I was determined to see Carrie Vaughn. I had spoken to her
at the 2011 Worldcon in Reno, Nevada. My novel manuscript Dust after Slaying features a unique main character for an urban
fantasy—a married woman.
Just about all urban fantasies with a female protagonist highlight
her as very single, at least at the start of a series. That way she can fall in
love with a good guy, or more commonly some bad boy from the wrong side of the
tracks. Sometimes the good guy is the bad boy. And there was at least one urban
fantasy where the female protagonist had three different guys of three very
different ages interested in her.
So I had asked Carrie Vaughn if she knew of any urban
fantasies where the woman starts out married. She did not, and she said her own
character of Kitty only got married in the fifth book of the series. But she
encouraged me in my efforts, saying I should write something different in the field.
She did a reading at this year’s Norwescon, and I managed to
thank her at the end for her encouragement. She looked gratified—I didn’t
realize how much an established writer would enjoy seeing her effect on an
aspiring one.
I was going to ask her for an autograph on her young adult
novel Martians Abroad, but there
really wasn’t time.
The cover art is especially good. Polly was raised on Mars,
which has one-third the gravity of Earth. Notice how elongated her torso and limbs are.
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