Hi all!
I've been chewing on a working title—or maybe a formal title—for our Good Intentions/Los Angeles spinoff. Feels like we're at a point where I need a better name than "Evan's Story" or "untitled shenanigans." It needs something to encompass the underworld and, ahem, extra-legal themes of our story, and something magical... and if it denotes a decent amount of chaos, that's even better, right?
How does GRAND THEFT SORCERY sound to you?
(I chewed on Grand Theft Arcane/Arcana and Felony Sorcery, but I think Grand Theft Sorcery is the most accessible and fitting.)
GTS, assuming I go forward with this, has now hit 51k words! I'm zooming right along! I'll likely get the next Good Intentions novel moving as soon as I decide on the opening sentences (kind of an important thing), but as long as GTS is running at full speed, I'm not gonna stop it.
So if you're interested in the next chapter...
Good driving in LA required knowing side streets, shortcuts, and when to jump off the freeway even if the traffic app advised otherwise. Evan prided himself on his urban navigational skills right up until last night; now his tricks and knowledge seemed trivial at best. He drove east along the 10 with a wary eye for slowdowns, listening to a free orientation to the city he never knew.
“Nobody’s really in charge of the spooky side of things. Never had that here.” Sunday seemed perfectly comfortable reclining in the passenger seat through the entire drive. Evan tried not to worry about her hold on her take-out soda. “Some spookies have their traditions or standards, but that only matters to their own kind and within their own groups. Outside that, it’s law of the jungle. Don’t say or do anything you can’t back up. The only deterrent is your own strength and maybe the chance of your friends avenging you later, if you’ve got ‘em.”
“What about this Cornelius guy?” asked Evan. “He was the head vampire, right?”
“Yeah, was. Vampires are mostly trash, but they’ve got the biggest numbers. More organized, too. Cornelius was old and strong enough to push the rest around. The numbers and organization made Cornelius a power-player beyond just the vampires. Still law of the jungle, though. I dunno if anyone’s the new boss vampire now that he’s gone.”
“How many people are we talking about?”
“You mean how many supernaturals?” Sunday tilted her head in speculation. “Nobody’s done a census, far as I know. Couple hundred, maybe? Some parts of LA don’t seem to have anything magical at all, and then you’ll run into a whole family of djinn living together in, uh… hm. Think I swore an oath not to say. That’s how it goes.”
“You’ve been around two hundred years, right? That give you any clout?”
She considered her answer with an uncomfortable, dissatisfied grumble.
“You’ve been here since the pueblos, so you’ve seen all this grow. Were you the first ‘spooky?’ What about the Tongva?”
“First off, yeah, this place had history before me, but I didn’t know it for a long time. Still don’t, really. I just know it’s there. I assume the Tongva knew some magic, or at least a few of them did. That’s how it is everywhere. Whatever they knew just wasn’t enough to hold back the tide, same as all the other people that got colonized and fucked over. Magic doesn’t seem to decide these things. Most of history is just like everyone else knows it.” Sunday waved at the sprawl. “This didn’t happen gradually over all that time, right? It grew slow, and then took off like crazy.
“Spookies don’t usually announce themselves. A couple real monsters trickled in after this became American territory, and I put ‘em down myself. More and more people came. Next thing I know, I find out a coven of witches has been here for years. I turned around an’ suddenly we had vampires actin’ like they’d been here all along. That’s kinda how it’s been. The nicer djinn respect things like age, but two hundred years is just kinda cute to them. I don’t try to assert myself as some kind of elder. I’m not into politics, and I don’t want to look like an extra-savory snack.
“Also, I haven’t been here the whole time. I’ve traveled. I didn’t want to take for granted that this was the best place for me, and moving makes it easier to hide my age. Never found anywhere I liked better, though. Maybe that’s how it is for most people, and why they never leave home at all,” Sunday mused. “I think it’s important to grow and branch out, but like, what if you really did start out in the best place in the world? Should you go somewhere less cool?”
“This is why everyone else finds people from LA insufferable,” said Evan.
“Hah! Yeah, but they ain’t here, so fuck ‘em, right?”