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in: Sorcerers as Main Supe, Mages or Wizards as main supe, Demons as a Main Supe,
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Jessie Shimmer series

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Spellbent by Lucy A

Spellbent (Jessie Shimmer, #1) by Lucy A. Snyder

Jessie Shimmer series, aka Spellbent series by Lucy A. Snyder.

Kick-Starter for new book: Devils' Field - The New Jessie Shimmer Urban Fantasy Novel From Lucy A. Snyder

Genres and Sub-Genres[]

Urban Fantasy / bordering on Horror

  • WARNING: graphic sex and violence.

Series Description or Overview[]

✥ Spellbent is an urban fantasy set in Columbus, Ohio. It contains a lot of humor to balance out the gritty bits, and I'd like to think it has the sense of wonder that's missing from a lot of current urban fantasy. I tried to write the kind of book that excites me as a reader who enjoys a wide variety of genres.

✥ Synopsis—Book one: Jessie Shimmer's roguish lover, Cooper, has been teaching her ubiquemancy, the art of finding the magic in everyday things. But things go terribly wrong when the couple try to call a rainstorm in downtown Columbus. A hellish portal opens, and Cooper is ripped from the world. Worse yet, a vicious demon invades the city. Jessie barely manages to slay it, but she's gravely wounded and the capital's center is destroyed. As if losing an eye and a hand isn't bad enough, the city's ruling mage, Benedict Jordan, brands her an outlaw. With only her ferret familiar to help her, Jessie must find the dimension Cooper's trapped in and bring him back alive before sinister machinations make both of them vanish for good. ~ Author Lucy A. Snyder: Spellbent

Lead's Species[]

  • Aprrentice Sorceress

Primary Supe[]

  • Sorcerers / Demons

What Sets it Apart[]

Narrative Type and Narrators[]

Books in Series[]

Spellbent Series:

  1. Spellbent (2009)
  2. Shotgun Sorceress (2010) 
  3. Switchblade Goddess (2011)
  4. Devils' Field (Dec 2014) ~ Devils' Field - The New Jessie Shimmer Urban Fantasy

Shorts, Novellas, Anthologies and Guides[]

~ Freebies: Author Lucy A. Snyder: Reading Room (Free Ebooks, Writing Articles, and More)

World Building[]

Setting:[]

Columbus, Ohio

Places:

  • Goad
  • High Street
  • Texas
  • Cuchillo
  • Sofia
  • Goad
  • Cuchillo

Supernatural Elements:[]

✥ Sorceress, magic users, dragons, witches, warlocks, hells, dangerous dudes in dark suits, demon, magical fake eye, council of sorcerers, Miko (ethal and powerful demon), wererats, soul harvester, monsters, magical objects, white witch, portals,

Glossary:[]

  • Ubiquemancy: the art of finding the magic in everyday things

Groups & Organizations:[]

World[]

✥ This is an extremely dark series, bordering on horror fiction. Don't look for the usual sarcastic repartee or angst-filled monologues that you usually find in UF novels because Jessie and her friends are way too busy thinking about and fighting off the monsters who are constantly after them. They really don't have time to sit around and worry too much about their relationships. Like Rob Thurman's Cal Leandros, Jessie is frequently attacked by a variety of weird and horrible creatures. Like Kim Harrison's Rachel Morgan, Jessie must constantly battle her dark side. Like Charlie Huston's Joe Pitt, Jessie loses some critical body parts along the way—although her missing bits get magical replacements. And like many UF heroines, Jessie's mysterious parentage turns out to be extremely important. ~ Fangtastic

Protagonist[]

✥ Jessie is an apprentice sorcerer, and her love interest is her master sorcerer, Cooper Marron. The couple's talents lie in ubiquemancy—a mixture of chants, spells, and magical objects and substances. Warning: Some of the substances used in the spells in Spellbent are pretty disgusting. Ubiquemancers are nicknamed Babblers because of their incomprehensible chants in archaic magical languages.

Supporting characters include Palimpsest (Pal), Jessie's familiar, who starts out as a ferret and ends up as something else; Mother Karen, Jessie's white witch friend; and the Warlock, Cooper's brother. ~ Fangtastic

Sidekick[]

Name: "Pal", Palimpsest / What: Feret / Sidekick-to: Jessie Shimmer / About: Jessie's familiar / Book First Seen In: Spellbent #1 (2009)

Character Chart[]

Resources to fill character chart: 

Characters What About
Jessie Shimmer apprentice sorcerer
Palimpsest (Pal) ferret, sidekick Jessie's familiar
Cooper Marron master sorcerer / wizard boyfriend and teacher
Benedict Jordan head of the local magical governing circle forbids Jessie to go looking for Cooper
Warlock Cooper's bartender half-brother
Mother Karen white witch friend
Randall Jessie's long-lost brother
Miko Demonic; daughter of Izanami: Japanese death goddess she lives only to hurt, torture, and kill humans, particularly Jessie and her friends.

To expand the table, in Edit–Visual mode, right-press on a Row of the table or Column (Control-press on a Mac)—choose add Row or Column.

Lucy A

Lucy A. Snyder

Author[]

Lucy A. Snyder

Bio: Lucy A. Snyder is the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of the novels Spellbent, Shotgun Sorceress, Switchblade Goddess, and the collections Sparks and Shadows, Chimeric Machines, and Installing Linux on a Dead Badger. Her writing has appeared in Strange Horizons, Weird Tales, Hellbound Hearts, Doctor Who Short Trips: Destination Prague, Chiaroscuro, GUD, and Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet. Lucy was born in South Carolina but grew up in San Angelo, Texas. She currently lives in Worthington, Ohio with her husband and occasional co-author Gary A. Braunbeck. If genres were wall-building nations, Lucy's stories would be forging passports, jumping fences, swimming rivers and dodging bullets. ~ More: Author Lucy A. Snyder: Biography and Photos

Cover Artist[]

Artist: Dan Dos Santos ~ Source: Author Lucy A. Snyder: Spellbent

Publishing Information[]

  • Publisher: Angelic Knight Press
  • Author Page:
  1. Spellbent: Paperback, 368 pages, Published September 8th 2013—ISBN: 0615875580
  2. Shotgun Sorceress:
  3. Switchblade Goddess:
  4. Devils' Field:

Book Cover Blurb[]

✤ BOOK ONE—Spellbent (2009): In the heart of Ohio, Jessie Shimmer is caught up in hot, magic-drenched passion with her roguish lover, Cooper Marron, who is teaching her how to tap her supernatural powers. When they try to break a drought by calling down a rainstorm, a hellish portal opens and Cooper is ripped from this world, leaving Jessie fighting for her life against a vicious demon that's been unleashed.

In the aftermath, Jessie, who knows so little about her own true nature, is branded an outlaw. She must survive by her wits and with the help of her familiar, a ferret named Palimpsest. Stalked by malevolent enemies, Jessie is determined to find out what happened to Cooper. But when she moves heaven and earth to find her man, she'll be shocked by what she discovers—and by what she must ultimately do to save them all. ~ Goodreads

✤ BOOK TWO—Shotgun Sorceress (2010): Outlaw sorceress Jessie Shimmer and her friends are trapped in an isolatedWest Texas town that is being decimated by a soul harvester named Miko. Asthey battle Miko and her minions, Jessie discovers a darkness within herselfthat she must overcome to save the town, her friends, and her own soul. ~ Shotgun Sorceress (Spellbent, book 2) - FF

✤ BOOK THREE—Switchblade Goddess (2011): Hell hath no fury like a goddess scorned. — When Jessie Shimmer traveled to a nightmare underworld to save her lover, Cooper Marron, she gained magical powers . . . which soon seemed more like curses. Her beloved familiar, the ferret Pal, became a monster. Her enemies multiplied like demons. Worst of all, she hasn't found a moment of peace to be with the man she adores.

Now a switchblade-wielding demigoddess commanding a private hell stocked with suffering innocents is after her. The blademistress' vengeance sends Jessie and Pal on a dark journey through strange, perilous realms. Their quest for salvation will push her newfound abilities - and her relationship with Cooper—to the breaking point . . . and beyond. ~ Switchblade Goddess (Spellbent, book 3) - FF

✤ BOOK FOUR—Devils' Field (Dec 2014): no news

First Sentences[]

  1. Spellbent — My name is Jessie, and I'm the reason why your life is about to change forever.
  2. Shotgun Sorceress — Worried anew that I was losing my ability to use white magic, I began to pace around the yard, holding my flame hand well away from my body.
  3. Switchblade Goddess — "Miko... you don't have to do this."
  4. Devils' Field (Dec 2014) — 

Quotes[]

Read Alikes (suggestions)[]

Awards[]

  • ★ Selected for the 2009 Locus Recommended Reading List
  • ★ Bram Stoker Award Nomination for Superior Achievement in a First Novel (Spellbent, 2010)
  • ★ Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in Poetry (Chimeric Machines, 2009)
  • ★ Editors' Choice Black Quill Award for Best Dark Genre Collection (Sparks and Shadows, 2008)
  • Honorable mentions, The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror (various)

Trivia[]

Special lista:

Notes[]

Spellbent's Frequently-Asked Questions

Q: Who painted the cover art?

  • A: Dan Dos Santos is the artist; he's also done the covers for Patricia Briggs' Mercy Thompson series and T.A. Pratt's Marla Mason series.

Q: What's with the ferret on the cover? He looks a little out of place perched there on that big demonic wyrm.

  • A: The ferret's name is Palimpsest, and he's Jessie's familiar. He's an important character, so he needed to be on the cover. The artist's original version omitted him, and so Pal does have the look of having been added in later. I think Dos Santos did a fabulous job taking an action- and image-packed storyline and condensing it into an exciting, eye-catching cover image.

Q: Is that big demonic wyrm also a major character?

  • A: I've nicknamed the wyrm Mister Not-Appearing-In-This-Book. :) He's a composite representation of the several dragons, firedrakes, and wyrms who do appear in the novel.

Q: What about those strange eggs? Are they in the book?

  • A: The dragon eggs do feature prominently in one scene. More metaphorically, I believe the artist thinks the novel has great big huevos.

Q: In the bit about "things go terribly wrong" in the synopsis above, do you really mean "through our stupidity while playing with magic, we opened a portal to hell"?

  • A: Er, no. The portal to the hell is not opened due to stupidity on the part of the protagonists. The reason why a fairly routine spell for them went horribly, drastically wrong is a major part of the ensuing plot. But don't take my word for it: read Chapter One for yourself ... the portal gets opened toward the middle of the excerpt. If you want to skip right to the action, go to Chapter One, Part Eight.

Q: How long did it take you to write the novel?

  • A: It took me a couple of years, mostly because I kept setting the manuscript aside to write other things.

Q: How long did it take you to sell the novel?

  • A: I sold Spellbent fairly quickly; you can read about that in How I Got My Agent. ~

See Also[]

See Also[]

See Category links at bottom of page

External References[]

Books:

Excerpts and Freebies:

Summaries, Articles:

World, Characters, etc:

Reviews:

BOOK 1—Spellbent:

BOOK 2—Shotgun Sorceress:

BOOK 3—Switchblade Sorceress:

Interviews, Guest Posts, Author Commentary:

Kickstarter Campaign:

Articles: 

Author:

Community, Fan Sites:

Gallery of Book Covers[]

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