Gail Z. Martin talks Alternative History in her Day of the Dead blog tour.

Please welcome Gail Z. Martin, whose novels with Solaris Books include the upcoming Vendetta: A Deadly Curiosities Novel in her urban fantasy series set in Charleston, SC, and The Jake Desmet Adventures a new Steampunk series co-authored with Larry N. Martin. I asked Gail to tell us a bit about what it means to write "alternative history."

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What Flavor is your Alternative History?

By Gail Z. Martin

What do you think of when the term ‘alternative history’ comes up?

Some people think of pivotal battles or moments in history. What if Hitler had won World War II? What if the Confederacy had won the Civil War? What if Lincoln had stayed home instead of going to Ford’s Theater? From that altered battle or event, the new timeline moves forward, and the author imagines a world different from our own.

Sometimes, the change is more subtle. What if an invention had come along earlier, later, or not at all? What if an influential philosopher or politician who is credited with setting a movement or ideology into motion never lived? That begs the question of whether or not an idea or invention would have come along eventually, if not by the person in our timeline who developed it, then by someone else. But what difference would a delay (or advance) in timing make?

Imagine the different route history might take if a natural disaster (like Hurricane Katrina or the explosion of Mt. Vesuvius that buried Pompeii) never happened. Or if a narrowly-averted natural disaster (the many hurricanes that veered away from making landfall on the East Coast at Category 5 status, for example) did happen? In a nod to the famed ‘butterfly effect’, that a tiny, random change that seems insignificant (like the flapping of a butterfly’s wings) can cause a huge difference when the ramifications play out. Many stories have been written about the difference one ‘average’ life makes (think “It’s a Wonderful Life”, which is really alternate history).

In Iron and Blood, the steampunk series co-authored with my husband, Larry N. Martin, we take a look at a Victorian Pittsburgh with crucial differences. In the real world, inventor George Washington worked briefly with genius Nikola Tesla, and then they went their separate ways. In our world, they found Tesla-Westinghouse Corporation, a nexus for steam-powered inventions. A disastrous flood, fire and earthquake that didn’t happen in real life occurs in our steampunk world, leading to the rise of the shadowy Oligarchy who stepped in to impose order after the catastrophes. That same Oligarchy sabotaged the nascent oil industry at Drake Well, so that steam power remained ascendant over petroleum.

Those are just a few of the altered details, but the ripple effect on history becomes larger and larger as time goes on, and it affects everything about the story and the characters, making the book a tale that could only happen in that alternative timeline.

One of the coolest things about alternative history is how it gives us a different lens to look at actions and consequences, to trace back how we got to where we are now and what might have changed that, and where we could have ended up. So whether you like your alternative history as steampunk, military adventure, sci-fi or fantasy, there are plenty of flavors to choose from!

My Days of the Dead blog tour runs through October 31 with never-before-seen cover art, brand new excerpts from upcoming books and recent short stories, interviews, guest blog posts, giveaways and more! Plus, I’ll be including extra excerpt links for my stories and for books by author friends of mine. You’ve got to visit the participating sites to get the goodies, just like Trick or Treat! For details, click here.

About Iron & Blood

Jake Desmet and Rick Brand, heirs to the Brand & Desmet Import Company, travel the world to secure treasures and unusual items for the collections of wealthy patrons, accompanied by Jake's cousin, Veronique 'Nicki' LeClercq . Smuggling a small package as a favor for a Polish witch should have been easy. But when hired killers come after Jake and a Ripper-style killer leaves the city awash in blood, Jake, Rick and Nicki realize that dark magic, vampire power struggles and industrial sabotage are just a prelude to a bigger plot that threatens New Pittsburgh and the world. Stopping that plot will require every ounce of Jake's courage, every bit of Rick's cunning, every scintilla of Nicki's bravura and all the steampowered innovation imaginable.

Extra Days of the Dead Trick or Treat Freebies!

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You can read an excerpt from the upcoming Vendetta here.

Purchase Iron & Blood on Amazon.

Get yourself some book swag here (before Nov. 1).

Novelist Terri Bruce and the Joy of HEREAFTER Research

It's my pleasure to welcome Terri Bruce, who's touring her new contemporary fantasy novel, Hereafter. Terri shares her thoughts about how research for fiction can be fun and absorbing, even for the reluctant researcher. As you'll see, Terri set quite a task for herself as she prepared Hereafter!

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To the Books—Researching Hereafter

I never thought I’d like doing research for a book; after all, writing is fun and researching is tedious, right? I mean, who actually liked researching term-papers in school? Yuck! Not me! I love to read well-researched, authentic books—historical fiction and historical romance are two favorite genres—but I always think (accompanied by a sorrowful shake of the head), “Oh man! How tedious must it be to have to research the exact shape of a dress sleeve in sixteenth century France? God bless ‘em, historical fiction writers are either saints or masochists!”

When I set out to write Hereafter I knew I wanted to create a story in which every culture’s and religion’s beliefs were true. Going into this project, I already knew a bit about quite a few cultures—the Greeks, the Norse, the Egyptians. Well…that was three. If I was going to include “every” culture, I was going to have to expand my knowledge. So I did a little research, visited a few websites, boned up on what I already knew and added some more cultures to my repertoire—Romans, Babylonians, Sumerians, Aztecs, Mayans. I even discovered a few cultures I had never heard of, such as the Etruscans.

Well, okay, that was a start, but that was, quite frankly, a whole lot of focus on a few geographic and ethnic clusters—which was reflected in the amount of similarity in the beliefs. I needed more diversity so I started poking into Australian and Africa aborigine, Inuit, and North and South American indigenous Indian beliefs. Now we were getting somewhere! And, wow, this was all really fascinating stuff!

Of course, this was a whole lot of “culture” but I was still missing “religion.” While I absolutely did not want Hereafter to be a religious book and did not want it to appear to subscribe to or advocate for a particular religion or world view, I knew that the story could not be completely divorced from religion and spirituality. I already had a good handle on the modern Christian afterlife and a little knowledge of modern Judaism. I was going to need a lot more than that. Back to the books!

I researched everything that all of the modern religions I could identify had to say on the matter—Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Baha’I, Confucianism, Taoism, and more; then I discovered some rich source material on several ancient religions, like Zoroastrianism, ancient Judaism, and such, including quite a few I had never heard of. Around this point, several critique partners reading early drafts of Hereafter asked if I had a degree in comparative religion and after a while, it started to feel that way.

So now I had a ginormous three-ring binder full of source material. And yet, something was still missing—I had a lot of great information on what would happen to Irene after she went through the tunnel, but very little about what she would encounter on earth, as a ghost, which was the main plot of Hereafter. Say it with me—back to the books.

This time, I focused on funeral customs and beliefs related to ghosts and spirits. I already knew about the Egyptian custom of mummification, Irish Banshees, the Jewish tradition of sitting Shiva and burying the dead without embalming, and Chinese Ghost Festival and the idea of Hungry Ghosts. I knew a bit about ghosts in general and a few charms/superstitions meant to either repel or call ghosts. Now I learned about the funeral customs of a hundred different cultures—both ancient and modern—and the names and forms of every type of ghost, evil spirit, and death omen. Oh my! My binder grew fatter and graduated from a 2” shell to a 4”.

I was feeling pretty good about the research I had done at this point; the world-building of Hereafter was rich and intense, full of both subtle and obvious references to a hundred different cultures and religions. And everything fit together much more neatly than I had thought it would. Then…halfway through completing the first draft of Hereafter, I went to two workshops on world-building. One was on “place as character” and the other was about creating realistic cities in fiction. It struck me that I had not been paying enough attention to “place” in my story; or more specifically, to the history of the place where my story was set. Hereafter is set in Boston—a place rich with history, and the ghosts of people from the past were very probably still wandering around the city. If Irene was stuck on earth as a ghost, then it was just as likely that people from other eras were, too. I realized that Hereafter was as much a time travel story as it was a story about the afterlife.

Back to the books!

So now it was once more back to the research, but this time on the history of Boston. I have never been much interested in history and have a terrible time keeping names and dates straight. However, I do love the history of cities—I love learning how they have grown and changed, both physically and culturally. I collect old guide books and love to try and follow their touring instructions, just so I can see what’s changed—new streets that have been added and old streets that have been renamed or disappeared altogether, new buildings that have gone up and old buildings that have been torn down, and the changing borders or even identity of the various districts or neighborhoods. Cities are alive and organic and they constantly grow and change. So for me, researching the history of Boston became just as fascinating and engrossing as researching the afterlife. And what an education! I learned that the South End had once been known for its rooming houses, that the subway line I thought was the newest was actually one of the oldest, and that the clean, business-like “government center” area had once been filled with burlesque halls. In short, I learned that a city I thought I knew intimately, I didn’t actually know all that well, after all.

Finally, I reached a saturation point. I had more than enough information to write Hereafter; there was no point to doing more research, and in fact, time spent doing research was time away from writing. There was no help for it, I had to put down the books and pick up my pen. To be honest, I felt a little bereft. Occasionally I needed to look up a stray fact, verify a spelling, confirm the veracity of a source, but it wasn’t the same. I had become a research junkie and I was cut off, cold turkey. Gradually, the love of writing replaced my newfound love of research and I learned to cope with no longer needing to read obscure texts at odd hours.

Then…then something happened.

It was time to write the sequel.

To the books!

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You can purchase Hereafter from Amazon or directly from the publisher.

You learn more about Terri Bruce by visiting her website.

Follow Terri on Facebook and Twitter.

Guest Blogger fantasy novelist Chrysoula Tzavelas

Chrysoula Tzavelas has just released her urban fantasy novel Matchbox Girls. Despite the whirlwind of her book launch, she kindly took time out to discuss her unique perspective on angels.

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I've been interested in angels ever since I was young. I think I remember the genesis of my interest: when I was very, very young, I had a dream wherein I went into a man's home, saw a large pair of wicker wings leaning against the wall, asked him about them, and was told, "Those used to be mine."

Later, when I was still quite young, I went to Sunday school, and got very upset when they taught me about Satan, and how, although God would forgive every human being for anything, angels who had made mistakes were cursed forever. That hardly seemed fair. I don't think my Sunday school teachers were very happy with one of their charges crying out of sympathy for the devil.  (Fortunately my mother was more interested in what I had to say than what they did.)

Then there was the early experience of picking up an illustrated Bible in a photographer's waiting room and reading a strange chapter about how some of the angels came down and mated with women and produced giants that dominated the Earth. For a long time I could never track down the text I'd read (and certainly not the vivid illustrations in the book itself), which only made it gain the substance of legend in my mind.

So yeah, I've been thinking about angels for a long time. Celestial messengers of an all-powerful entity who were simultaneously known for their obedience and their disobedience. It was fascinating, especially to a strange little kid struggling to understand both the spoken and unspoken rules of life. As I got older and started to seek out my own entertainment, more and more ideas about angels and their Fallen brothers crept into the mass of knowledge I'd been accreting. Nice angels, devout angels, amnesiac angels, scary angels, irreverent angels, lost angels, misguided angels, and just as many varieties of demons and devils and monsters.

It was clear that the world of celestial beings could be extremely simple: a black and white accent to the questions of human nature, or a whole landscape in which to explore metaphors of choice and destiny and the passions of entities that still seem both alien and so very human.

Guess which approach I decided to take?

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You can purchase Matchbox Girls from the publisher, on Amazon, and on B&N.

You can learn more about Chrysoula Tzavelas at her website.