Rachel Coles - Author of Pazuzu's Girl, Into the Ruins, and Beyond The Veil
Rachel
Coles lives in Denver with her family in Denver, Colorado. She works in public
health disaster preparedness. She enjoys researching mythology to incorporate
into story-telling. Her family and friends share her enthusiasm for fantasy and
science fiction, she is the proud mom of one of the youngest Trekkies in the
state.
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Author Questions:
1.
What is your all-time favorite book, and why?
I'm
not sure I could pick a single one. One of my favorite series is Dan Simmons'
Hyperion series: Hyperion, Fall of Hyperion, Endymion, Rise of Endymion. I
loved those books because they were complex, and when I put the last one down,
it felt like my brain had changed after reading them. Mind-blowing. The series
explored human evolution, not just physical, but religious and cultural, in the
kind of time-span covered by Dune. It also explored artificial intelligence, in
a different way than anything I'd read before. I also loved reading Terry
Pratchett's Discworld series. I always enjoy reading that because Discworld
really picks you up and carries you away in the story. And that world is
hilarious. Terry Pratchett takes typical tropes like vampires, dwarves,
werewolves, etc, and turns everything on its head. He's a really fun read,
great for escaping. But I would say that the book whose phrases stayed with me
for decades was either Something Wicked This Way Comes, or The Halloween Tree
by Ray Bradbury. He was one of the most poetic writers I'd ever seen, and
really impressed upon me the power of words.
2.
Is there an author you could be compared to or a popular fictional character
you could relate to and why?
I
have been compared to Neil Gaiman once or twice, because of the mythological
content of some of my stories. That absolutely makes me feel honored. He is
another one of my favorite authors, and I have to admit that I've emulated him
in a lot of ways. As for characters I could relate to, I guess I would have to
say Bilbo Baggins from The Hobbit. I come from a family of Hobbits, pretty
much. We're mostly little people who love to eat and talk, and eat and talk,
and eat and talk. I'm mostly not exaggerating. When I went to my aunt's
retirement party, we stopped at a deli and got pounds of meat, knishes,
whitefish salad, bagels etc, on the way to her place from the airplane. Two
hours later, we went to her party at which we didn't stop eating, talking, and
dancing for five hours. And when we got home, we cracked open the leftovers and
ate again, chatting around the kitchen table. And that was just the beginning
of the weekend. Elevensies/luncheon/afternoon tea/dinner/supper, they all ran
together. Somehow I'm not 800 pounds. That's why I think we're secretly
Hobbits. I am specifically a bit like Bilbo Baggins because I like telling
stories, I am a creature of habit, and don't normally go for anything unexpected,
but every once in a while, I throw my hands up, give in to my wild side, and
get into trouble.
3.
Can you give us your favorite quote from your book and explain it?
My
favorite quote, spoken by Pazuzu, is "I will do whatever I have to do to
protect you, even if I do it poorly in your eyes. You are young and angry and
nothing is as simple as you imagine." I like it because Pazuzu's Girl is
partly about what it means to be a parent. Whatever his other flaws are, he
loves his daughter, and insists on being a dad, even if it means Morpho is mad
at him. It reminds me of what I have heard some parents say, 'It's not my job
to be your friend, it's my job to be your mom/dad.' I'm sure that I will
someday have this conversation with my daughter when she is a teenager, because
I had it with my parents at some point.
4.
What types of things/people/music inspires you and makes you want to keep on
writing?
Everything.
I'm a space cadet and cannot stop daydreaming, and every experience I have
somehow wends its way into a story. But specifically, I'm a child of the 80's.
I mostly listen to 80's music because even though it's corny often, there was
an optimism then, and now a nostalgia. It's energetic, bittersweet, and just
kind of grabs my emotions. I write best when I'm caught up in some emotion or
other. People who inspire me to keep writing are my family and friends. My
daughter was the reason I started writing. She loves to hear bedtime stories,
particularly scary stories. And when we had burned through all of the remotely
age-appropriate scary stories we could find, we started making them up
together. I started writing them down, and kept going. My husband who is my
best friend is really supportive and beta-reads my stories. The writing group
I'm part of, we critique each others material, and have peer-pressure writing
nights and get each other to write (pssst, just a few words, you know you want
to, all the cool kids are doing it...)
5.
Describe your typical writing day or week.
My
writing can be kind of scattershot. I have weeks where I'll sit up until
midnight after my daughter goes to bed, and write every night. Other times,
it'll be only on peer-pressure writing night, when I take my daughter with me
to Panera and she plays Minecraft, while we all write, though I often have her
write me a story on her iPad too.
6.
Is there a typical food/drink you have to have when you write?
Well,
I don't know if I have a particular food or drink, whatever I'm in the mood for
at the time. Usually iced tea of some kind. I've gotten into the habit of
eating a Panera sandwich and soup, and one of their brownies. I love eating
their brownies when I'm writing, and am sad when they're all out by the time I
get there. Their chocolate chip cookies are nice, gooey, and chewy too. But I
can't eat those every time I write, or I'd need a forklift to get me to the
restaurant.
7.
Can you tell us what you're working on now, possibly an excerpt?
I'm
working on a sequel to Pazuzu's Girl. For now the working title is Iron
Butterfly. But I will probably change it, because there are really four main
characters: Morpho-- the demon Pazuzu's daughter who is also part Sidhe,
Ereshkigal--ruler of the Underworld, Ninhab Agresti--Morpho and JD's high
school principal and future consort of Ereshkigal, and Marduk--ancient god-king
of Babylon now a CEO.
From
'Iron Butterfly'
The tunnel went on in darkness
for a ways. Morpho couldn't tell how long. She had the feeling of rough walls
on either side and above. The ground felt like loose dirt underneath her
sneakers. But light grew ahead, and slowly they emerged out of the tunnel.
There was sky overhead, but it wasn't like any sky she'd ever seen. There was a
moon like the moon outside in the regular world, except bigger, and brighter.
It was clearer, and looked somehow like a bowl of molten silver dripping little
pearls into the rest of the sky. The sky around the moon was deep emerald green
shading into black velvet, which was littered with rainbow swaths of stars.
“Whoa.” JD stared around him at the thick bushes
and trees. Their leaves were bronze and teardrop-shaped, with an iridescent
sheen. Other bushes looked periwinkle blue in the glow from dozens of insectile
motes that flitted away through the trees. The forest went dark, and she had
somehow gotten the impression that they hadn't been alone when they had come
out. “Okay, then.” JD whispered. He kept going along a faint trail. “That was
cool. Like Tinkerbell's family.”
She looked back at the tunnel, but there was
only foliage behind them. “Tunnel's gone...Of course.” She muttered. “Okay.”
She followed him until the trees thinned out to a broad plain of rolling
grass-covered hills. The trail widened into a road that threaded through the
swells of land. They had been walking for about five minutes, cresting the
first hill when the baying started in the distance to the left. It got louder
quickly as whatever made that sound came closer, but as she stared out at the
hills, she couldn't see anything, at first. Then a form took shape in the low
mist that cloaked the valleys. As it got closer, it looked like a woman riding
a chariot, that was drawn by the largest dogs she had ever seen. They were the
size of horses, so black the light of the moon just sunk into their fur. Their
ringed yellow and red eyes shone from their heads like lamps, and their sharp
teeth were as black as obsidian. She didn't get as far as noticing what the
woman looked like.
“Oh hell!” Morpho and JD turned and ran.
“Change, Babe, change!” JD yelled to her. “They
won't be able to chase all of you!” he panted. “Or maybe you could test your
Cuisinart wings move!”
She changed into a cloud of butterflies with
razor wings and flew up into the sky above the chariot to get a vantage point,
but the chariot had gained on JD. Then just when she thought that it couldn't
get worse, the chariot split into three. Three chariots, three sets of hellish
dogs, and three women. They circled JD.
Leave him alone! She thought, as she dived at them. But the woman in the
middle raised her hand, and suddenly, Morpho was human again as she slammed
down onto the ground in front of the figure, whose hand was still outstretched
toward her. Morpho couldn't move, not even to turn her head, so she had a
moment to see the women who had captured them. The tallest one had blazing red
hair, not just Irish red, but so red it was almost like flames drifting around
her head, barely restrained in long braids that were bound by delicate chains
ending in tiny golden balls. She wore a gold circlet with swirls across the
band. Her eyes were blood red. The woman to her left had a face very much like
the red-haired woman, enough to be sisters. Her hair was as black as the
messenger Raven's wings, almost as black as the hell-hounds' fur, absorbing
light. Her black irises were like two holes in her eyeballs. Her nose was long
and slightly curved, and her lips were thinner than her sister's. The last
woman was as pale as her sister was dark, the shortest of the three. She had
pure white hair, as long as the other two. Her skin was the color of bone, and
the eeriest part was her eyes. They were completely white. There were no pupils
or irises, just milky white all the way across. They were terrible to look at,
and oddly beautiful.
The red-haired one spoke. “You certainly are
curious little creatures, aren't you? Lugh told us you were coming. I warned
your mother that you would be too curious for your own good at some point. I
told her you would be your father's child.”
“Who are you?” Morpho choked and strained
against the force that held her head down. It released suddenly, and she sat
up, spitting soil.
“I am Nemain. We are the Morrigan. We rule here.
You would do well to show us some respect. Especially since you are
trespassing.”
“Lugh is here? He told you about...us?” She
glanced at JD. The dogs stood in front of him, a low rumbling growl issuing
from their throats.
“Yes, though Macha saw that you would come.” She
nodded at the white sister.
“Uh, sorry, we didn't mean to trespass.” JD gulped,
looking at the length of the dogs' teeth.
The black-haired sister turned to her sibling,
opened her mouth and a caw bordering on a shriek came out. It wasn't amiable,
like Raven's caw. It was sharp and dangerous. Her nose seemed longer and her
lips and white teeth seemed sharper.
Nemain studied JD. “Badb says you are young
and...cute, like a lapdog. She wants to let you live, for now. Very well.” She
reached over Morpho, as if her arm simply stretched and grew. Her long-fingered
white hand grasped the back of Morpho's shirt and hauled her up as if she were
a kitten, into the chariot and dumped her at her slippered feet. Badb took JD.
His face was frozen somewhere between terror and the goofy look he got when he
stared at his busty guitar girl posters. If Morpho had been closer to him, she
would have smacked him. But then, the chariots took off with a lurch and they
were moving so swiftly she didn't have a chance to do anything but slit her
eyes against the wind as they flew. Everything turned grey and when she looked
down at her hands, they seemed insubstantial, like mist. The dogs, JD, Badb and
Macha, all of them seemed to blend into the grey so their edges blurred. She
didn't want to turn and see the red-haired queen behind her. And then, they
slowed to a halt. Now, they were in a circle of grey stones so tall, the
shadows they cast from the moon must have spread across the plain they were on
for a mile. And across the shadows, filling up the plain behind them were hosts
of fairies of all kinds. At least that's what Morpho thought they were when the
chariots pulled around. There were some very powerful looking fairies around a
semicircle of thrones in the center of the stone circle. Their thrones were all
different too. One of them was made of what looked like carved amber, inlaid
with gold in the same swirling designs as the red-haired queen's circlet.
Another was made entirely of silver, another of pure gold, shining in the
moonlight. Another appeared to be made of woven branches and soft emerald moss.
Lounging in the amber throne, was Lugh, their erstwhile legal guardian. He had
a gold circlet around his forehead, the only thing controlling his wild tawny
locks. He wore what looked like a fine red linen tunic with gold embroidery and
woolen plaid leggings.
“Hi, luv! Took you long enough.”
“You knew we were coming.” Morpho said.
“I've been livin' with you for almost a year.
And I know your mama.”
“So...you're not mad? That we, uh, poked around
and, uh, followed you?”
“I didn't say that.” His pale eyes flickered for
a moment with golden light. “But you're my cousin's girl. I'm under a geas that
I'd look after you if something happened to...the other side o' yer family.”
“Under a what?”
He smiled grimly. “Geas. An oath.”
“Oh.” She swallowed, somehow deflated.
“Relax, I like you. I like yer boy too,” he
nodded at JD, “or we'd be havin' a very different conversation right now."
“Do you vouch for them, Lugh Lamfada?” The
man who sat in the golden throne boomed. Though he was seated, he was obviously
tall and powerfully built. His hair was silver. He had none of the other marks
of advanced age, but Morpho could tell he was old. Really old. Not crusty
though. He radiated power. He had the bearing most jocks took steroids to try
to look like, with half the brains.
“I do, your Highness.” Lugh inclined his head.
The Morrigan hauled her and JD out of their
chariots in front of the King. Then the chariots collapsed into a single throne
made of black sharp rock and padded with what Morpho seriously hoped wasn't
human skin. There were six heads tied by the hair onto the sides of the throne.
And instead of three women, there was only Nemain now. She stared at Morpho.
Her expression was somewhere between contempt and curiosity. Either way, it was
unsettling. She said nothing.
Pazuzu's Girl - Morpho
Wilson thought her life was difficult enough. Her father is Pazuzu, the
Mesopotamian demon of plague and the Southwest wind. As a teenager Morpho
struggles against her father, while trying to adjust to high school in a new
neighborhood. The family is constantly moving in an attempt to elude Pazuzu’s
murderous ex-wife, a demoness known for killing children.
Then something unique happens. A socially-impaired classmate becomes so
intrigued by Morpho that he pursues her, despite the mystery surrounding her
family and the danger that accompanies it.
But before their romance can grow the demoness tracks Morpho down, and now only
needs an ancient artifact called the Tablet of Destiny to complete the
destruction of the world. The tablet confers on its owner the ability to
control the fate of everything and everyone on earth.
Once the tablet is discovered in the Middle East, the oldest and most powerful
gods begin a battle for its possession, with the human population caught in the
middle. Morpho, her family, and her new friend must decide, do they escape from
the horrifying demoness or fight for their own destiny. How far will Pazuzu go
to save his daughter from a hellish fate? Will his banishment from Heaven so
many millennia ago end up being a curse...or a blessing?
Into The
Ruins is an urban fantasy anthology featuring life-changing or
world-changing events. They feature everything from comic horror, as in Diary
of a Duct Tape Zombie, horror, as in Mushrooms, historical fantasy, as in
Plagues, science fiction, as in Whistles, and finally a fun animal story, as in
Beergarden.
In Diary of a Duct Tape Zombie, Detective Nate Mallon investigated vice, when
he was alive. Being a police officer was his life. Even dying didn't dampen his
enthusiasm for solving his last case. However, there are others who aren't
ready to be dead yet, and they aren't trying to solve cases. They are at the
center of them.
In Mushrooms, Kallie and Mark Sangiovi didn't live complicated lives. They
enjoyed their humble home in Denver, fresh food, and most of all: each other's
company. But one strange summer in 2011, everything changed. What begins with
an invasion of ants, and summer colds, brings them to the brink of death, in a
few days. And they aren't the only ones. During this time, Denver becomes an
eerie city, populated by the sick, whose imperative is to bite the people
closest to them. The city grows still as the epidemic progresses, and Kallie
and Mark leave the human race behind.
In Plagues, Miryam, humble daughter of Hebrews, doesn't have many aspirations
as a slave in the city of Ra'amses. It might not be much, but the stability of
her husband, child, and home are enough for her to live her life as it is. Her
brother, Moses, raised in the Pharaoh's palace and 'touched by God', has
grander aspirations for their entire people. But there are many sides to the
growing conflicts. The political situation deteriorates in Mitzrayim with the
rising power of Ramses, and the advent of terrible environmental disasters. And
Miryam finds that her friendship with her Egyptian neighbor, Acenath, means as
much to her as her religion.
Beyond The
Veil is an anthology of ghost and spirit stories that encompass
everything from vengeance, closure, or justice from beyond the grave, to
portals from which sinister things can enter our world. Take a ride through
these stories and explore some of the possibilities of existence beyond life.
Bees of St. John:
Shana Latray needs a vacation. Her life as a telecommunications service
provider feels like a dead end. St. John of the Virgin Islands seems like
paradise, but behind the frozen drinks, and the beaches, is a complicated
history of invasion and ancient predators. Shana Latray realizes quickly that
nothing, from the warm, friendly locals, to the ever-present bees among the
profuse tropical flowers, are at all what they seem.
Kisses:
Terry Cooper always hated Valentine's Day, more so since losing her husband. In
fact, she hated it so much, she inadvertently put a curse on it. Now, dreadful
things are happening on this romantic holiday, as anyone who is kissed will
die. And in the midst of this crisis, is a strange ancient ghost warning Terry
that only she can revoke the curse. But she doesn't know how. What she does
know is that if she doesn't find a way, for hundreds of people across the city,
their Valentine's Day kisses will be their last.
Tribulations of a Jewish Vampire:
Becoming a vampire was not on Leah Horowitz's list of life goals. Contrary to
all the romantic and dark hype about the sexy life of vampires in the movies
and books, Leah's life, when she was turned after her fatal motorcycle accident
was anything but glamorous. With no guidance but her still human wedding-happy
cousin, her orthodox Jewish aunt, and skeptical mother, she almost dies as her
culture and her needs as a vampire clash.
Full Circle:
Life for Jim Red Eagle and his family is unfair. He is an auto-mechanic in his
Lakota community, who runs a simple honest business. When his son is involved
in an accident that leaves him paralyzed, and he can't seem to find anyone who
can help them, he starts falling apart. As he sits in the hospital chapel,
wondering what to do, a mysterious Irishman shows up. As the two men get to
know each other, and the man's shocking history are revealed, Jim finds that
good deeds in the past can return in forms he never expected.
The Muse:
Do you ever feel like statues can hear you, see you, feel your presence? Eliza
Shourd is a sometime sculptor, filling credits with an art class while she
works through another degree. But after falling asleep by the Platte River in
the middle of the night, and waking up to a disturbing drawing she didn't
remember doing, her life, and her art takes a turn for the dark. When people in
her life begin disappearing, she returns to the river to find out why.
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