Official Author Website
Order An Ember In The Ashes HERE

AUTHOR INFORMATION: Sabaa Tahir was born in London, UK and grew up in California. As she grew up, she spent her time devouring fantasy novels, raiding her brother's comic book stash, and playing guitar badly. After graduating from UCLA, she joined Washington Post and began writing An Ember in the Ashes. Sabaa currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her family. 

OFFICIAL BOOK BLURB: Laia is a slave. Elias is a soldier. Neither is free. Under the Martial Empire, defiance is met with death. Those who do not vow their blood and bodies to the Emperor risk the execution of their loved ones and the destruction of all they hold dear.

It is in this brutal world that Laia lives with her grandparents and older brother. The family ekes out an existence in the Empire’s impoverished backstreets. They do not challenge the Empire. They’ve seen what happens to those who do. But when Laia’s brother is arrested for treason, Laia is forced to make a decision. In exchange for help from rebels who promise to rescue her brother, she will risk her life to spy for them from within the Empire’s greatest military academy.

There, Laia meets Elias, the school’s finest soldier—and secretly, its most unwilling. Elias wants only to be free of the tyranny he’s being trained to enforce. He and Laia will soon realize that their destinies are intertwined—and that their choices will change the fate of the Empire itself.

FORMAT INFORMATION: An Ember In The Ashes is 453 pages long divided into four titled sections further spread out over fifty chapters. Narration is in the first person via Elias Veturias and Laia. This is the first book of a series.

April 28, 2015 marked the US hardback and e-book publication of An Ember In The Ashes by Razorbill Books.

OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: An Ember In The Ashes is Sabaa Tahir’s debut and one of the most anticipated YA releases of this year. The author has talked about various influences that went in to this book. The world settings are a secondary fantasy world, which is a mix of some Roman and Indo-Persian settings.

The story has two POV characters Laia of the Scholar clan and Elias Veturias of the Martial clan. These two characters are the prisms through which we see the world and it is a brutal one even though for its young adult genre. Laia is living a normal life or as normal can be defined when you live the life of a conquered people. She lives with her brother Darin and her grandparents. Things however take a horrid turn when her home is ransacked and her brother captured and her grandparents murdered. She has to flee her home and find out the resistance to rescue her brother but that is a herculean task in itself. Elias Veturias is a twenty-year old student warrior of the Blackcliff academy that is a martial Hogwarts with Voldemort as its headmaster. Elias hates his life and is trying to escape however that isn’t an easy process and he has family to consider. The ironic part being his mother is the commandant of the Blackcliff academy and hates him while his grandfather is the only relative who has ever supported him.

These two characters both have different reasons to be at the Blackcliff academy and how their paths cross is the main focus of the story. The best part of the story is the characterization, with both Laia and Elias, the author brings out these vulnerable three-dimensional human beings who are forced to do things that go against their very nature. There’s also the side-supporting cast, chief among whom is Helene Aquilla who is another fellow student and a good comrade of Elias. Laia has her handler Keenan and a sympathetic resistance fighter Sana in her corner. There’s also the commandant who truly is a horrific person and I hope the author does explore her background so we can learn more about why and how of what she does and thinks. These characters do lend an intriguing air to the overall plot and I hope the author gives them more page time in the sequels. Especially Helene who steals the show with her no-nonsense attitude and is more than an effective foil to Elias.

Another intriguing aspect of the story was the way the author included certain Hindi-Urdu words into the world vocabulary and also delineated the scholar and martial clans along Roman and Indo-Persian cultural ethos and racial lines. The author however doesn’t quite go into much detail about the world origins or how the scholar and martial clans came to be. This was one of the things that is definitely a drawback for this debut. The author however makes the story quite a fast-paced one and there are a few twists that come out of the left field that make the story a fun one to read. The magic system as well as the world mythology isn't quite touched upon, it's mentioned in passing here and there. But as a world-building junkie I would have preferred a detailed outlook into both and I hope the author does make the world a bit deeper than it's showcased in this debut volume.

Of course with this being a young adult novel, there’s a certain predictability to the storyline and one good aspect was how the author downplayed the romance angle. Of course there’s romantic tension that’s introduced within the story for both Elias and Laia however neither does it overwhelm the main plot nor does it confound their thinking ability. Both characters are focused on the tasks that they wish to accomplish and act admirably even though they are both so new to the adult world.

CONCLUSION: Overall this was a debut story that I enjoyed for its fast-paced plot, and engaging characters. It didn’t quite re-invent the wheel but what the author does is present a story that has a fresh touch to it and is well written within its genre confines. An Ember In The Ashes is a fun debut and one whose sequel I’ll be eagerly awaiting to read when it releases in 2016.

Official Author Website
Order The Grace Of Kings HERE
Read A Silkpunk Epic: The Grace of Kings and a New Aesthetic
Read Silkpunk: Redefining Technology for The Grace of Kings
Read Silkpunk: playing engineer in an imaginary world

AUTHOR INFORMATION: Ken Liu is a Chinese-American science-fiction writer, poet, lawyer and computer programmer. His short stories have appeared in F&SF, Asimov's, Analog, Lightspeed, Clarkesworld, and other magazines, as well as several anthologies, including the Year's Best SF. He is also a translator of science fiction and literary stories from Chinese into English. He is a winner of the Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy awards for his short story "The Paper Menagerie". The Grace Of Kings is his debut fantasy novel. He currently lives near Boston with his family.

OFFICIAL BLURB: Two men rebel together against tyranny—and then become rivals—in this first sweeping book of an epic fantasy series from Ken Liu, recipient of Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy awards.

Wily, charming Kuni Garu, a bandit, and stern, fearless Mata Zyndu, the son of a deposed duke, seem like polar opposites. Yet, in the uprising against the emperor, the two quickly become the best of friends after a series of adventures fighting against vast conscripted armies, silk-draped airships, and shapeshifting gods. Once the emperor has been overthrown, however, they each find themselves the leader of separate factions—two sides with very different ideas about how the world should be run and the meaning of justice.

Fans of intrigue, intimate plots, and action will find a new series to embrace in the Dandelion Dynasty.

FORMAT INFORMATION: The Grace Of Kings is 640 pages long divided over fifty-one chapters that are spread over four titled sections. The book features multiple third-person POV characters and also has a glossary, a pronunciation note and a list of characters. The Grace Of Kings is the first volume of The Dandelion Dynasty chronicles.

April 27, 2015 marked the hardcover and e-book publication of The Grace Of Kings via Saga Press.

OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: The theme of the evil Empire is a tried and tested one in high fantasy. If you need a villain, and a powerful one, it’s easy to make him hateful and seem powerful by giving him an empire that’s badly governed or built on immoral foundations, such as slavery or the labour of ‘evil’ races like orcs and goblins. Our heroes, usually country boys or girls, have to destroy this empire from the ground up, and usually install a destined king in the old/corrupt ruler’s place. The story rarely follows what happens after this destined king is put in his place.

In his fantasy saga, The Grace of Kings, Ken Liu does precisely that. And what’s more, he does it in one sitting, using just the one book to tell a long, sprawling tale of a shattering empire, the heroes who ‘rescue’ it and the political games that come thereafter.

The Big Island of Dara is home to many races of people, their disparate lands (with distinct histories and cultures) only recently yoked together by the Empire of Xana, ruled by the ageing Mapidere. Rebellion simmers beneath the surface though, most notably in Cocru, one of the most martial of the islands and home to Mata Zyndu, descendent of a long line of marshals who fought for the king of Cocru and most recently resisted the campaigns of the Xana aggressors. So when Mapidere dies, it’s Mata Zyndu and his unlikely friend, the gangster and hustler Kuni Garu, who emerge as leaders of the revolt and the bid to destroy the Empire.

The politics of the various kingdoms are complicated by supernatural factors: the gods take sides in the conflict, choosing their own champions. They are restricted in their interference, unable to take a very active role or directly harm/aid their chosen ones, but that just makes them all the more desperate to make sure the factions they favour come out on top.

What Liu does with this book is play with some of the old fantasy conventions: the upstart hero, the scheming Imperial servants, the beautiful, doomed princess and the cross-dressing female soldier who bests all her male opponents. But he sets it in a world so incredibly diverse that readers are sure to fall in love with it. I won’t lie—one of the many reasons I loved this book was because, unlike in many Western fantasy sagas, a character was, by not, by default, assumed to be white or of Caucasian heritage. Instead, the peoples of a Dara are a huge blend: olive-skinned, pale skinned, dark skinned, ‘ebony’ skinned…and they mingle and mix as part of one land.

Kuni is an immensely likeable character, the typical rogue with a heart of gold, scheming and beloved of his people, a pro at public relations in the manner that many upstart ‘common’ heroes tend to become. His wife, Jia, is a Lady Macbeth-like figure, pushing her husband along the path to ‘greatness’, and making the many sacrifices that are expected of her (and him) on the climb. Mata Zyndu is the typical martial hero, tall, imposing, the kind of man who births legends and who is heralded by prophecy. He comes closest to a fantasy stereotype, but what Liu does with him turns convention on its head.

My favourite characters remain Luan Zya, a tormented genius, and Rasina, an enchantress who works and shapes smoke, and can peer into the hearts of those around her. Liu creates brilliant characters who stick on in the imagination, no mean feat considering his book is quite an epic and hosts a huge number of them. Yet he endows each with character enough that they linger on, long after they’ve played their parts (some of them shorter than others). 

Liu’s book is an interrogation of politics, ideals and the people who sport them, who live and die for abstract causes like freedom and a ‘better world’. In that way, it is a lot like ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’, but instead of the seven tomes Martin’s series is expected to take, Liu wraps up his world in one. His style is light, comic rather than weighted, but the statements he makes are no less profound for that. Whole years pass in the course of his narrative, and characters evolve in ways you might never expect.

CONCLUSION: It’s obvious that Ken Liu is a writer for whom his craft is very important, and he has not been overwhelmed by his world enough to stretch it out and hammer it unnaturally thin in an effort to spend more time in telling its story than he has to. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and look forward to more from Liu soon.

NOTE: This review was originally posted on Achala's blog. 

Writing. Nobody ever said it was easy. Writing a novel is a Herculean task, akin to mucking the Augean stables in a single day, even though it takes months or years to complete a book. So why bother?

Even when you reach the point where your novel is finished--you've workshopped it, edited it, revised it, and gotten it as perfect as possible--you're still only halfway there. You still have to find an agent and/or a publisher. Then, when you're lucky enough to have your book released into the world, you have to deal with the fact that no novel is ever universally loved. No matter who you are or how good your writing, no matter how many people like it or love it, there will always be someone who hates it. You'll have to endure the naysayers, the unqualified (and the qualified) critics who diss your work, and nobody will care about your "feelings" when they post a bad review of your book.

To be a pro you'll have to learn to deal with negative feedback, and you'll have to rise above it. To be a pro. That includes resisting the urge to "fire back" at negative reviewers, even when they're entirely incompetent. Do Not Engage. You'll have to let your work speak for itself, as any piece of art should. People are entitled to their opinions, even when those opinions are in direct opposition to your own. Ain't Freedom of Speech grand? God Bless America.

Finally, you'll have to work as hard for your second book deal as you did for your first. As a very knowledgeable person once told me: "It never gets easy until you have a break-out hit." So what does that mean, "a break-out hit"? Well, in publishing terms it means one of three things:
  1) You've written a best-seller. This rarely ever happens. Ninety-nine percent of writers keep their day jobs.

  2) You've landed a movie deal to option/adapt your book. This could mean a very large check for you, but sometimes it's far less money than you might think.

  3) You've won a prestigious industry award of some kind. Despite what you might think of awards and the worthiness or unworthiness of the awards themselves, the industry sees awards as a sign of worth. Winning an award could mean a ticket to greenlighting your next project. But most writers don't win awards. (If most writers won awards, there would then be nothing special about winning awards.) Even if you DO win an award it's still no guarantee of commercial success, although it usually helps a bit.

Yes, the writer's life ain't easy. So why bother?

Why would anyone cloister himself or herself away for months at a time to dream up imaginary worlds where imaginary people have their imaginary adventures? Why spend huge segments of what little time you have on earth pursuing such daft endeavors?

Why? Because you're a writer. A storyteller. A magician. A shaman. Stories are inside us and they gotta come out. If you're a writer you'll know it because you won't be able to stop it. Oh, sure, you'll stop sometimes--get frustrated, maybe even swear it off forever--but you'll be back at your keyboard as soon as the next Big Idea hits you. Writers write because they have to, not because they want to.

Yes, being a writer ain't easy, but there's nothing else like it. To write is to bend and reshape reality, to build a bridge between souls, to leave your mark on eternity. To harness a dream from the ether, force it to take shape in the physical world so it can be someone else's dream as well. Writing is magic, and not only can it change the world, it has changed the world. Many times over. Every time a great work of fiction enters the world, things have changed for the better.

Anything worth doing is going to be difficult, and writing is no different. It'll never be easy, but that challenge is part of why you love it so much. Knowing a few things can help you on your journey. So here are the Six Difficult Steps to Writing a Fantasy Novel...

1) Do Your Homework: Write short stories, learn story structure, characterization, find your voice, hone your narrative skills. While there are novelists who have never written short stories, I believe it's important to master the short-form before you tackle the long-form work. There's no reason not to do it. Writing short stories provides you with skills, confidence, and experience that you'll need when you start to tackle your Big Novel.

Every single story you write is a learning experience. Sending out those stories over and over will toughen you up, get you used to rejection, and if there's one thing a writer has to be able to handle it's rejection. Writers get rejected WAY more often than they get accepted. The more you write, the better you get, the less rejections you get, and better able you are to handle it. But writers never stop getting them, so they build a suit of metaphorical armor from their rejection slips.

2) Read Plenty of Great Novels: This may sound a lot like #1, but it's more about familiarizing yourself with the field you're trying to enter. Not so you can copy other's ideas, but so you can learn from them--and avoid repeating them. You have to know what's out there so you can know if your idea is something new or simply a fresh take on something that's already done. It's been said there are No New Ideas, but only new ways to use the Old Ideas. In order to do that, you have to know what the Old Ideas are. You don't have to read every fantasy that's ever been written--you don't even have to read most of them. But you should have a passing knowledge of the history and standout achievements of any field before you attempt to join in and add something new to the canon.

Follow the authors who thrill you, the ones who make you want to write every time you read them, the ones who write the way you WISH you wrote. Study their paragraphs, their sentences. Break apart the language you love and find out WHY it works, and why you love it. Do this for years--many fantasy fans have been doing this since they were children--to the point where it becomes a habit. Then, forget about all that stuff and do your own thing. Let everything you've learned bubble its way out of your subconscious in your writing. Don't sweat the technique. Get your mojo workin'.

3) Build Your World: Whether you're writing historical fantasy or imagined world fantasy, you'll need to create a setting that's believable, no matter how distant in time and space it may be. In order to design a realistic fantasy world, study the real world. Look at the great cultures throughout history, the mighty empires that have risen and fallen. History can be an incredible inspiration for fantasy writers. Decide how close to the real world you want your story to be--or how far.

If you know how nations, provinces, kingdoms, and cities work in the historical world, you'll know how they work in your fantasy world. If you know how people lived in a given historical period, you can extrapolate that to your fantasy world. If your fantasy is set in the modern world, you still need to know that world and its history. 

Before you ever sit down and draw the inevitable Fantasy Map, you need to think about your fantasy world, and you'll need to know how it works. Governments, geographies, myths, superstitions, wars, disasters, everything that might possibly come up in your story. Bottom Line: You'll need to know a HUNDRED times more about your invented world than your reader needs to know. For every fact you give in the novel, you'll need to know ten more that never come up. When the world begins to live in your mind, it's ready for the page.

4) Choose Your Characters: Get to know them before you start writing the story. Remember that all characters have a life before you start writing about them--unless they're being born in the opening scene. You need to know their personal histories, what role each of them plays in this fantasy world you've created, and most importantly: What Do They Want? Characters must want something, or they're not worth following. Characters are motivated by something they desire, even if that desire is something as simple as mere survival. Other characters will want things that interfere with or directly oppose your main characters' goals. That's where your plot begins.

5) Let Your Plot Arise from Your Characters: It's been said before that "Plot is Character, and Character Plot." Nothing could be more true. When your plot arises from the choices that your characters make--logical choices for logical characters, insane choices for insane characters, it doesn't matter--when plot arises from character, it feels authentic. Whenever you're uncertain of where the plot should go, there's only one thing to do: Look to your characters. Get inside their heads (even the ones you despise). Even the most minor supporting character wants something. In every scene you write, remember to ask yourself what these characters want. That will determine what they do in every scene. Know your world, know your characters, and you will begin to know your plot.

6) Finish It: There's one big thing that separates "real" writers from "wannabe" writers. Real writers finish what they're working on. It may take weeks, months, or years, but a writer needs to stick it out, follow through, make it to the end. A writer has to finish what he or she begins because otherwise nobody will ever get to read it. If nobody's reading what you write, there's no way you can have a career as a writer. Sure, you can write only for yourself and leave behind a pile of moldering manuscripts that have never seen the light of day, but you'll be much happier if those manuscripts get out into the world while you're still alive where people can read them joyfully and with enthusiasm.) The first rule of getting a novel published is Write It. Until then it's all just lip service.

Once you've finished the First Draft, you're not done. You have to go back and read what you wrote, and you have to revise. The best thing to do when you revise is to CUT-CUT-CUT. Cut out every single unnecessary word, sentence, and paragraph. Strive for simplicity, clarity, and economy of language.

If you want to write poetry, then write poems, but if you're writing fiction your work has to read like prose. Prose has its own rhythm, one that comes from an author's personal style. But it won't matter how pretty and lyrical your sentences are if people can't see beyond them to the raw ideas. Less is more. Never forget that.

Finish your book, no matter how long it takes. If it never gets finished, you can't move on to the next project. And moving from project to project is what a writer spends most of his or her life doing. It's a journey, not a destination. Write what you love, not what you think will please someone else.

Enjoy the journey because even though it's a hard road, there's nothing else like it.

The writer's journey is a great adventure. Write On!

*---------------*---------------*---------------*

I got my start in urban fantasy. When I began writing Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, it was mostly a labor of love that stemmed from a single frustration: I couldn't find female-led urban fantasy that wasn't erotic or obsessed with romance. So Niki Slobodian was born, and for the most part, she simply did not have time for a roll in the hay (until the devil came along, but that's another story).

After my first series of novels, I dabbled in epic fantasy, sci-fi, and horror. But I always came back to urban fantasy. I felt at home in this sub-genre, like slipping into a warm bath. So much so that I ended up penning five novels in the Niki Slobodian series and earned a small following of avid readers in the process.

So when a flurry of ideas hit me about a new kind of urban fantasy, I jumped on it. The idea of redemption in fantasy is an old and well-worn one. But what if, I thought, my character was dead to begin with? This wasn't a new idea for me either. My punk rock zombie apocalypse series The Thirteen focuses on a character that keeps coming back to life after being part of a series of horrific experiments. Niki Slobodian herself has died at least once. 

But this was different. This was a new kind of book for me. Something darker and richer than anything I'd attempted before. A flawed main character, someone who had done something so horrible that she felt she was beyond redeeming herself, who after being executed wakes up at a crossroads. Frankie Baylor is told she can either go to Hell, or live and do Cain's dirty work: murder the murderers. Anyone from Cain's bloodline has it in them to be psychopaths, murdering their way through life without a care in the world. Loving the death and pain and chaos that they bring to the world. And Frankie, the seemingly sister-murdering, former Death Row inmate, has to stop each and every one of them.

I commissioned Dean Samed of Conzpiracy Media Arts to do the cover, and he exceeded all expectations. He made me a gorgeous book cover to go along with my story, just as excited as I was about the dark and gritty and bloody concept.

Here is an excerpt of a pre-edited, pre-polished version of my upcoming release, Monstrous, the first book in the Blood of Cain series, which will be out late Fall of this year. To be honest, it's not pretty. There is cursing and drinking and sex and sin. And Frankie isn't a hero, just the opposite. So if you like your urban fantasy dark and gritty, you might like to give it a try. If you like a dose of romance and love with your fantasy, well, you might want to pass on by. This ain't no love story:

I died on a Thursday and that should have been the goddamn end of it. Not only dead, but executed by the state of Texas, of all places. No one cried. The only people that showed up to watch were a sprinkling of bloggers and so-called reporters, and my mother, practically oozing self-satisfaction. I was the daughter that lived, after all. The daughter that killed. Only once, but once was enough to get me strapped to a slab with a needle in my arm, a bunch of intern slackies taking furious notes.

And then they killed me.

Don't get me wrong. This isn't a story of good overcoming evil. This isn't some drippy, squishy story about love conquering the darkness inside of me. This is my story. An unrepentant murderer, drug user and liar. An occasional whore and manipulator. Don't expect me to come back to life with the light of a thousand angels. It wasn't an angel that brought me back, but someone much different.

You expect there to be a bright light. Or at least hellfire. But when I opened my eyes on that awful fucking Thursday, I was naked and sitting at a crossroads, the gravel cutting into my ass. There was a creepy dead tree planted next to the road, its branches looking more like dead fingers than wood, and there in the moonlight, leaning up against that tree was a man. He was watching me.

“Where the fuck am I?” I said. I don't really cry, and I'm not easy to scare. So I probably had some dust in my eyes from the road. And those goosebumps were just from the cool breeze blowing across my skin. “Hey, I'm talking to you. Where are we?”

He stood up straight then and I saw how tall he was. Tall and skinny with a long coat and a fedora. A fucking fedora tilted at an angle. And as he walked toward me I saw his face. Young and good-looking with high cheekbones and just a suggestion of a beard.

“You know a crossroads when you see it, Francine Baylor?” 

“No one calls me Francine.”

“They do in the papers.”

I finally had the sense to stand up. The gravel felt like shards of glass on my feet as I tried to back away. Tried because there was a weird glowy circle on the ground right in the middle of the intersection, and there was an invisible wall that wouldn't let me cross. I could see the field by the side of the deserted roads and the line of trees beyond, could hear the crickets and feel the early morning dew on my skin. But fuck if I couldn't put my goddamn hand past that asshole circle.

“What is this?” I said, my voice sounding panicked. I took a breath and got myself under control. Control is important, especially to me. The guy was staring at me with no expression on his face, like some kind of vapid fucking male model or some shit. I stopped trying to cover my nakedness up and stood tall, looking at the creepy bastard straight in the eyes. His fedora was pulled low, so I couldn't literally see his eyes, but I stood there proud. Defiant, even. Tits pushed straight out, chin up, hands on my hips.

“How do you know my name?” I said. Calm. Quiet. Under control.

“I know your name because you're mine now,” said the creepy bastard. He had a slight accent, but I couldn't tell what kind.

I couldn't help it. I laughed. “I'm yours,” I repeated. “Really.”

“Really,” he said, and there was something disturbing about the way the words came out of him. A coldness. Or maybe just a lack of anything. Like he was empty. Or maybe I just made him feel empty. I had that effect on people.

“What the fuck is this?” I said again. “What exactly is happening here?”

He looked at his watch, stretching his long arm out, making a big show about looking at his wrist. “Approximately three hours ago, you were executed by the state of Texas.” He looked at me. “Texas? Really? How does it make you feel to die in Texas?”

I remembered the room all metal and glass. The straps that dug into my arms and legs, the needle in my arm. The burning as the plungers went down and then...nothing. I woke up here. Wherever that was.

“Who are you?” I said. “Are you the devil?”

He chuckled. “Hardly. But I play bridge with him once in a while. Terrible bridge player, which actually surprised me. You'd think the Prince of Darkness would be better at cards.” 

“Come on, man,” I said, fear creeping into my voice. “What the fuck is going on?”

“What is fucking going on is that you died, Frankie. We covered that.” He started to walk slowly around the circle and I hated myself for following him. Him on the outside and me on the inside. It was like I was still in prison. Fitting.

“But what is going on right now?” I said, straining to remain calm. “You're not the devil, so who are you?”

He stopped pacing and turned to face me. “I'm family, Francine. Long lost family a million times removed.” He pushed the brim of his hat up then with a finger and I took a step back. For a split second his eyes flashed red in the darkness. He smiled.

“Family? What side?”

“Both sides,” he said. “Your blood is my blood, and everything you are is because of me.” 

“I've never heard of you,” I said.

“Oh I'm sure you have,” he said. “Your mother was very careful to take you to Sunday School every week. Tell me, do you remember the first children of the Earth? Two brothers, if that jogs your memory.”

“What, Cain and Abel?” I said. “Look, what kind of game is this? Is this some kind of prison guard prank? Because all you sadistic motherfuckers can kiss my ass.”

“No prank,” he said, still watching me. Suddenly he bowed low, like the gentlemen in those period movies with the top hats and carriages. “Cain Adamson, at your service.” He straightened slowly and that goddamn smile went right back on his face.

“So you're crazy,” I said. “That's cool. Just tell me what you want so we can get this over with. I want to go home, or wake up, or whatever. Anywhere but here.”

The guy calling himself Cain shrugged. He raised his hand and snapped his fingers.

“How about here,” he said. The ground beneath my feet shook and swayed and the air grew thick and warm. We were standing at a different crossroads, surrounded by palm trees. I could hear water lapping somewhere nearby.

“Or here,” he said. He snapped again and the world tilted. I had to squeeze my eyes shut against the brightness. Sun shone on my face and flat fields surrounded us. Just grass with no hills, no trees, just flatness. And still a fucking crossroads.

“Or maybe here,” he said, snapping again. I almost puked, but managed to keep my last meal down. Macaroni and cheese and steak don't taste so good coming back up. We were at a crossroad again, somewhere cold as fuck. A dim light shone on the horizon and tiny particles of ice were falling from the sky. I shivered and my teeth started to chatter. I gasped as I realized my feet were standing in snow, the trees and mountains around us already dusted with white.

“Okay, I believe you!” I said. Either this was a dream or this guy had some kind of freaky power. Or maybe it was me that was crazy. But whatever it was, he smiled, snapped, and we ended up where we started. The sun was threatening to come up and the sky had gone from black to a deep blue in the east.

“I'm your ancestor, Frankie,” said Cain. “I am very old and very tired. But I want to help you.”

“Help me?” I said. “Haven't you heard? I'm a killer. And I'm dead. The future's not looking so bright for me, Grandpa.”

“I disagree,” he said, and he wasn't smiling any longer. “I can do for you what no one could do for me.”

“What's that?” I said.

“Offer you a way out. Redemption.”

“Dude, I'm a lost cause,” I said. “Even my own mother hates me.”

“My mother hated me as well,” he said. “Are you saying you don't want to try? Because if you won't try, you know where you're going, don't you?”

I swallowed hard. “Yeah,” I said lightly. “I mean, I sort of expected it, all this time. I mean, there was this priest in the prison and...”

“Spare me the details. I'm offering you life if you want it,” he said. “Do you want to live, Frankie?”

I frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Live. To have life. To breathe and taste and smell and screw. I'm offering it. All you have to do is accept.”

“You can do that?” I said.

“Only to certain people,” he said. “To family.”

“Yes.”

“What's the catch?”

He smiled again and I wondered how I had ever thought he was attractive.

“So there is a catch,” I said. “Figures.”

“You have to do some things for me from time to time,” said Cain. “You might say it's part of my own recovery. We all have our own kind of redemption.”

“What kinds of things?” I said, narrowing my eyes.

“There are others,” said Cain. He took the hat off and smoothed dark hair back. He had a foreign, exotic look to him. “Others like you and me, Frankie. They are beyond redemption. Sometimes we need to stop them.”

“We?” I said.

“Well, you,” said Cain.

“How do I stop them?” I said. “Have you seen me?” I gestured to myself, 120 pounds soaking wet, and five-foot-six if I was wearing shoes.

“How do you think?” he said. “The old-fashioned way.”

“Oh fuck,” I said. “You want me to kill the killers?”

“Now you're getting it,” he said.

“Exactly how does that redeem me?” I said. “Isn't that just digging me deeper into sin? Shouldn't we just wait for nature to take its course and let God sort them out?”

“Now that's funny,” he said, putting the fedora back on his head. “Do we have a deal?”

I bit my lip. “You'll let me live?”

“Yes.”

“And I'll be free? Not in a prison or the army or some shit?”

“Free to do as you please, as long as you honor our agreement.”

“And I have to kill these guys.”

“Yes. Not all men, though. Some women.”

“But they're bad guys. And bad women.” 

“Yes.”

“How bad?”

“Imagine your crime,” said Cain. “You killed your own sister, just as I killed my brother. You didn't have a reason that anyone else could see. No one knew of anything that she had ever done to you. You just killed her.”

“That's the story,” I said.

“Now imagine doing that over and over again. Ten, fifteen, twenty times. Imagine you love it, the thrill of the hunt, the smell of blood. Imagine that you can't stop.”

“That's pretty bad,” I said.

“And you will stop them,” he said. “By killing, you will save lives. Perhaps hundreds.”

“How long?” I said.

“I don't understand,” he said. “How long what?”

“How long will you give me?” I said. “How long can I be...not dead?”

He smiled his creepy smile. “As long as you need redemption. Until the end of time, if need be. How long do you want?”

“I want to live forever.”

“Perhaps,” said Cain. “But I'll warn you, some don't last a day, let alone forever.”

“There have been others?” I said.

“Oh yes. And there will be others after you.” 

“How many have been redeemed?” I said.

“Seven.”

“Out of how many?”

“Three hundred something, I think,” he said. “I lost count.”

“I don't like those odds.”

“And yet,” he said, “you'll do it.”

“What makes you think that?” I said.

“Because it's me or the devil. And I am much more sympathetic. We are family, after all.”

I watched him. He just stared right back at me. He must have been some con artist because I couldn't tell if he was full of shit or not.

“Fine,” I said finally. “I'll do it.”

He smiled. “The deal is done.”

Cain snapped his fingers. The world tilted.....

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