Kara has achieved something that no Majat has ever managed – freedom from the Guild!

But the Black Diamond assassin Mai has been called back to face his punishment for sparing her life. Determined to join his fight or share his punishment, Kara finds herself falling for Mai.

But is their relationship – and the force that makes their union all-powerful – a tool to defeat the overpowering forces of the Kaddim armies, or a distraction sure to cause the downfall of the Majat?

* * *

Worldbuilding for a fantasy world is even more involving than research for a historical novel.

It is commonly known that a well-done historical novel requires a lot of research. Getting down the major dates and facts is only a small part of it. Historical authenticity comes with details: clothing, geography, customs, beliefs–not to mention all those obscure historical facts you would never find in commonplace sources. Only a fraction of these facts ever finds its way onto the pages of a finished novel, but the information must be there, forming the foundation of the story.

When I approached the task of creating a world for my Majat Code series—an epic adventure fantasy set in a fictional empire–it had seemed at first that I would be spared the necessity to do any research at all. After all, the world is all in my head, which makes me the foremost expert on every aspect of it. Right?

I quickly realized how wrong I was. To give life to a story, the world it is set in it has to be real–possibly even more so than for a historical novel where readers often can relate to sparingly mentioned facts. And, creating a world with this kind of realistic feeling takes a lot more than researching a world that already exists. As an author, I needed to achieve a state where I knew so much about every aspect of my world that I could literally write books about it. All the back history, geography, customs, clothing, languages, religion, politics had to become alive in my head, as if it actually existed. Except that this time there were no places to look it up. Every time I found myself missing a fact or a reference point, I had to sit down and develop it, often basing it on historical analogies that required even more research.

In the end, I found the process of worldbuilding a lot more tedious, and involving, than any kind of research I ever had to do for historical fiction. It was also lots of fun, watching my created world take shape and substance, from the detailed maps I drew, to all the history, culture and lore. It seems a pity that most of these things have to remain in the background, forming the foundation for my world that no one ever sees. But as I now know it is also a necessity that could make all the difference in the story.

One point of view is not enough.

I often see discussions among readers and authors on whether it is better to write in one point of view, or several. Opinions differ. Many prefer to stick to only one character throughout the whole story, and this strategy has certainly yielded many successful books. Others enjoy epic stories with multiple point-of-view characters. In that camp, my ultimate example is “The Game of Thrones”, which can easily serve as an encyclopedia of character development.

In my writing, I have originally opted for a single point of view, which seemed to be well suited for my action/adventure genre. But only a few chapters into my first book I realized that I won’t be able to keep it up. There were aspects to the story I needed to develop which were more natural for another character to describe. Often the same scene needed to be described from more than one perspective, based on people’s positions in the room, as well as their experience, skills, and perceptions. Finally, there were parallel story lines which could only be shown by people involved. In the end, the interplay between points of view, male and female, young and old, became one of my favorite aspects of writing “The Majat Code”.

No story is ever a stand-alone.

I used to disapprove of the idea of sequels. To me, each story had to be a stand-alone that resolved all the possible conflicts and plot lines and left nothing unsaid. I have since realized that, like life, a good story is impossible to resolve completely. Even if all the conflicts come to an end and everyone achieves (or fails) everything they set out to do, something always had to be left behind. Those stand-alone books out there just choose to leave these things in the foreground rather than following through. In the end, it all comes down to these kinds of choices.

After creating a world for my Majat Code series, I also realized more. It would take me more than one book to leave that world behind, to move on and create something new. I fell in love with some of my characters, and even though their stories got resolved in book 1, I could see many more things that needed a follow up in books 2 and 3, and possibly others.

By now, having written three books in the Majat Code series, I am aware that it is impossible to wrap up all the story lines without leaving a gap that could be explored in another story. In fact, I believe that the best sequels stem from the issues that were unintentionally left unanswered in the previous book(s) in the series. In my case, I found that it works best if I write with a full intention to complete each story, and then pick up a thread and unravel it into the next book. This way, the sequels flow more naturally and each book is more satisfying than if I tried to deliberately leave things open.

In the “Majat Code” series, book I, “Blades of the Old Empire” ended on a note where one of the main characters had a status change, and while everything else in this book had been resolved, this status change left behind an uncertainty not covered by the rules of their world. This uncertainty feeds the conflict in “The Guild of Assassins”, which is, again, a full stand-alone, but for which I had to start working on a sequel almost as soon as I finished the book.

Trust your characters.

Along with the worldbuilding, another very important task is character development. To me, it starts even before I sit down to write. I imagine a person, his/her major character traits, appearance down to the details of clothing. I also imagine their opposites, and those they would most likely be friends with. Once these characters come alive in my head, I create a scene and give them all tasks to do. And then, if it all works well, all I have to do is sit back and write down what happens.

When done well, this could be a very rewarding process, which, to me, parallels writing to watching a movie where I can also direct the setting and the action. This synergy with my characters can expand my abilities so much. If I don’t know what to do in a certain situation, one of my characters is bound to know, and all I need to do is allow this character to take over. If I want to explore my character’s limits, all I need to do is throw this person into a conflict and see what he or she can do. I used this a lot in “The Guild of Assassins”, where three characters with a lot of unresolved feelings for each other must unite to fight a common enemy. Writing this book I had a sense that the words already existed somewhere, and all I had to do was write them down. It was an amazing feeling, one that I miss every moment I spend not writing.

Follow your heart.

Like most authors, I spent many of my early years dreaming of finding a publisher while working my head off trying to perfect my writing. Like many, I tended to think of this process in terms of “what will the editors/readers like?” and “how can I write something popular?” Fortunately for me, I quickly realized that these thoughts were completely counterproductive. The only things I can write well are those that come from my heart, those I love, those I can pour my soul into. The question of who and why would like it becomes irrelevant, and certainly I could not do anything at all to make my writing deliberately likeable other than by doing my best. So, I learned to live by this rule: follow your heart when writing, and never worry about others. Well, not during the writing process, anyway.

I am a firm believer that one can succeed only if one does something exceptionally well. For an author, this has to start with writing something that opens your soul, not something deliberately commercial or appealing. One small example concerns the genres. I was writing epic fantasy when the majority of sales were in the urban fantasy genre. I felt crazy doing that, but I simply could not stop. Urban is just not by genre, even if every now and then I feel tempted to try.

I had to put this rule to the test again and again, most recently when writing “The Guild of Assassins”. One of the unexpected turns of the plot involved a controversial move, and I knew the readers were bound to be divided about it. I even considered changing the story. But then I realized that for me, as an author, it was the only possible one, so I went with it–and it worked just the way I wanted it to. I consider this book the best one I have written so far. I followed my heart. In the end, it made it all seem worth it.

* * *

Anna Kashina grew up in Russia and moved to the United States in 1994 after receiving her Ph.D. in cell biology from the Russian Academy of Sciences. She works as a biomedical researcher and combines career in science with her passion for writing. Anna’s interests in ballroom dancing, world mythologies and folklore feed her high-level interest in martial arts of the Majat warriors.

Anna Kashina: Website | Twitter

Guild of Assassins: Amazon | B&N

Appaloosa Elim is a man who knows his place. On a good day, he’s content with it.

Today is not a good day.

Today, his so-called “partner” – that lily-white lordling Sil Halfwick – has ridden off west for the border, hell-bent on making a name for himself in native territory. And Elim, whose place is written in the bastard browns and whites of his cow-spotted face, doesn’t dare show up home again without him.

The border town called Sixes is quiet in the heat of the day, but Elim’s heard the stories about what wakes at sunset: gunslingers and shapeshifters and ancient animal gods whose human faces never outlast the daylight.

If he ever wants to go home again, he’d better find his missing partner fast. But if he’s caught out after dark, Elim risks succumbing to the old and sinister truth in his own flesh – and discovering just how far he’ll go to survive the night.

***

1. Don’t Leave Home With Horse Nuts.

No, really, y’all. Snip-snip before the road trip. This was something I never even considered. Sixes starts with two guys herding a dozen-odd yearling horses down to sell at the fair. Simple enough, right? And obviously you’re going to get more money for your horses if they’re intact, right? And they’re barely more than a year old, so surely –

“Nope,” my all-knowing equestrian beta-mistress said. “You leave them like that, they’re going to start getting horny and feisty and getting in fights and mounting their sisters, and pretty soon that whole pen is going to be nastier than aLannister game of spin-the-bottle.”

Okay, she didn’t say it exactly like that, but you get the point – and so did I. As I picked up my red pen, two dozen thoroughbred testicles cried out in terror, and were silenced.

2. Nothing Says Fashionable Femininity Like Wearing a Dead Mouse.

Well, it’s like this. I’ve been describing this book as “cowboys and fishmen fantasy” – and the thing is that the fishmen (who are actually more like frog men, but shhh) are actually sort of like changelings: with a little surgical alteration and some good makeup, they can disguise themselves as human beings. Still, they aren’t mammals, so they don’t have body hair – which makes trying to pass for an earthling slightly more complicated. Wearing a wig is easy enough, but then what do you do for eyebrows?

Why, you get yourself a fresh mouse pelt and cut yourself a pair, that’s what! As I learned, this was not only common in 17th and 18th century Europe, but practically de rigeur, as the lead-based cosmetics that fine ladies wore had the unfortunate side effect of making their hair fall out. And you don’t even want to know how they replaced their teeth.

3. Cowboy Lingo Is the Nickel-Plated Dickens…

Seriously, you guys. I’ve had so much fun wallowing in antique frontier vocabulary – which as near as I can tell is the bastard love-child of Charles Dickens, Dr. Seuss, and a meth-addled Latin student. The dialect says so much, not only about what kinds of objects and activities 19th-century working-class folks needed words for, but also about the humor and creativity that went into the terms. Here are a few of my favorites (ones that actually made it into the book!)

absquatulate – to flee, leave in a hurry

calf slobbers – meringue (the kind you’d used to top a pie)

knocked acock – stunned, blindsided

necktie sociable – a hanging

sucking hind tit – being last, getting the least

(You can find these and about a million more over at Legends of America, by the way.)

4. …But Native Slang Will Blow Your Mind.

Exhibits A through E, from Countryboy79’s Archive of Navajo Slang:

Burger King – ‘Áh Bikiin – “just enough food to get strength from”

Dr. Mario – Azee‘ handéhé – “falling medicine”

Girlfriend – Bich’áayaa íí’áhí – “the one that sticks up from under his armpit”

Microwave – Bee na’niildóhó – “you warm things up with it”

To watch a movie – bináá na’alkid – “it is showing in front of him/her”

Do you feel that? Those little pop-rock explosions in your brain? I’m not a professional mentologist, but I’m pretty sure that’s the sound of internalized pop-culture bullshit withering like the Wicked Witch of the East’s ruby-slipperedcankles.

Like, these days I think most of us realize that the Apache Chief / Tonto / Tigerlily stuff is a load of eagle-feathered horse-apples. But then you see a little list like this – and you think about how Dr. Mario is pretty frigging great – and you start noticing how a lot of these nouns are actually being translated into descriptive actions – and then you click over to Wikipedia and start reading about how yeah, the Navajo language is basically the supreme linguistic god-emperor of verbs – and you realize that your whole life has been a hideous lie.

Or maybe that’s just me.

tl;dr: if you really want to get to know somebody, start with their words.

5. You’re a Writer. If You’re Not Crying, You’re Not Trying.

I don’t mean that literally, of course. I realize that not everyone manifests anxiety and distress as episodes of acute facial incontinence. Maybe you Hulk out, or binge-eat gas station hamdogs, or sing down the eldritch fury that ends the earth.

Personally, what I like to do is get real excited about something like #4 above, and think about how to work those elements into my fictional indigenous cultures – then worry about becoming the Great White Culturally-Appropriating Satan – then worry about NOT doing that, and remaining Part of the Ignorant Anglocentric Whitewashing Problem – then collapse in a pile of wet kleenex and artisanal despair. It’s a hell of a system, let me tell you.

My point is this: after literally years of intermittent stomach-churning horror, I’m starting to realize that that’s a feature, not a bug. It’s not fun to live in mortal terror of screwing up. It’s even less fun to actually screw up. (I expect it’s absolutely ZERO fun for the people we hurt when we do screw up.) But my God, that fear is SUCH a great motivator. When you’re afraid of doing it wrong – whatever “it” is! – you take extra time and trouble to get it right. So the goal is not to stop being scared. The goal is to USE your scared to get shit done.

So basically… if you’re ever like “man, I’m really nervous about writing X” and your friend comes back with, “ahhh, don’t worry; you got this” – you punch them. You punch them right in their big friendly face. You go find a new friend, one who says, “ooh, yeah, you don’t wanna mess that up. Want help making a game plan?”

Be afraid. Be very afraid. Then be awesome.

***

Arianne “Tex” Thompson is a home-grown Texas success story. A relentless fantasy enthusiast dual-wielding a bachelor’s degree in history and a master’s in literature, Tex has since channeled her interests into an epic fantasy Western series, set to kick off in July 2014 with the release of ONE NIGHT IN SIXES.  An active member of SFWA, Codex, and the DFW Writers Workshop, and currently serving as editor for the DFW Writers Conference, Tex has made it her mission to help other writers achieve their goals: with relentless enthusiasm and the fastest red pen this side of the Pecos River, she is out to change the world – one misplaced modifier at a time.

Tex Thompson: Website | Twitter

One Night in Sixes: Amazon | B&N | Indiebound | Powell’s

Stephen Blackmore is a friend and a bona fide bad-ass who writes killer urban fantasy about LA necromancer, Eric Carter. Here’s Stephen talking about… well, you’ll see.

* * *

Sometimes I get to write about the things I’m not writing about.

Themes and metaphors, subtext and meaning. I can talk about one big theme, how you can’t go home again, say, and then scatter smaller ones throughout. Sometimes it’s obvious. Sometimes not so much. And I can couch it all in a fast-paced adventure, a violent detective story, a monster hunt.

My books DEAD THINGS and BROKEN SOULS are about a modern day necromancer named Eric Carter who can see the ghosts left behind by traumatic deaths. Gunshots, stabbings, stranglings, car crashes. Haunts trapped where they died, Wanderers flitting from place to place, unanchored and lost. Echoes repeat their deaths over and over again like a busted record player. He can’t not see them. To make things more confusing for him, he doesn’t just see ghosts of people. He sees the psychic landscape of the world that was left behind. The torn down buildings of a bygone era in all their glory, the grand hotels, the street corners that made history. The skyline of Los Angeles looks very different to him than it does to most people.

For him the Dead can be goddamn scary. They can’t touch him from his lofty perch on the living side. In his ivory tower he’s safe and secure. But if he crosses to their side, goes into their world, it’s a whole new set of rules. They’ll tear him apart given a chance. Fucking things might as well be sharks.

But they’re not. They’re still people, people with needs most couldn’t possibly understand. Tormented, confused, desperate. He forgets that sometimes. He’s alive and they’re not. Other times he doesn’t care. He’ll use them to his advantage. They’re everywhere, after all. Hidden in the spaces in between. And though they themselves go unseen and unnoticed they see a lot themselves.

Let’s be clear here, he is NOT a nice man. He’s arrogant, angry. Sometimes he’s really fucking stupid. His moral compass is as broken as the ghosts who wander past him and his blind spots cause more problems for the people around him than they do for himself.

But for all his fear of the Dead for reminding him of how fleeting life is, and how tenuous our grip on this reality might be, sometimes he’s the only voice they have, even if the best he can do is to scream their names into a howling wind.

To him the Dead are a cautionary tale. It’s luck of the draw if someone winds up a ghost, but if they do they can expect to spend a good long while draining away into the ether until they end up wherever they’re supposed to go. It’s not a good existence. He’s got a unique ringside view of what happens when things really go to shit. And he doesn’t know how to help them.

Years ago I met a friend for coffee at a place in West Hollywood. When I got there she had five, maybe six teenage girls with her. Youngest looked to be about twelve, the oldest couldn’t have been more than sixteen. They were crashing at my friend’s place for the next few days before heading up to San Francisco. She had only just met them that week.

The girls were from Texas and had hopped a bus two weeks before. They weren’t all related, but they were very clearly a family. The oldest watched the world around her like a Mountain Lion protecting her cubs, scanning for threats and making it clear with nothing more than her body language that if the world fucked with her or her friends she’d fuck the world right back. My money was on her.

We hung out for about an hour and from that I got that they were getting away from things they didn’t want to talk about. Violence was involved. A couple of the older ones were clearly in a relationship with each other. Before we parted I gave them some money, wished them well. Heard from my friend a few days later that they had moved on. I have no idea where they ended up or what became of them.

I didn’t get the sense that anything else I could have said or done would have been helpful or even welcome. Though they were exhausted, scared, lonely and largely invisible, they had a plan that I wasn’t privy to. I don’t know what they had gone through, what their world was like, I wasn’t even a tourist to them, but I got the distinct impression that whatever they were going through at that moment was world’s better than what they had left.

And so when I write about Wanderers, Haunts and Echoes, I think of those runaways. I think of a wheelchair bound vet who can’t get his PTSD meds. I think of broken families who can’t get Section 8 housing. The hidden homeless, the people we don’t want to look at, the ones we don’t know how to help. I see Carter’s disjointed skyline of Los Angeles disappearing into a haze of gentrification. Of Downtown squatters being pushed out of buildings so developers can convert them into $5000.00 a month lofts. Carter’s uncertainty is my own. His ghosts are my ghosts, peeking out through the cracks in the pavement, swept over by the tidal forces of change, powerless to do anything about it.

Sometimes I get to write about the things I’m not writing about.

Stephen Blackmoore: Website | Twitter

Broken Souls: Indiebound | Amazon | B&N

Apparently there’s this Internet Scavenger Hunt thingy run by Misha Collins — the handsomely smirksome gent from Supernatural. I’ve seen it in years past and always thought it had something to do with a convention, but that’s totally wrong, as I have learned this year.

I have learned this year because one of the items on the scavenger hunt list is to get a sci-fi writer to write a 140-word or less short story featuring various elements (Misha Collins, Queen of England, an Elopus, whatever the fuck that is).

I’ve been asked about a dozen times for a story.

I have said yes to one person.

I will say no to everyone else.

(You have to give the story directly to the people asking, as I understand it — can’t just post it publicly and have it work for the scavenger hunt. Or so I’m told — I honestly have no idea what’s happening, which is par for the course for me. Ignorance is not only bliss, but frankly, it’s just plain easier. YAY FOR IGNORAMUSES LIKE ME WOOOOO.)

There has been some kerfuffles and fracas over this, though.

Because writers are being asked to work for free.

Further, some folks have been more than a little abusive about the asking.

(Link here.)

To those asking, I say:

Be polite, please. Writers are not obligated to interrupt their work to provide you with a free story, regardless of how short. It’s like asking a comedian to tell you a joke — it’s very difficult to always be “on.” So, greet us with kindness and you will likely be met with kindness in return.

To those authors being asked, I say:

Be polite, please. Also: fucking relax a little. I know, maybe you’re a bit overwhelmed by the attention — but, really, is this the worst thing that’s ever happened to you? First, it’s for charity. Second, there’s basically a bunch of horrible things happening all around the world right now, and you have the privilege of being a published sci-fi author, which is actually kind of rad. Third, nobody’s devaluing the price of literature by asking for this free story from you — this isn’t like, some publisher snootily saying, YEAH WE’RE GONNA PUBLISH THIS AND PAY YOU NOTHING, STUPID WRITER, HA HA HA. This ain’t cause to raise Harlan Ellison from the dead (okay, he’s not dead, but he’s always been quite spectral) to yell at you about ‘paying the writer.’ I’ll admit a moment of sympathy for someone like Neil Gaiman who is probably so inundated with this request he’s almost certainly actually on fire, but then it’s also vital to remember that he’s Neil Motherfucking Gaiman, married to Amanda Fucking Palmer, and he writes from a magical gazebo in the woods and is handsome with or without a beard and so he’s probably going to be just fine. My suggestion, then? Take the requests as an honor rather than an irritation.

I mean, unless someone’s an asshole about it, then hell with ’em.

Everyone be polite.

Nobody be a bully or a jerk.

Go forth and be rad. As always:

Be the best version of yourself that you can be. In this, and in all things.

You know Delilah S. Dawson, yeah? She’s been here before. I’ll just let her take it away.

* * *

First of all, let’s get something straight. I’m Southern, and I’m slightly Goth, which makes me totally qualified to speak on this topic.

*puts on heavy black eyeliner, turns on The Cure, and prepares glass of overly sweetened iced tea *

Now, let’s get down to business. What is Southern Gothic? I’m not going to bore you with the entire Wikipedia entry, so let me sum it up: MACABRE SHIT GOES DOWN IN THE SOUTH. Whether you’re swooning with Flannery O’Connor or swooping around the graveyard with Anne Rice, Southern Gothic is a fun playground for stories that mix horror, history, magic, and opossums. YES, THEY HAVE TO HAVE OPOSSUMS. IT’S A RULE.

Now, don’t look at this list like my grandmother’s famous chocolate pie recipe, which is highly specific and involves candy thermometers and bezoars and assplodes the kitchen if done incorrectly. No, this is more like making a gumbo. Look at the list, toss in what appeals to you, and leave out what’s rotten or still twitching. We good, y’all?

Then I reckon it’s time to R-U-N-N-O-F-T.

1. THE SOUTH

Yes, okay, so this one is actually pretty necessary. If it ain’t in the South, it ain’t Southern Gothic. But where exactly does the South start and end? Is it everything below the Mason-Dixon line? Where is the Mason-Dixon line, and is it dotted or marked with caution tape? What about Texas? What about Florida?

Hellfire, son. I don’t know. If there’s a Waffle House in the area, you’re probably safe setting a Southern Gothic Story there. Here’s a map:

Point is, setting is a big deal. Old plantations, warped little towns, creepy homesteads in withering fields. You can’t write this shit in California. Not with all those hipsters and avocados classing up the joint.

2. A MANSION

Once upon a time, there was always a plantation. A beautiful, shiny white plantation. Everyone’s happy at the plantation—except the slaves who do all the work. Because Southern Gothic is all about irony and contrast. These days, the metaphor has more wiggle room. But every small town has a family that’s rich and beautiful and powerful but secretly corrupted and sinister. They might actually be snake people. I mean, I’m not sure. But they might.

3. A HOVEL

It stands to reason that the way to make a mansion seem even grander is to put it next to a trailer or a shotgun shack. That’s like putting a rusted Matchbox car with three wheels next to a souped-up monster truck. See, the weird thing about the South is that we have all these confusing opposites smushed together. Rich people and poor people, cheek by jowl. Rednecks and Yankees. Starbucks next to the cemetery. Yacht clubs next to the swamp. It’s a study in contrasts that allows the writer to explore social critique and magical realism.

Or, in Southern terms, GO HOME, GUSSY GOT-ROCKS.

I mean, that’s what my grandma says when I buy a new pair of shoes.

4. A WITCH

Or anyone who straddles the real world and the magical world. Maybe it’s an old voodoo lady or a child who has prognosticatory nightmares or a preacher who says mystical things and may or may not be a demon. But someone has to commune with the spirits. And judging by the Krispy Kreme bags we always find by the dead black chickens in my hometown graveyard, our particular hoodoo priestess likes chocolate iced donuts with her Santeria.

5. A SWAMP

There’s nothing like a swamp. Like, literally, because it’s this weird mix of land and water that you can’t find anywhere that isn’t a swamp. It’s alive, oppressive, treacherous, and hiding all sorts of nasty things under scummy, opaque water. GEE, I WONDER IF THAT’S A METAPHOR.

6. A CEMETERY

It’s hard to write a Southern Gothic that doesn’t involve a cemetery, a lone grave, or at least a nice, gnarly dead body. That’s partly because it’s hard to walk through a Southern town without finding tons of graveyards. Since the South is the oldest part of America, we got lots of dead folks. Especially once you get down into Savannah and the coast, every downtown is just full of curious headstones, mausoleums, and statues. And they’re all different and strange and crumbling. Of course something unnatural is going on down there. Didn’t you see the lady carrying the Krispy Kreme bag and the black chicken?

Side note: Do you play the cow game? That’s where you count cows on your side of the car, and whoever gets the most wins. But if you pass a graveyard, you lose them all. No one ever wins the cow game at our house because you can’t get to our house without passing more graveyards than cows. And we live in cow country.

7. A TOWN

Well, obviously you need a town. But the thing is, in Southern Gothic, the towns are almost characters in and of themselves. The town has a flavor, a funny name, a history, peculiarities that make it different from other small towns. It’s most likely a caricature, a warped version of a real town. Think of Big Fish, of the shoes hanging from the lines and the lights strung across the green. If you’re writing a town of your own invention, go on and make it as strange as the ones you see in real life. Like the one twenty miles from me that thinks it’s a German village in the Appalachian mountains. Alpine Helen. Even the Denny’s looks like a damn chalet, and you can’t walk five feet without tripping on a bratwurst. IN GEORGIA.

8. SECRETS

Here’s the fun part. Your town seems quaint and pleasant, but it’s hiding something. Your plantation seems happy, but it’s rotten. Your debutante’s smile isn’t quite real. You have to paint a picture for the reader that squirms, just a little, underneath. And then, bit by bit, like a shovel uncovering a coffin, you reveal what’s down there, waiting. But it can’t be a trans-dimensional spider-clown, because Stephen King already did that. Pick something else.

9. A MONSTER

The monster can be real or magical. It can be a giant gator, a chupacabra, or a Civil War ghost. Or it can be a serial killer undertaker or a corrupt cop or a little old lady with especially bounteous tomatoes growing out of body-shaped dirt mounds. Point is, you want the reader to feel like something’s always watching from the other side of the bushes, waiting to pounce and claim another victim. But don’t write an albino alligator, because I just did that, and NEENER.

10. A CURSE

Much like a sprinkle of sugar in the creamed corn, it’s always nice to toss a bit of mysterious worry into your story. An omen, a head shake from the palm reader, a fortune cookie with only bad news, or a family ailment that claims all the first born sons when they turn eighteen. You have a monster waiting behind the tree, but the sword of Damocles is dangling over your head, too. It’s not something solid, not something you can fight. But it wears on you, chases you, keeps you from ever feeling safe. Like your own personal storm cloud full of angry bees.

11. A BOO RADLEY

Eccentric characters are a big part of Southern Gothic. Nobody’s normal, and anybody who pretends to be is hiding a body in the freezer. There’s almost always one peculiar character who’s actually harmless and helpful. Maybe the whole town’s scared of the cat lady, or maybe it’s the old man who lives alone in the swamp and brings a lost little girl home. But you need a friend, and it’s okay if your friend is a damn Sasquatch, so long as we learn at the end that they’ve been helping out all along. I suggest a beekeeping Sasquatch named ROO RADBEE who makes hand-dipped candles to light the way of lost orphans. I will now take 15% of your profits.

12. AN UNEXPECTED VILLAIN

Yeah, so every story needs a villain. And sometimes the villain is the monster, but sometimes the monster is the Boo Radley/Roo Radbee and the super nice mayor is the villain and he would’ve gotten away with it, too, if not for you kids and your Sasquatch candles. Sometimes it’s obvious, and sometimes it’s not. But mostly, you should get to the end, and your jaw should drop, because it’s been staring you in the face all along.

13. THE ELITE

Or the darling debutante of Dublin. Or a Mrs. Havisham. Or a Country Club Colonel. But almost every Southern town has a character known for putting on airs who’s secretly just as pathetic as everyone else. This is the lady wearing the flea-bitten fur coat in August or the fellow with the slicked back hair who can’t do without his Dapper Dan or the baton-twirling beauty queen with Vaseline on her teeth. The whole point is that someone has to represent how “the elite” is really just a dead conceit and Gussy Got-Rocks goes home and takes out her dentures and cries while she polishes her baton. Which is not as weirdly sexual as it sounds.

14. CREEPY PLANTS

There is nothing that says Southern Gothic like Spanish moss dripping off live oaks. Unless it’s a swamp filled with swoopy tupelo and cypress. Or a field of kudzu slowly marching onward and tearing down a weathered barn. Thing is, you can’t really stop plants in the South. Maybe you can hold ’em off for a bit, but they’ll keep coming back, digging in their tendrils and slowly reclaiming whatever folks try to build. They seem to reach for you—because they are reaching for you. Vines, branches, twisted roots cracking tombstones—they’re always in the background, painting a picture of inescapable decay and a return to nature, whether you like it or not. Trust me on this one: I once played a kudzu monster at an outdoor haunted house, and I made a guy piss his pants. BY BEING A PLANT.

15. AN INNOCENT

Here’s another one of those opposites: when you take an old, decrepit Southern town, you need a new person to really make it look crappy. Whether it’s an awkward and curious outsider from the big city or a sweet, naïve child experiencing the setting for the first time, it makes us aware that everyone who lives in the town is part of it, decaying with it, unable to escape it. Whereas the new person is fresh, unburdened by whatever’s dragging down the town. Bad news, sugarplum: they’re going down, too. But they’ll probably get a nice slice of pie before it happens.

16. A PECULIAR CRITTER

Everybody in the South is full of stories about weird animals. And I don’t mean a dog named Paul with funny markings that look like eyebrows. I mean that time when my cousin Jaybird put a toddler version of me on the back of a billy goat named Hercules and told me to grab onto his horns for as long as I could. And that is the story of how I was almost trampled and eaten by an angry goat with balls the size of mangoes. We take in pet opossums, feed cat food to families of raccoons, adopt three-legged hounds, and buy de-glanded baby skunks at the flea market. Critters are part of our community eccentricity, and every good Southern Gothic has at least one animal that’s too ridiculous to be true but is based on someone’s twisted childhood.

I might still be afraid of mangoes.

17. A TALISMAN

Southerners are a superstitious lot. We pick up pennies, carry rabbit feet, and rub stones we found by the river. A mysterious talisman or object is another way to add a layer of mystery to your story, whether through an antique ring handed down through the family, a coin found in the town’s last pay phone, or a music box found buried under a tree. Old Southerners in particular often consider themselves historians of stuff, keepers responsible for carrying on traditions and passing on stories. Over time and with enough embellishment, seemingly meaningless objects will be imbued with almost otherworldly powers.

Ask me about the time I slept in Jefferson Davis’s bed. No, don’t. It was super uncomfortable. The ghost of Jefferson Davis hates me.

18. MALAISE

Humidity + heat + everything is old and droopy + everyone is lazy = an overwhelming malaise characteristic of the South. Most Southern Gothic stories don’t take place in winter, when the mud freezes and everybody stays inside to burn books. No, it’s usually a summer night, and sweat glistens on everybody’s brow, and water beads up outside the iced tea glass, and the dogs pant, and the air seems to shimmer over the cracked ground. There’s a magic to the heat here, as if the buzz of the cicadas is just waiting for something to happen. It’s hammocks and porch swings and rocking chairs and slowly waving fans with church calendars from 1954 printed on ’em. Yes, I’m romanticizing it. August in the South is miserable, and our mosquitos are the size of vultures, and we all wish we were in Canada, playing hockey.

19. OLD SHIT

Yes, we’ve covered old people and old houses and old tombstones and old objects that old people can’t stop hollering about. But seriously: SOUTHERN GOTHIC IS FULL OF OLD SHIT. Wood is weathered, paint is peeling, the roof is missing shingles. The car has ghosts on the hood, and the old man’s slippers have holes in the soles, and this cast iron skillet has seriously been in my family for so long that a certain family member recently joked, “When your great-great-great whatever got disowned, they left her with this skillet and a slave. If only the slave had lasted longer than the skillet.” And then we all quietly threw up. But decrepitude and magnificent decay are a big part of Southern Gothic. Because no matter how grand and beautiful something used to be, it dies just like everything else.

20. WEATHER

You know how in Jane Austen, they say the weather was practically a person? It’s like that in Southern Gothic, too. You just don’t get humid heat like this anywhere else. There’s no smell like fat raindrops hitting the dirt during a drought. Tornadoes tear our trees up by the roots, and hurricanes pound our shores, and thunder rolling along on a summer night sounds like drums and cannons. When it rains while the sun is shining, we say, “The devil is beating his wife behind the kitchen door,” and then we realize what we’ve just said and wonder what the hell our parents were thinking and explain to our children that we just call it a sunshower and move on.

Oh, and when it snows? We all wear tube socks on our hands because we don’t own mittens, and we sled down the driveway on bent cookie sheets and get into insane traffic jams that lead to amazing sex. True story!

21. A NIGHT MEETING

Oh, how I love to write night scenes in Southern Gothic. When you add up everything else, all the decay and heat and malaise and hungry plants and creepy critters and eccentric neighbors, then put it all in the pitch black with nothing but a moon hanging in the tree branches and some flickering fireflies… well, it’s magic. And also creepy. Just make sure your characters are wearing shoes for that meeting, or one of them is bound to step on a slug, which will scar them forever. FOREVER.

God, I hate slugs.

22. SOUTHERN FOOD

If the weather is a character, the food is pretty much a minor god. If you’re Southern, you know the catechism: grits, biscuits, banana pudding, gumbo, fried chicken, collards, field peas, creamed corn, fried green tomatoes, pimento cheese, chocolate pie, grass, chow chow, vidalia onions, squash casserole, barbecue, brunswick stew, cold ham, peach cobbler, green beans, apple pie, watermelon, butter beans, fried okra, jambalaya, dirty rice, fried catfish, Moon Pies. I could keep going. But I’m too hungry.

23. DRINK

If it’s tea, it’s sweet. If it’s carbonated, it’s Coke. If it’s alcohol, Lord, that’s a long list. We have moonshine, and we also have cheap beer and some mighty nice bourbon. Point is, if someone invites you inside on a summer day, they offer you a drink. What you ask for and what they have on hand says a lot about you both. But here’s one way that conversation might go differently than in other parts of the world:

Them: Can I get you a drink?

You: I’d be obliged. What do you have?

Them: Tea, milk, water, Coke.

You: What kind of Coke?

Them: Sprite, Orange, Diet, Dr. Pepper.

Because anything carbonated is Coke. COKE IS YOUR GOD NOW.

Did somebody say Pepsi? *stares* GO HOME.

24. RELIGION

If you don’t think religion is still a big deal in the South, then you haven’t seen the statue of the Ten Commandments that’s bigger than a Volkswagon Beetle outside our town hall. Most Southern families have a Bible the size of a coffee table that’s been around since the Gutenberg. The pages are so thin as to be transparent, the cover is cracked leather, and the inside flap includes carefully written names, birthdays, and deaths, often of people with names like Sister, Jules, Paralee, and Castleberry. If we’re talking deep South and small towns, chances are you’re looking at Baptists. There might even be snake handling Pentecostals or tiny churches where you can hear the singing down the road. Thing is, you can’t write Southern Gothic without old people, cemeteries, churches, and a deep-rooted belief that colors the perspective on good, evil, and the afterlife. And, oddly enough, there’s often some sort of hoodoo going on simultaneously.

25. COLLOQUIALISMS

Different parts of the South have different accents, different lingo, different idioms, but chances are we’re dropping our Gs and peppering our speech with turns of phrase that you just can’t fake. If you can’t properly use “I reckon”, I reckon you’d best let sleeping dogs lie. If you put the words “you guys” in an old Southern woman’s mouth, the Gods of Y’all will flutter down on mosquito wings and poke you full of holes. If you forget to say yes ma’am or no sir or please or thank you, we’ll know you’re from New York City and trying to sell us Pace Picante Sauce.

At the very least, watch some Duck Dynasty and just do whatever the guys in beards do. If they have their own line of wines at Wal-Mart, they must know what they’re doing.

Just as an example, if you haven’t watched True Detective, I recommend it. Fascinating, super sharp writing with compelling characters and a plot that keeps you guessing. And it has every single thing on this list. So does True Blood and the original Sookie Stackhouse series of books on which the show is based. So does Beautiful Creatures. And so does my YA Southern Gothic Horror, SERVANTS OF THE STORM, which is out now, set in a storm-ravaged Savannah, and guaranteed to make you think twice about eating collards.

So y’all go on out and write some creepy Southern Gothic. And then y’all come back now, y’here? And when y’all come back, bring me some chocolate pie, cuz I’m hungry enough to chew the ass end out of a rag doll.

* * *

Delilah S. Dawson is a native of Roswell, Georgia, and the author of the paranormal romance Blud series for Pocket, including Wicked as They Come, Wicked as She Wants, and the upcoming Wicked After Midnight, as well as two previous Blud novellas, The Mysterious Madam Morpho and The Peculiar Pets of Miss Pleasance. 

Delilah S. Dawson: Website | Twitter

Servants of the Storm: Amazon | B&N | Indiebound

I want you to take a book selfie with my new book, Blightborn.

*stares*

*stares harder*

YOU WILL DO THIS.

And, if you do this, you might win one of two visidexes Kindle Paperwhites.

These are special Kindle Paperwhites, though. They are fancy.

Each Kindle will have a custom cover that matches the very lovely Blightborn cover.

Further, each Kindle will come pre-loaded with Under the Empyrean Sky, Blightborn and The Wind Has Teeth Tonight. Three Heartland stories in one.

(You can see the previous photo contest with another book of mine, Blue Blazes, right here.)

Here’s how this works:

You take a photo of yourself with my book, Blightborn.

Physical or digital version of the book is fine. Just make sure the photo captures that (oh-so-lovely) cover.

Cell phone photos are fine, as are photos taken by any other means of photography. DSLR, pinhole camera, a shot from the Hubble Telescope aimed at your face and my book, whatevs. (All photos will be posted to Flickr for easy perusal.)

You send me this photo — use e-mail address terribleminds at gmail dot com, and be sure to apply the subject header: [Blightborn Book Selfie Contest]

This is open to the United States only, at present.

You can enter only once.

This contest runs for two weeks. Entries are due by 11:59PM EST on Sunday, August 24th.

[edited: contest extended by a week, as some folks asked!]

There will be two winners.

I will pick one winner — my favorite!

And the terribleminds readership here will pick their favorite, too.

Both winners will receive the fancy-pantsy Kindle Paperwhites.

And that’s the long and short of it.

Any questions?

Then go nab Blightborn and start snapping some selfies.