Hello again! Told you this would come today! Grand Theft Sorcery continues!
As I said in the spoilerific post earlier today, I shifted from this project for a few weeks to revise & finish Great Power and No Responsibilities. If you've read the previous "Professional Vacation" chapters, you'll want to take a look—I've changed Chapter One substantially, and in fact most of the chapters posted here so far. I think they read lighter than before, which was my hope. The work also didn't take much time. Every writer works at different speeds for different phases. For me, revising is MUCH easier and faster than my initial drafts.
That brings us back to GTS, with Evan and Sunday fresh off their street-racing and car-selling triumphs. Anatole and the rest of the LA nightlife still loom large in their immediate future, and both of our protagonists still have questions about their experiences and where they lead. It only gets rougher from here!
EDIT: So it occurred to me, after posting this, that I haven't actually spelled out what a djinn is for the sake of this book. I wound up inserting this while Evan & Sunday are in the parking lot:
“This guy we’re gonna see. Omar. He’s a djinn, so he’s old, and he’s a sorcerer. That’s why we’re here. Between being djinn and a sorcerer, he’s connected, like with family and contacts and…” She threw up one hand in a gesture of futility. “He’s connected in the way I’m not, for good and bad. Once we get talkin’, I don’t know for sure where it goes. Nobody likes trouble showin’ up at their doorstep, right?”
“Back up a sec. You mentioned djinn before, but I don’t actually know that word. I didn’t want to interrupt by asking. That’s djinn like in Aladdin and such, right? Only for real?”
“Yeah. Don’t take any cues from American movies, but that’s the source. They’re real. Spirits of smokeless fire, they’ll tell you. Think of them as spirit-people. Whole bunch of different kinds, lots of magic powers, and they can get real old. Most of them live apart from humans and they’re more common in the Middle East, but they can go wherever. This is LA. We’ve got lots of everything here. Djinn can be real powerful, but most of the ones you meet aren’t monsters like vampires or werewolves. Most who live among mortals act basically normal—except the bad ones can be real bad, and you don’t wanna piss them off. Not even the nice ones.”