Set in 1960s England, this is a much more personal story than The Savage Year. Not that I have anything in common with my protagonist, Maud Binks, other than a love of reading but I connect with 1969 England much more than I do with the U.S. in 1968
The inspiration came from my disappointment in John Brunner’s Black is the Color. The text on Katherine Jeff Jones’ cover gives you the novel’s hook, which I found intriguing. The book, as detailed at the link, did not deliver.
However that got me thinking about using the setting myself. My protagonist was a teenage girl in ’69 “Swinging London.” Maud, a working glass girl stuck in a posh school, has impressed her classmates by pretending to be tough, wild, sexually experienced and generally outrageous. Now one of her classmates has called her on it so Maud proves herself by sneaking a few of her friends into a black Soho jazz club. It turns out the club she picked was the wrong place at the wrong time and embroils Maud in the schemes of Death’s Jester.
Several elements in the early drafts stuck through to the finished product. There’s seemingly suicidal Hilda, whom (Maud and her classmate Prue try to help; Death’s Jester lives inside mirrors; and he’s transformed Hilda’s family into monsters. The villain was based on an episode of the cartoon Shazzan, The Evil Jester of Masira, about a jester who’d acquired a book of magic and transformed the royal family he served into monsters.
Much of the earlier material wound up on the cutting-room floor. After the initial encounter I had the Merryman (the villain’s alternate name) come after Maud and Prue; the attacks were creepy enough but the way his powers worked didn’t make enough sense. Nor could I figure out the ending and how they’d beat him. When I read the parts I was satisfied with to the writing group however, they said it worked perfectly by itself — all I needed was a stronger ending. I wrote one I thought worked; if you read it, you can decide for yourself.
#SFWApro. Top cover by Kemp Ward. All rights to images remain with current holders. 19-Infinity is available on Amazon in paperback and ebook and available as an ebook on other websites.
No One Can Slay Her is the only alternate history in 19-Infinity.
I no longer remember what gave me the idea for a story built around the concept of “Bertie Wooster, Wizard.” Bertie, as many of you probably know, is the upper-class twit who bumbled through countless P.G. Wodehouse comedies, always getting out of scrapes and engagements thanks to his unflappable manservant Jeeves. Whatever gave me the thought, the idea of a slightly silly magician seemed to hold no end of promise, so earlier this year, I began work.
Many, many years back, I was joking with my friend Ross about the classic Disney TV show, the Mickey Mi-Go Club and it’s heartwarming ending song:
IIRC, the original idea for what became Questionable Minds was born sometime in the early 1980s. I’d seen Sean Connery in The Great Train Robbery my junior or senior year at Oberlin and much enjoyed his role as the roguish thief organizing the first robbery from a moving train. In his trial, after a judge demands to know what could have led him to violate every principle of law and decency, Connery simply shrugs and says “I wanted the money.”
My initial idea was to take the Connery character (based on a real character in the Michael Crichton nonfiction account of the theft) and have him work for the government — go where the police can’t go, do things the police can’t, that sort of stuff. The initial adventure, prompted by some nonfiction I’d read, would have involved the Hindu Thuggee cult setting up shot in London. In hindsight I’m very glad I never sat down and wrote it as I can’t think of any way it wouldn’t have been racist as shit.
