Guest Post with Stephen Blackmoore - Bottle Demon ~ JeanBookNerd

Photo Credit: Kari Blackmoore

Stephen Blackmoore is the Los Angeles based author of the noir / urban fantasy Eric Carter series, including DEAD THINGS, BROKEN SOULS, the upcoming HUNGRY GHOSTS, and the stand-alone CITY OF THE LOST. He has written tie-in novels for the role-playing game Spirit of The Century (KHAN OF MARS), the video-game Wasteland 2 (ALL BAD THINGS) and the television series Heroes Reborn (DIRTY DEEDS), as well as part of the Gods & Monster series (MYTHBREAKER). His short stories can be found at FIRESIDE FICTION, PLOTS WITH GUNS, and in anthologies such as URBAN ALLIES, DEADLY TREATS, DON'T READ THIS BOOK, UNCAGE ME and many others.

TEN QUOTES FROM BOTTLE DEMON

"No offense, but nobody showed up for the funeral."
"I had a funeral?"
"No, but if you had, nobody would have shown up for it."
"Eating souls take a lot out of you."
"Why's it a hobo?"
"I merely assume it's a hobo. It's a body. Not sure whose, and I don't see how it makes much of a difference."
"I think it makes a difference to the hobo."
"Well, isn't this a pickle?"
"If you mean vaguely dildo-shaped and shoved repeatedly up your ass, sure."
"It's like fucking Hogwarts in here," I say.
"Are you calling me Dumbledore?"
"I was thinking more Voldemort, actually."
I know that lost look. You think you know all the angles. You think you know exactly what's going on, and then BAM, you get a truth bullet right in the forehead and you know just how wrong you fucking are.
I flip a few pages until I find an entry from the 1920s and point it out.
"'Bird cage, brass: Do not open'," Gabriela says. "That's it?"
"Yep."
"Why?"
"You really want to find out?"
"Yes," she says.
"Me too. I just haven't had time to go looking for it.
"Techno mages."
"I dated one of those in college. Tried to make a flying car."
"What is it with those guys and flying cars?"
"Right? Anyway, he drove it off a cliff. It didn't work."
"Sorry to hear it."
"We were about to break up anyway."
"I've just got a carefully crafted shell hiding the fact that I'm a complete sociopath."
"I thought we all did that," I say.
"Yes, but I'm good at it.
"I'm just thinking that as soon as I think I know what the hell is going on, the universe pulls the rug out from under me."
"Sure that's the universe's fault?"
"No, but it's nice to have something to blame it on."

Journey to writing BOTTLE DEMON
Bottle Demon is the sixth book in the Eric Carter Necromancer series. A few major story arcs get resolved in this one and a couple new ones come into play that will go forward into the next three books.

Getting to this point has been a weird experience for me. I still have trouble with the idea that this is the sixth book. That there was ever a first book. Or that I ever got published in the first place.

My plans are not what you would call detailed. So though I knew what Bottle Demon was going to be about and how it would end I didn't have a lot of clarity on how I was going to get there.

I don't have Grand Plans. I have more like There's A Grand Plan Somewhere Over In That Direction I Think Maybe Oh That Road Looks Interesting Let's Try SHINY.

This works out for me most of the time. If I have something too heavily planned out I can get caught in a hole where I keep trying to make something work that doesn't and the answer is to simply ditch it and try something else.

I'm running into that right now on the eighth Eric Carter book, HATE MACHINE. I had in mind a scene I thought would be awesome but to do it I'd have to yank the story around in a direction that simply won't work. It wastes a lot of time.

Fortunately, with Bottle Demon I didn't run into that too much. My goal was to tie up a bunch of plotlines and clear the decks for new things. So I already had those pieces in mind when I wrote it.

Having multiple books to try to look back on and draw from helps immensely. At the same time keeping everything straight can be a challenge. I had a side character in this who I had forgotten I had named in a previous book, mostly because it's only mentioned once.

Fortunately my copyeditor caught it and I was able to fix it.

Overall, I'm happy with how it turned out and I hope fans of the series enjoy it as much as I did writing it.

The sixth book of this dark urban fantasy series follows necromancer Eric Carter through a world of vengeful gods and goddesses, mysterious murders, and restless ghosts.

The Necromancer is dead. Long live the Necromancer.

After being attacked by a demon in the one place he thought he was safe, Eric Carter has been killed, his soul sent to take its place as a stand-in for the Aztec god of death Mictlantecuhtli. But somebody on Earth isn't done with him, yet. Somebody with the power to bring him back from the dead. He doesn't know who, and worse he doesn't know why.

Between an angry death goddess, family secrets steeped in blood, a Djinn who's biding his time, and a killer mage who can create copy after copy of himself, Eric's new life looks to be just as violent as his last one. But if he doesn't get to the bottom of why he's back, it's going to be a hell of a lot shorter.

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