My wife’s book
My moll recently sold her first ever novel, PROSPERO’S DAUGHTER, which tells the story of Miranda after leaving the island of Shakespeare’s magician… centuries after.
As it turns out, the mage did not burn his books and break his staff, as promised, but used his alchemy to make himself and his daughter immortal; he also fathered other sons and daughters as the centuries passed, so that a small family of magicians lives in secret among men in our world. Their mission is to tame the unruly sprites and spirits that otherwise would create tempests and earthquakes and madness among unwary mortals… while turning a profit! Trade relations between the contending tribes of aery spirits, genii and dragons encourage peace between them. Prospero, Inc. is the multinational business empire with offices not just in Chicago and New York but also in Elfland and Djinnistan and Hyperborean realms. One day the old man turns up missing, and Miranda receives a mysterious message to beware the Three Shadowed Ones.
Someone in the family may be a traitor in league with the powers of Hell. But who? The mad elder brother Mephisto Prospero, who lost his charming wand? The elderly demon-hunter Theophrastus Prospero, who has forsworn the alchemy needed to retain his eternal youth? The blind Cornelius Prospero, who has the power to mold men’s minds? The sinister Erasmus Prospero, who knows the deadliest of all magic, the secrets of Time and Entropy? Or perhaps it is her sister Logistillia Prospero, whose witchcraft is to render men into the shapes of brutes, who has for centuries been jealous of Miranda’s advantages. And what of Titus Prospero, the giant, or Gregor Prospero, the Holy Man, now missing for years? Where is the elegant Ulysses Prospero, the thief, who can appear and vanish in the twinkling of an eye? Or perhaps the traitoress is Miranda herself.
Miranda and her trusty sidekick Mab, the company gumshoe, set out to unwind the labyrinth of mysteries surrounding this most mysterious of families. Their adventures carry them from Leavenworth to the castle of Father Christmas in the Arctic, to haunted Caribbean isles, to Prospero’s multidimensional mansion, to Hell itself.
My wife managed to find one of the better and better known literary agents to sell her book. This man is a real gent, a class act. Richard Curtis is his name. He also has a sense of humor. He is also the agent for Harlan Ellison. I heard Mr. Curtis give a dryly witty speech about dealings with Ellison at the Nebula awards. (If Mr. Curtis gives me permission, I’ll reprint it in this space.) The Author Formerly Known as Harlan Ellison was honored with a grandmaster award. (I was at the ceremony because the great Joe Haldeman and I were up for best novel that year. Needless to say, the better man won.)
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
