For those who saw a draft post up for a moment on New Year’s Day, don’t worry, it’ll come back! Except this time, it will not be a horrible embarrassing accident. Happy New Year!

Iwa

She grew up being told that her mother had wanted to name her Roxanne because of the song. It wasn’t true, though. It was just the name in the last paket kongo her mother had made; nobody knew why. Her father had chosen Roxie’s middle name, though: Kri. In Creole it meant to shout, yell, scream. It’s what her mother had done, just before she died giving birth to her.

Roxie was ten when she felt her first loa. Ezili Dantor crawled into her bed and held her, humming under her breath, the hilts of her knives digging into Roxie’s back. The tune was long, and low, and filled with blood — a mother’s blood, shed for Roxie. Maybe even shed willingly. After a time, Ezili whispered in Roxie’s ear how she was a chosen one, she would be a great warrior, and she would be a living aspect of Ezili. And then the loa held her again until Roxie could stop shaking.

By the time she was sixteen, Roxie had met all the Petwo family of loa, met them and knew them as her own. It was Ogun who had ridden her when she’d come across her first Door to Hell, who’d shown her how to wield her knives while smoking a cigar. Kalfu was there to teach her tricks and sorceries to keep herself alive, though she’d never had quite the same fear of Doors afterward, a fear she should have kept. Marinette . . . Marinette had killed the man who’d hurt Roxie on her sixteenth birthday, and later Marinette had washed her hands in the blood of the babe that would never be.

Marinette liked to free her, even when she didn’t want to be free.

When Roxie had been seventeen a month, she discovered what she was: a hunter. That’s what the girl at the movie theater said; a demon hunter, a knife against the Doors — and not alone. That night Roxie and the girl, the other hunter, worked together to fight an elemental. Roxie’s knives flew, and she felt the Petwo around her; her face was cut deep before she killed the demon. She breathed hard, retreated, and looked around for the other girl. It took her a moment, staring at the dark, to recognize the body.

That night Roxie dreamed strange and terrible things. Ezili came. The weight against Roxie’s back was hot, and soft breasts pressed against her skin. Ezili’s hand stroked her cut cheeks. Oh, lady, the loa whispered. Oh, lady, ma chere, I need you too much. She laughed a little. You and me, she said, and pulled away.

So then Ogun came, and poured rum over her face, and held down her arms. Kalfu came, pulled out a silver necklace, and breathed charms against it. Marinette came, laid the necklace along the cuts on Roxie’s face, and pressed it down hard enough to make Roxie scream. Finally Ezili, her body a drumbeat, burned, and burned, and burned the silver into place.

Oh, ma chere, ma chere, such things we will do.

Anna Katherine turns in a fun, fast-paced paranormal romance in Salt and Silver, serving up a worthy heroine in Allie and a hot love interest in Ryan, along with the requisite complications (the wandering Door) and a potential rival (Roxie), not to mention some very serious mistakes–as when a friend is bitten by a werewolf–and some big problems to deal with, such as a trip into Hell itself. She also provides a great supporting character for Allie in the form of Amanda, whose train wreck lifestyle masks a depth of compassion and love for her friend.

Perfect for fans of dark urban fantasy, Salt and Silver is an interesting, quirky book with an awful lot to say in nearly 360 pages. (more…)

Thanks, SFRevu!

(This, and other review links, can be found on our blog’s review page — if you know of a review we haven’t linked to, or you’ve written one yourself, drop us a line and we’ll add it.)

I’ll say it straight out: Writing a sequel is significantly harder than I realized. For one thing, we can’t just make stuff up like we did before. Sure, the Anna Katherine Co-Op of Evil had a grand old time throwing our brains at the page the first time around — but now we’re faced with having to actually remember the events and worldbuilding of Salt and Silver; remember, and build upon it.

I’ve got a copy of the book sitting beside me right now, ready to be flipped open to make sure that, for instance, we never said vampires had to always be goth — but trying not to contradict ourselves is the simpler part of the problem. The world’s a different place at the end of Salt and Silver; that’s got to have repercussions. Big ones. And while it’s easy to think of all sorts of horrible things that could happen (zombie apocalypse! the sky turns to jelly! a giant buzzard appears and eats everyone!), whatever happens needs to work within both the bounds of this new story — and with Salt and Silver. At the very least, that cuts out the zombie option. No such thing, as the reader might recall. So there’s that.

The other difficult thing comes down to one thing: Nerves. When we were writing Salt and Silver, it was a joy and a rush all at once. We could do anything! The worst that could happen was that someone wouldn’t like it. But with the sequel, I find myself worrying about disappointing those who did like the first book; I’m worried about being one of those sad flash-in-the-pan newbie authors who never really has much to say after one book; I’m worried that maybe whatever alchemical magic we worked with Salt and Silver will absent itself forever, and all that will be left is a mishmash of word vomit and regrets.

(Pro tip: These are what we call Author Crazies, everybody. And they aren’t your friend.)

I’ve got a couple of ideas about how to work through these difficulties — keeping S&S by my side, like I said, is one of them. And the other is really having faith in my own abilities and the fantabulous abilities of Anna — more faith in us than in the author crazies, anyway. Eventually we’ll have a book in our hands; that’ll be worth it all over again.

Salt and Silver Receives Starred Review from Publishers Weekly!

This lively tale of demons and gods, the debut effort of Katherine Macdonald and former Tor editor Anna Genoese, opens six years after witty, sarcastic Allie, a trust fund baby turned Brooklyn diner manager, inadvertently generates a door to hell in the diner’s basement[...]. Genoese and Macdonald mix multiple mythologies into a charming, biting cautionary narrative about taking responsibility for one’s actions. (more…)

Hurray! This, and other review links, can be found on our blog’s review page — if you know of a review we haven’t linked to, or you’ve written one yourself, drop us a line and we’ll add it. And while we’re at it: Have a question about Salt and Silver, magic, or the fascinating (and possibly imaginary) life of Anna Katherine? Send it in! You never know what we’ll decide to write about next…

One of the big writer maxims is: Write what you know.

It’s advice that usually works. Do you want real action, real emotions, real consequences? Remember what you’ve done in your own life, and write it out. “Write what you know” is a classic for a reason: pour all that lust for your midnight lover into your sex scenes, add the tiny details about what it’s like to live in Boise, Idaho, and use the uncomfortable memory of what you saw a friend go through in high school for a surprise plot twist to make the reader weep. Nothing sounds more real than what is actually real.

On the other hand we do sometimes run into problems. After all, how many of us have really faced down a demon? (more…)

A: [...] Another great thing we have going for our partnership is the fact that many of our skills and talents are complementary. For example, I am terrible at plotting, while Kat is absolutely amazing at it. I am great at writing sex scenes and emotional confrontations.

K: –Yes! Whereas I tend to shut my eyes and flail a bit. Though I do go back in and edit, and I think I tend to leave notes for Anna like, “Then they do something emotional here.” (more…)

Everything I write is a compilation of things I want to say, stories I want to tell, and messages I want to send to the world. The pieces of Salt and Silver come from all over the place—holes in TV shows and movies that bother me, bits and pieces of esoteric and obscure magic that I think are cool and want to share, and characters whose stories I want to tell. That’s really where the foundations of Salt and Silver were laid: when I heard Allie’s voice in my head telling her story. (more…)