Kedrick Rue

I grew up in Laurel Canyon. My father worked at Lookout Mountain Studios, and I still own the house, whose location I shall not disclose, and which I call the Rectory. There were folkies, and hippies, and Satanists running through the woods at the time, along with children. Joni Mitchell sang songs from her terrace not that far from my house, in preference to having to make conversation, while John Philips of the Mamas and the Papas chased groupies through the caves hollowed out in the bedrock below his room.

One morning I came outside to find a number of tiny people with flowers gathered in the garden. At the time, this didn't seem strange, as I would regularly come upon one of Frank Zappa's G.T.O.'s dressed as a butterfly, or a wandering itinerant who appeared to be homeless but who nevertheless had numerous expensive silk scarves draped around his neck. But these people were different. They were fairies, or pixies, or whatever you want to call them. They were tiny, and seemingly made of light, and they were all gathered around a tiny puddle where a toad presided, staring solemnly at the two who appeared to be their King and Queen, draped as they were in flower petals and cobwebs.

My newest book is the second in the "Sirens" series, in which our semi-abstinent vampire, Charles, is accosted by a woman claiming to be his former wife and saddled with both a hairy Swedish vampire toady and a young girl who looks an awful lot like his daughter but whom he suspects is something else entirely. It's a mostly self-contained novel in the "Twin Cities Series" with my fellow authors Drew Avera, J.B. Cameron, and Theresa Snyder, but also enlarges and expands on the world of the Realms. As the second book in the series, perhaps it goes without saying that things don't end well. But there's a tiny note of hope amid the smoke and rubble.