Not only that, he’s a sleazy, double-dealing scumbag operating in one of the most sinfully decadent eras in human history – Hollywood in the 1930s. And believe me he enjoyed every last lick of the forbidden fruit in that particular version of paradise.

Yep, no wonder Earl meets a most sticky end… Wonder what he was thinking as he breathed his last? Did he believe his fierce-eyed Mayan death goddess was going to save him?

What do you think’s going to happen to you?

Whether we admit it or not, everyone wants to know what happens after we take the biggest ride in the amusement park – death. And being the cheeky monkeys that humans are, every culture in history has come up with an intricate explanation about what happens after we step off that rollercoaster.

Many cultures actually map out their expected post-death journey…where you go, what you see along the way, such as in the Egyptian Book of the Dead and the Tibetan Bardo Thodol (Book of The Dead).

One element that many of these ancient maps of the afterlife use is an axis mundi or cosmic axis – a detailed description of the centre of the universe. It’s the place where heaven and earth meet, where mortals and gods interact and where all compass directions start…

So it makes sense sticking one in a map of the afterlife because if you see death as a transition from this existence on Earth to another plane of being…whether it’s heaven or…er, cough, cough…somewhere a little less comfortable, then you’d damned well better know how to find your way to where you want to end up! There’s no GPS available on this stretch of the cosmic tour. J

And the axis mundi, which connects the earth to the sky, has been depicted as everything from a sacred ladder to a great tree to a lofty mountain… To some the great red rock of Uluru is the axis mundi of Australia.

Now back to the question of whether Earl’s Mayan death goddess is going to do right by her boy?

The Mayans, living in the middle of a hot, steamy jungle, picked a tree. They depicted the centre of their cosmos as the mightiest living being they ever laid eyes on – the ceiba tree, It’s literally the veggie version of a green whale.

The ceiba tree is gigantic with huge buttressed roots and a massive trunk that reaches up and out into limbs that form the rainforest canopy. It reaches down through its roots to connect Earth to the Underworld below and up through its limbs to Heaven above.

   But to the Mayans the mighty ceiba was not only their axis mundi it was also the Tree of Life – it connected all creatures. In the jungle the mighty ceiba tree forms its own micro habitat sheltering a multitude of plants, animals and insects in its leafy embrace.

But life wasn’t all the Mayans were interested in…

Death is so fearsome to most humans that just the threat of it wields great power. The power over life and death has been the cornerstone of many of our political systems and control over what happens after it is the foundation of many of our religions.

The Mayans, like the rest of humanity, cottoned on to the power that death wields and ran with it. Everyone has seen pictures of (if not movies about) the human sacrifices that were made by ancient cultures in Meso and South America.

And the awesomely, frightening temples that were used as the performance venues for these death-magic rites.

Which brings me to that infamous axis mundi of the West…where mere mortals are turned into stars and placed in the heavens for worship – Hollywood.

Frank Lloyd Wright (arguably the most famous American architect of all time) may’ve believed Sin City was the axis mundi of barbarism…because when he was commissioned to build several houses there in the 1920s he turned to the ancient temples of Meso and South America for inspiration.

The most beautiful one he built was Hollyhock House in East Hollywood, which is inspired by the Mayan city of Palenque. Now the Mayans liked to decorate their temples with all sorts of fierce motifs: snarling jaguars, writhing serpents, screaming gods, howling sacrificial victims…

You know the usual house decor…

But somewhere along the way Wright decided to create a Mayan-style hollyhock motif for his new house project instead – which must’ve have been a HUGE relief to the people who were going to live there!

In the alternate reality of Hoodwink, my sleazy character Earl Curtis was lucky enough to convince Frank Lloyd Wright to build him a house too. One based on a Mayan temple just like Hollyhock House, but decorated with the symbol of his Mayan death goddess – a ceiba tree.

You see the ceiba connects all beings, mortal and divine, good and bad…and Earl’s hungry goddess watches over all from her own, special branch on that mighty tree.

Or rather she waits for prey.

So what does happen to Earl Curtis? Does Kannon Dupree find out in Hoodwink?

Maybe…maybe not.

But once I thought about it, and peeled some of my preconceptions away, I started thinking that yes, I am actually a horror writer (as well as a fantasy writer and a novel writer and a feminist writer, and so on).  It’s hard to argue with when I look at the Creature Court trilogy, which is full of blood and dark magic, obsession and addiction, cruelty and death, along with the aspects I’m better known for – like banter, frocks and steamy sex scenes.

Come to that, most fantasy does have elements of horror in it.  Lord of the Rings is not only rife with monsters and violence, but it also features one of the most iconic Dread Objects of genre fiction – the ring that destroys the souls of those who hold it.  Fritz Leiber, one of my own heroes for his funny and clever Lankhmar series, also put Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser through some deep psychological traumas and was a master at balancing the sinister with the amusing.

Urban fantasy is particularly related to horror – in fact, you could argue that the works of Laurell K Hamilton, Charlaine Harris et al. are closer in many ways to the traditions of horror than to fantasy, certainly in the way that vampires, werewolves and other Horror Movie Icons have been swept into the mainstream.  Buffy the Vampire Slayer might have served to popularise the idea of a girl hero fighting the darkness, but while that show epitomises the urban fantasy genre, it was created very much in conversation with horror movie tropes.

So what is your favourite fictional collision between horror and fantasy?

and IGN announces the casting of Stannis & Melisandre *and Davos*: http://au.tv.ign.com/articles/118/1182548p1.html

Game of Thrones Season 2 will be airing from the 11th April on Showcase!

Other authors do that, right?

If Power and Majesty was the book that set up the city, the characters and the magic, and The Shattered City was the book that tore it all down and hurled the bits at the feet of my poor characters… well, Reign of Beasts is the book that puts it all back together, but it’s not an easy path for any of them.  Another city is going to pay the ultimate price… because yes, I don’t just go around destroying individuals in this series, I tear down whole cities.  That’s just how I roll.

As well as visiting some new geography, indulging in a little steampunk, and allowing certain characters to get hot and heavy with each other (in between battles) Reign of Beasts also slips into the past, revealing all manner of secrets through the eyes of one of the more mysterious members of the Creature Court: the one with many names, and far too many guises.

Back when I was regularly teaching creative writing, an exercise I would suggest early on was to make your ‘list of awesome,’ a stack of bullet points about your favourite themes, topics, hobbies, obsessions, historical periods, nouns… basically everything you think is awesome.  And then, of course, to write something that crams as many of those things in as possible.

I think that experienced writers often do this as a matter of course, without bothering with the list – we build up all our favourite obsessions, and spread them across our writing, trusting (as much as we CAN) that we can spend our themes freely and there will be new ones along to fill up the well… and if not, well, it’s not like it hurt Dick Francis or John Grisham to always be writing about the same thing, right?

I never made that list of awesome when writing the Creature Court books – they grew far more organically than that – but if I had, then the list would look something like this:

frocks
secret society of sexy shapechangers
Rome, Rome, Rome
gothic city with many rooftops
secret underworld
women who craft
roaring twenties
sentinels with paired weapons
blood magic
more frocks
Victorian music hall, pantomime & commedia dell’arte
steam trains
bisexual heroes and villains and… other
a sky that’s trying to eat you
flappers with swords

All ideas, themes or images that I love, or have been wanting to write about for years.  I’m particularly happy that, having seeded the importance of theatre in the lives of some of my charactes, I spend a lot more time in and around a certain theatre in the city of Aufleur, as well as getting outside the boundaries and visiting a new city, and introducing my readers to Ashiol’s home and mother, before we spiral into the final, devastating battle.

Also, words cannot express how delighted I am that the final cover of this trilogy features a flapper with a sword. It sums up the books themselves very clearly in my mind.

Reign of Beasts is in stores this week and if you’re in Tasmania she’s launching at The Hobart Bookshop on Thursday 2nd Feb!

Tansy’s Writing Blog - http://tansyrr.com
Crunchy SF Feminist Podcast - http://www.galacticsuburbia.com
Pendlerook Designs, Tasmanian Hand-painted Dolls - www.pendlerook.com

Each month our very own Voyager Science Queen* will bring you interesting, quirky and downright bizarre tasty morsels from the world of science. And its all completely, totally, 100% true!

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This is a story about a family that is too interesting NOT to share: the Maskelyne clan. It is claimed this is a branch of the family descended from Dr Nevil Maskelyne, the fifth English Astronomer Royal. I can’t find any proof, except that the grandfather, John Nevil Maskelyne, father, Nevil, and son, Jasper, were all brilliant and clever men and brains obviously ran in the family … and they all spelt Neville as ‘Nevil’, which would suggest it was a family name.

The first of this clan was John Nevil Maskelyne. He was the kind of gentleman whose brain was set on ‘high’ and didn’t have an off switch. I’ve picked him as our first mad scientist for the year, because he also contributed a metaphor to the English language, and wrote a very famous book. John was born in 1839, and started his working life as a watchmaker (what is it about watches that so fascinates inventors?) but he was also fascinated by stage magicians and spiritualists.

His break into show business came about in a most peculiar way. He was watching a pair of shysters, the Davenport Brothers, use a ‘spirit cabinet’ and he clicked onto how they engineered their sham. He publically announced he would duplicate the cabinet using no magical devices.So John Maskelyne and his friend, Mr George Cooke, successfully built their own version of the cabinet, exposing the Davenport brothers as the frauds they were.

From that point on, he became an inventor of stage illusions, put together an act of his own with Cooke as his partner, and they became a famous stage act. However, he also had solo successes; he also went on to write several successful books, including the bestselling Sharps and Flats: A Complete Revelation of the Secrets of Cheating at Games of Chance and Skill. He inventedthe public toilet door lock, which opened with the insertion of a coin, and so gave rise to the euphemism of ‘spending a penny’ when explaining your trip to the toilet. He also continued to investigate and expose frauds claiming supernatural powers. He was an active member of The Magic Circle and the first editor of their society magazine, The Magic Circular.

I don’t know how he found the time, but he managed to marry and raise a family. One of his sons was also a famous stage magician, inventor and writer, Nevil Maskelyne, born 1863. He was a bit of a scamp and the very first ‘hacker’. When Marconi was giving a public demonstration of his wireless telegraph, using Morse code, Nevil – who was also interested in the wireless – used his skills to disrupt the demonstration. Before the actual message was due to arrive the telegraph began to issue the word ‘rats’ over and over, and then proceeded with a rude limerick at Marconi’s expense, “There was a young fellow of Italy, who diddled the public quite prettily.” This was followed by more rude suggestions and some quotes from Shakespeare. As you might have guessed, Marconi was unimpressed with these doings, but Nevil Maskelyne felt that Marconi had taken an unfair advantage in taking out patents. However, his hacking did little other than embarrass Marconi, who went on to dominate the field.

 His son, Jasper Maskelyne, was born in 1902. He was a stage magician, like his father and grandfather. However, the inventor mad-skills turned up in his genes too strongly to ignore. During WWII, he was supposedly using his skills as a master of illusion to create camouflage and techniques for subterfuge for the Allied Forces. After convincing officials of his skills, he was placed in the Royal Engineers Camouflage Corps and sent to Egypt.Jasper and his ‘Magic Gang’ were supposed to be able to do everything from making jeeps look like tanks up to and including hiding entire cities and the Suez Canal from the German Bombers.

Now, to me that sounds like something from an alternative history fiction book, but Jasper wasn’t the only person to plan and construct these diversions. Hollywood special effect men were also part of this sort of subterfuge for the war effort. However, some historians deny that such escapades ever took place. I prefer to think they did, and that magic was used to save lives.

Poor Jasper couldn’t get his career as a stage magician up and running after the war. The Maskelyne line of magicians died with him in Kenya in 1973, as I can’t find any evidence that he ever married or had children. But all three of the Maskelyne magicians made history, one way or the other.

Now, you have to admit, that was a family with style!

This Science Post is dedicated to Phillip Berrie, who provided me with an article on Nevil and Marconi and introduced me to this amazing family. Why don’t they teach this stuff in school?

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*The Voyager Science Queen is also known as Lynne Lumsden Green- find out who she is in About Our Contributors!

The David Gemmell RAVENHEART Award Poll is open!  Head here  and be sure to vote for one of the beautiful HarperCollins Australia covers by Gregory Bridges, Aaron Briggs & Frank Victoria:

From top left, World's End by Gregory Bridges, Journey by Night by Aaron Briggs, Road to the Soul by Aaron Briggs, Samiha's Song by Frank Victoria & Oracle's Fire by Frank Victoria