Daemons and Pizza Rats

Introducing my forthcoming serialised novel, Midnight Metropolis

Greetings, fellow humans. I’m Caroline and I write fantasy and horror—my debut epic fantasy novel, The Obsidian Druid was released in April 2024. I also have a mild obsession with Web 1.0-era websites. This is my newsletter.

Midnight Metropolis

I have a new announcement this week. I think I’m finally ready to start posting chapters of a serialised novel called Arcanoforge: Midnight Metropolis.

It’s taken me a while to get to this point. It’s weird, for one thing. I don’t know if anyone will enjoy a story set on a planet with no sunlight that straddles sci-fi, horror, and fantasy. My main protagonist is spiky, to say the least, and there are multiple POVs which I know not everyone enjoys. I’ve struggled with some of the sci-fi aspects and have gone back and forth on the worldbuilding many times. The magic system is based around a form of blood magick that I sometimes worried was too disgusting or problematic (also, The Boys spin-off, Gen V, totally nicked my idea—I’ve since toned it down).

I was tempted to pull the plug, but then I thought, why not just post it? Post it, and see what happens. We only fail when we give up.

So… with much trepidation, I present Midnight Metropolis, a novel of sunless planets, hallucinogenic mushrooms, daemons, and... pizza rats.

“I was a haematic mage. So what? I bolted from Rakkone when the elders insisted I kill for them. I might be the Arcanoforge, but I’ll only perform heinous blood rites on my own terms.”

Tattiana the Blood Seer plies her odious trade in Noctara, the wart on the blackened arse of a lightless planet revolving around a colossal, sentient head. Tattie just wants to break sky and leave Noctara behind forever, but the neon megacity has other plans for her. People are being husked for the slightest infraction, and now her one-time lover has reappeared to beg for help she refuses to give. When her co-worker makes a pact with a tentacle-armed daemon and the grimy back alley club they work in is destroyed, Tattie begrudgingly accepts a gig from the mysterious Verna Shade in return for a hefty amount of credits. With that sort of capital, she could buy her own space bucket and carve out a future in the stars.

The job should be easy—all she has to do is break into a government facility guarded by emotionless husks that feel no pain and steal Noctara’s most closely guarded secrets. It’s a near-impossible task that could get her husked, exiled, or killed, but Tattie possesses the dire blood magicks of the fabled Archanoforge. She’s tired of hiding, and shattering Noctara’s fragile hold on peace seems like a small price to pay for freedom.

If you’d like to follow along with this madness, you can expect free weekly chapters to start dropping in your inbox from Tuesday.

 

This Week, I’ve Been Mostly Obsessed With…

Long-time subscribers might have guessed that not only am I currently journeying through the dark and fabulous realms of classic sword and sorcery, but I’m also rather enamored with their old-school book covers. I’ve read Tanith Lee’s The Birthgrave (a book that felt like constantly delving into an ornate, glowing box packed with fascinating wonders), and Raven: Swordmistress of Chaos by Robert Holdstock (which was a fun ride, but obviously written for a fanbase of teenage boys), along with many of the old short pulp stories (I’ve been pleasantly surprised to discover that Conan is a far cooler dude than I ever gave him credit for).

Next up, I’ll be diving into this little masterpiece:

Swords and Sorceress 1 (1984)

How’s that for a book cover? The sword being struck with lightning is a bit She-Ra, and the blue eyeshadow is so 80s it makes me want to pull on some leg warmers and start dancing to Flashdance…What a Feeling.

This is the first title in a series of anthologies that spanned an incredible thirty-four volumes from 1984 to 2019. There’s a neat little biography of each author printed along with their stories. As I was flicking through, I was amazed to learn that the Jennifer Roberson story, Blood of Sorcery, was published not long after she sold her first novel to DAW. She’s since published over twenty novels and has been on my TBR list for a while. I love finding these little breadcrumbs that make up the course of a writer’s career. It’s like finding buried treasure. I’m sure many more treasures will be unearthed when I start reading the book (and the sun’s finally made an appearance, so you can be sure I’ll be reading it in the garden beneath a ridiculously oversized sun hat).  

Current Favourite Website

The Chupacabra Home Page - First Created 1996 - Last Updated 1996

Surely Princeton has forgotten that this beautiful relic is still floating around in the dusty depths of its servers? The Chupacabra Home Page is a one-stop solution for anyone struggling with Chupacabra-related queries. Queries such as, what the hell is a Chupacabra? (handily summarised as “a half-man, half-beast vampire who roams the countryside terrorizing farm animals”), is it an alien?, and is the government covering it up??

Accurate representation of me before coffee.

Obviously, all this information at your fingertips will only further spark your appetite for Chupacabra information. The Chupacabra Home Page had you covered with a Chupacabra discussion group and links to more Chupacabra-related websites. Point Review were certainly won over, awarding the site the Top 5% of all Websites Award. That probably put it somewhere below ishouldbeworking.com, and above Tokyo Toilet Map.

The truth is out there, and it might be sucking the blood of a goat.

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If you want to see the complete list of Web 1.0-era Websites of the Week, you can find it on my website.

Stalk me across the interwebs: Website - Dreamwidth - Bluesky - Read Stories Online

That’s it for now.