Hobson's tales

[sergebroom]

About two years ago, I came across short story "Hotel Astarte" in magazine Realms of Fantasy. And I loved it, along with everything else that MK Hobson has written since then, as may be obvious to some of the people who regularly show up here. Why she hasn't been noticed more by critics is a mystery to me. Maybe it's because every one of her tales has been a short story so far. That's going to change next summer, when Bantam Spectra releases The Native Star, her first novel.

It’s 1876, and business is rotten for Emily Edwards, town witch of the tiny Sierra Nevada settlement of Lost Pine. With everyone buying patent magics by mail-order, she’s faced with two equally desperate options. Starve—or use a love spell to bewitch the town’s richest lumberman into marrying her. When the love spell goes terribly wrong, Emily is forced to accept the aid of Dreadnought Stanton—a pompous and scholarly Warlock from New York—to set things right. Together, they travel from the seedy underbelly of San Francisco’s Barbary Coast, across the United States by train and biomechanical flying machine, to the highest halls of American magical power, only to find that love spells (and love) are far more complicated and dangerous than either of them could ever have imagined.

Click here and you'll be taken to her site, which contains her blog, news, and where some of her fiction has been posted.

Comments

[mkhobson.livejournal.com]

Thank you for this! I can't wait to get a copy of the book in your hands ... I'm really hoping you're going to like it.

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

I'm sure I will. Let me know when you see the cover art and I'll put it up here.

[readinggeek451]

That does sound good. I'll have to look for it.

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

You'll have to wait until next summer before you can read her novel, unfortunately. Some of her short stories are available on her site though, including Hotel Astarte, which started it all for me.