How to Survive a Relationship with a Demon Lover: Part 2

She's alluring. She inspires you. She's like no one you've ever met before, and yet all of the women you've ever wanted. Here's a list if you take the risk:

1) She may have averse reactions to the following: iron, silver, holy water, or salt. Try to avoid keeping these items in your household.

2) Black cats, toads, and ravens will be unusually attracted to her. Get used to them.

3) Suggest an elegant up-do for her hair, so that it's not constantly veiling her features.

4) Always let her win the arguments--there is no argument worth winning that results in yor temporary existence as an insect, an easy chair, or a tree.

5) Do not touch the following items in her home: Fancy bottles with weird labels, creepy dolls, or mirrors.

6) If you're uncomfortable with the way she dresses--super-sexy glamour or spooky antique (or she always wears white if she's a Lady in White) present her with a gift card to a classy boutique.

7) Family. If you have children and have lost your spouse to death or divorce, be warned: your DL will be a terrible stepmother. Don't ever let your kids accept gifts from her...especially apples, combs, or candy.

8) If you decide to share a place, you might suggest she move into yours, because she'll probably have real estate in a forest, an abandoned mansion/castle, or in a lake, and these might not suit your lifestyle.

9) Ex-lovers. Most likely they'll all be dead at suspiciously youthful ages. But they'll have left some great art behind--poems, music, paintings, etc; As she'll be a source of inspiration, you, too, may want to venture into the fine arts.

10) Intimacy. Since this tends to literally drain the life out of you, make sure you have a will and a good life insurance policy. Good luck!

(Illustration: Carlos Schwabe)

How to Survive a Relationship with a Demon Lover

He's dark. He's brooding. He's gorgeous. and his origins might be less than earthly. Here are 10 tips if you decide he's worth the risk:

1) He'll be a night owl, so become one. (Goodbye big weekend breakfasts. Hello Denny's late night.)

2) Whenever he begins to brood, read him a funny part from a book (all DLs have literary fetishes), watch a comedy, or take a bubble bath together. (Third one always works!)

3) His family. If they're totally evil, they'll have hopefully been destroyed. If not, the usual things should work in keeping them away--holy water, silver, sea salt, etc; Remember, most times, they need to be invited. So don't do that.

4) Your family. Explain to them any allergies your DL might have (silver, salt, garlic), so accidents don't happen.

5) Get used to crows, black dogs, bats, wolves, and, inevitably, some sort of totemic insect--death's head moth, dragonfly, scarab--they'll be attracted to your DL. Ordinary cats and dogs, however, will not, so, no pets.

6) If he doesn't have a fortune in a tomb or the stock market, it might be best to encourage self-employment. (Artist. Writer. DLs are crafty!)

7) Make sure, if you ever go on vacation, he picks something you want, as he'll be drawn to gloomy places (Abandoned cities, ancient castles, Eastern Europe). If that's your thing, fantastic. Avoid cruises.

8) If you share a space, just add a bit of a classy Gothic touch to make your DL feel at home: a porcelain skull, a black accent wall, taxidermy animals.

9) Intimate moments. Needless to say, if he has supernatural strength or hazardous teeth, be careful.

10) Exes. If your DL has exes, most of them will, unfortunately--or fortunately, in some cases--be dead. (Hopefully, he won't have killed them.) You may need to perish one or two of his exes yourself.

Good Luck!

Ten Favorite Urban Fantasy Books Part Two

So here are the others:

Among Others by Jo Walton: A teenage girl who loves science fiction novels and whose twin sister's death was caused by her mad mother, attends a boarding school in England, where the magic she is used to in Wales is scarce.

Tithe by Holly Black: A sixteen-year-old girl learns she's a changeling when the world of faery presents itself in the form of a beautiful elf knight and his weird and dangerous enemies.

Waking the Moon by Elizabeth Hand: A young woman attends an eccentric college in Washington D.C. and makes two intriguing friends whose fates are entwined with the resurrection of an ancient goddess cult.

Daughter of Hounds by Caitlin Kiernan: A dark fantasy set in New York, this time about a changeling named Soldier, a young woman who is one of the soldiers of the Cuckoo, monsters who abduct human children to serve them. It's also the story of a little girl called Emmie who can see those monsters.

Moonwise by Greer Gilman: In modern England, a young woman named Ariane must rescue her best friend from the otherworldly forest that has drawn her in. A story of friendship told in strange and bewitching prose.

Ten Favorite Urban Fantasy Books: Part One

Okay, picking only ten was difficult and I left out a lot of great ones. These are the books that appeal to me. Not listed are the urban fantasies based on the ballad Tam Lin mentioned in a previous post.

MOONHEART by Charles De Lint
A magic house in Ottawa, Canada is the setting for this fantasy that beautifully mingles Celtic and Native American mythology, as several residents of the house--a folk musician, a police offer, an antique shop owner, and a biker--must face an ancient evil.

WAR FOR THE OAKS by Emma Bull
Eddi, a young woman in a Minneapolis rock band, meets the faery folk, who draft her into a war between the dark and the light courts. She also falls in love with an elusive young man who is an Irish shapechanging faery.

WITCH BABY by Francesca Lia Block
In this series, set in Los Angeles, a girl named Witch Baby grows up with her eclectic family. The descriptive language and the characters are the magic here.

WHEN THE LIGHTS GO OUT by Tanith Lee
16-year-old Hesta runs away from home and takes up residence in a rundown hotel on an English beach. The former resort town has some sinister inhabitants. Then she meets a mysterious man who may be far older than he appears. A weird and lyrical urban fantasy.

EXCEPT THE QUEEN by Jane Yolen and Midori Snyder
Two fairy sisters are punished by the fairy queen and become elderly mortal women in two different cities. As they try to help a mysterious girl and a lost boy against a malicious Elfin knight who is a tattoo artist, they discover what it is to be human.

Next five. Next time.

Reindeer and Chimneysweeps and Fairy Toadstools

The reindeer is a source of life for the nomadic Laplander tribes of the arctic. Because the reindeer sometimes eat the psychotropic toadstools known as amanita muscaria (fly agaric, which is also poisonous--flying reindeer?), these animals are also valued by Saami shamans who, in visions, soul-journey on the backs of reindeer, or through the chimneys of their homes. In Hans Christian Andersen's The Snow Queen, little Gerda sets out on an almost shamanic journey, on the back of a reindeer, to rescue her friend Kay.

In some areas of Europe, chimneysweeps, associated with the Yule season, were considered good luck and portrayed as distributing gold coins, red and white toadstools (fly agaric again), and four-leafed clovers. They were also identified with coal, which wasn't negative, but a source of light and heat.

As for Santa Claus, he may have originated from fertility deities such as Holland's Black Peter, who carried a sack full of babies to deliver, in the new year, or the Nordic fertility god Freyr, who was king of the elves.

Writing: Paper or Plastic?

As old-fashioned as it seems, some writers prefer the simple comfort of writing with pen and paper and inspiration seems to strike me best this way. (You have to be a fast writer though.) It also gives me an excuse to purchase some really pretty journals -- I like the freedom of keeping the world I'm working on in a journal I can carry around like a grimoire. (It's also wise to have a water and fire proof document safe.) And there's always pressure when I'm hunched in front of a computer screen, hoping no technical oddities will occur because of faulty software or hardware or because Mercury's in retrograde or whatever.
I write the first draft by hand within a few months, then complete the final drafts on the computer for the expediency and clarity of revisions. The world of my book, its rules and characters and locations, may be contained within a physical journal, but the information is also on computer file. I definitely appreciate the convenience of technology, but, as far as dreaming up the films inside my head, being away from it, surrounded by books, is how I prefer to work.
(Illustration: Adelaide Claxton)

The Magic of Keys

 

   Unchanged in shape since the fall of the Roman Empire, the key has a number of meanings -- trust, secrets, temptation, knowledge, protection, initiation, opening and binding. A key hung upside down near the bed will keep away bad dreams. A silver key means temporal power, while a gold key represents spiritual power. Skeleton keys have the ability to unlock all doors in a building. Hecate, the Greek goddess of witches, is known as a keeper of keys. The two-faced Roman god Janus is picutured with keys, as a god of gates and doorways. The Keys of Solomon are grimoires supposedly relating the spells and rituals King Solomon was taught by the mysterious Queen of Sheba.
   In Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Alice finds a gold key that fits into a tiny door for which she must drink an elixir to shrink and enter another world. In the fairy tale Sleeping Beauty, another gold key opens a door which leads to an evil fairy who sends Sleeping Beauty into her enchanted slumber. In the fairy tale, Bluebeard, an innocent girl marries a nobleman who gives his bride the keys to the house and warns her not to open a certain door -- behind which are the bodies of his former wives. In Alice, the gold key represents initiation into the world of spirit. In Sleeping Beauty, the gold key reveals a secret, the spirit enemy of Beauty's family. In Bluebeard, the key is temptation.
   In Thorn Jack, the moth key plays an important role, opening doors for the heroine that represent initiation into a hidden world.