(Redemption's Heir #2)
by Anne M. Pillsworth
Just released: October 27, 2015
Amazon | Goodreads
Meet Sean...
by Anne M. Pillsworth
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My protagonist, Sean Wyndham, started fictive life as his father, which sounds like a time travel conundrum, doesn't it? The truth is that I wanted to write a series of supernatural adventures set in H. P. Lovecraft's cosmos-spanning milieu and mythology. I meant to start in Lovecraft's beloved Providence, Rhode Island, which is also my beloved (adopted) home. The star would be police detective Thomas O'Conaghan, with comic relief from son Sean and Sean's BFF, Eddy (Edna) Rosenbaum. I think there was also a bulldog and far too many snakes for a smallish apartment.
By way of "practice" for the initial novel, I decided to write a short story about Sean's first (calamitous) venture into magic. The story kept growing, with Sean and Eddy and the villainous wizard Simon (later Redemption) Orne shoving Tom O'Conaghan out of center stage. O'Conaghan was demoted from protagonist to minor character, and Sean got a new father, Jeremy, a fierce if perpetually perplexed defender of his son.
The novel that became Summoned, first in the REDEMPTION'S HEIR series, was originally titled, um, er, provisionally, Sean's First Spell. Sean thought that sounded like a little kid's picture book. He made me change the name to Servitor, a "servitor" of the Outer Gods being the monstrous familiar conjured by said first spell.
In those early days, a role-playing game was a big part of the book. Astute beta readers pointed out that the game was soon eclipsed by Sean's involvement in REAL magic. Subsequent drafts nixed the game, and Sean decided that Summoned would be a much cooler title.
As main character, Sean does pretty much boss me around. I'm told he has my voice, or I have his. Certainly he does whatever I would do in his situation, although with greater recklessness and much greater magical aplomb. For example, I would want to respond to an ad for magical apprentice, answerable by email though published in a newspaper from 1895. But Sean actually does respond. I would like to visit Devil Reef on a hot August night when merpeople lounge there among the gray seals. Sean hops in a boat and heads off.
As the series develops, repeated near-catastrophes are making him more cautious, but he'll always thrill to the lure of the uncanny -- and go down the dark staircase or up into the haunted attic. He, and I, wouldn't have it any other way.
~end
Guest post created by Anne M. Pillsworth, author of Fathomless
© 2015. All rights reserved.
About the author:
ANNE M. PILLSWORTH's novel Summoned began the Redemption's Heir series, set in the same world as her short story "Geldman's Pharmacy," which received honorable mention in The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, Thirteenth Annual Collection. She currently lives in a Victorian "trolley car" suburb of Providence, Rhode Island, with her wife.
by Anne M. Pillsworth
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