Do your characters have any backstories?

You know, I really resisted doing that at first. I don’t know why. Mostly, I think, because I was afraid it would get away from me and I’d end up with another enormous book on my hands! I mean, really, every Blackfriars book has been longer than the one before. The Kingdom is about 450 pages, while The Glory is 720! Crazy.

I didn’t want to get derailed from the projects I’d been working on by a short story that was going to take on a life of its own and hijack everything! They really do have minds of their own, these characters and stories, you know.

But while putting together the relaunch of The Kingdom and The Power, and as I was getting The Glory ready for its debut, a few short ideas came to me. The first was a really fun stand-alone adventure for Kat that I called “The Demon Bunny of Ipswich.”

In it, Kat is sent off into the California central valley, to some podunk town, and she really, really doesn’t want to go. I mean, I love Kat, she’s one of my favorite characters, but she scared me a little in this story because she’s so pissed off!

So she gets there, and there’s this possessed rabbit, who seems to take whatever anyone around it is feeling and amplifying it. And since Kat is pissed… Well, I’m not going to tell you any more about that. It’s funny and touching and magick—everything you want in a Blackfriars story, except that it’s really short!

Another short story is “Susan Gets a Job.” Susan, as Blackfriars fans know, is Father Dylan’s wife, and she is kind of a force of nature. No one wants to get on Susan’s bad side. She’s a big girl who doesn’t mind throwing her weight around. She’s also really smart and she’s usually right.

So, Susan goes to this local church to apply for the job of church secretary, and she has an interview with the pastor. And the interview does not go well. That is, until someone busts in and tries to kill the pastor. Nobody pulls shit like that on Susan’s watch. Does she get the job? It’s a damn good bet.

The most recent story I wrote for Christmas. Every year my wife and I go to the Dickens Christmas Fair in San Francisco. It’s put on by the same folks who do the Renaissance Faire, and it’s pretty similar in some ways. The Dickens Fair, however, tries to recreate Victorian London.

It’s indoors, in an enormous, cavernous building, with sawdust “snow” all over the floor. There are three very long streets that take hours to walk around, old English music halls, and lots of tasty English food, like meat pies and bangers and mash. Every now and then Queen Victoria will come through with her entourage, Father Christmas shows up, and Marley’s Ghost wanders around shaking his chains. It’s huge holiday fun, and we never miss it.

So this year, I thought, “Hey, what would happen if the Blackfriars had a shop at the Dickens Fair?” Well, it would not be boring! Stuff would happen that no one expects because that’s what life with the Blackfriars is like! It’s a Christmas ghost story, in the long tradition of Dickens, with an interfaith twist.

All three stories take place after The Glory, so there are definitely clues in them as to what happens in the latest book, but I’m not giving any spoilers here! All three stories are included in The Blackfriars Companion, a compendium of Berkeley Blackfriars miscellanea. You can get that free right here: www.BookHip.com/DXDCAS

About J.R. Mabry 

J.R. Mabry roams the earth like the ghost of Jacob Marley, searching for the perfect omelet pan. He writes thoughtful urban fantasy and science fiction. When not haunting high-end cooking stores, he lives with his wife and three dogs in Oakland, CA. He is allergic to coffee, tea, and alcohol, and for this reason, the hills resound with his lamentation. He is also generally a cheery guy.

Check out the relaunch of The Kingdom, out now from Apocryphile Press. The relaunched The Power will be out next month, followed by the all-new The Glory—also known as the Berkeley Blackfriars series. The Berkeley Blackfriars aren’t your ordinary priests—they curse like longshoremen and aren’t above the occasional spliff or one-night-stand. But if you’ve got a nasty demon on your ass, they’re exactly the guys you want in your corner.

For a free short story in the Berkeley Blackfriars universe, download The Demon Bunny of Ipswich. For more on The Kingdom and the Berkeley Blackfriars, visit J.R. Mabry’s website at www.jrmabry.com.

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Giveaway Goodness

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The Kingdom Berkeley Blackfriars Book 1 by J. R. Mabry
Genre: Urban Fantasy

Synopsis

An unhinged tycoon.

A lodge of evil magicians.

A plan to steal every child from the face of the earth…

When Kat Webber discovers her brother’s comatose body in the midst of a demonic ritual, she knew she was in over her head…

Fr. Richard Kinney is having a crappy week. He’s not at all sure he’s the best leader for the demon-hunting Berkeley Blackfriars, and his boyfriend has just broken up with him. But when a violent demon possesses one of the richest men in the world, Richard doesn’t have time for self-pity.

Kat and the Blackfriars discover their situations are entertwined—leading them to a lodge of black magicians who make every avocado in the world disappear. Their dark power growing, they eliminate every dog from existence.

Kat and the Blackfriars find themselves in a desperate race against time as the magicians try to eliminate their next target—every child on earth. To save the world’s next generation, Kat and the Berkeley Blackfriars will have to put themselves in the line of fire instead…

The Kingdom is the first book in the Berkeley Blackfriars series. If you love supernatural suspense laced with humor and danger, you’ll love J.R. Mabry’s Berkeley Blackfriars’ books.

Fans of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Preacher, The Dresden Files, and the Mercy Thompson series will thrill to this new paranormal fantasy adventure.

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