They might not be raindrops on roses or whiskers on kittens, but that doesn’t mean that we love them any less. Welcome back to My Favorite Things, the weekly column where we grab someone in speculative circles to gab about the greatest in geek. This week, we sit down with Megan Mackie, who just re-released The Finder of the Lucky Devil with eSpec Books in March!
What does Megan love when she’s not writing thrillers blending urban fantasy with cyberpunk in an alternate Chicago? Spoiler alert: an incredible take on the Greek gods, viewing Gotham City from a different point of view, humans and mechs fighting in space, enemies uniting for something they love, and the urban fantasy that started it all (for Megan, at least!). Interested? Read on to learn more!
When I was first asked what my favorite things are, I immediately drew a complete blank. Apparently, I had no favorite things at all and writing this article was a hopeless endeavor. Of course, while not thinking about it for the rest of the day, I recalled enough favorite things and here we are!
Favorite Online Comic is Lore Olympus. This is an example of something where I didn’t think I would love it at first. I mean an interpretive story about the Greek gods is about as common as a man, dwarf, and elf go on an adventure or a boy and his dog. Frankly, it’s been done to various degrees of good, bad, and otherwise, so when Lore Olympus got recommended to me I was highly skeptical. Then I saw that Netflix was intending to make it into an animated series and I got curious. And then I read the entire catalog in two and a half days and was hooked. The characters sucked me in. They are complicated and relatable and the comic tackles some really tough subjects with beauty and poignancy. You can find it on the app WEBTOON, which has also exposed me to other online comics I’ve come to like as well.
Favorite Comic book is Batman: The White Knight. Again, everyone’s written a Batman story. This has been rebooted so many times what more was there to say? Well, what if the Joker became sane? How reasonable would Batman’s vigilante modus operandi be then? I read and reread this comic series many times, picking it apart, seeing the Joker in a new way through the eyes of Jack Napier and that’s all I can tell you without spoiling it.
Favorite new book series is Defy the Stars by Claudia Grey. Now, I actually know Claudia Grey, I met her in Bard’s Tower where we were both selling our books. Or more accurately, I was selling and she was meeting fans. But there was plenty of time to talk and get to know her a little and I have to admit I got sucked into the idea of Defy the Stars. It starts with space war between humans and mech soldiers fighting at the behest of an empirical, narcissistic government. Then a human soldier meets one of these mech, a model more advanced than any previous. They go on a journey of survival and discover together what it means to be truly human.
Favorite streaming tv series is Good Omens with David Tennant and Michael Sheen (who I did not realize was the sexy werewolf from the Underworld series and boy did my jaw drop when I did.) I love tongue-in-cheek storytelling and frankly no one does this better than Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. In a world that defines itself by what it hates, an angel and a demon decide to define themselves by what they love, which is Earth. (Thank you for coming to my TedTalk)
All-time Favorite book Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman. This is the book that started it all, my love of urban fantasy. What draws me time and again to this book is the idea of magic and wonder just under the surface. It was the first time I was exposed to ladies and knights and tricksters and courts from old faerie tales, but all set in a modern setting and I was hooked forever.
The book pitch says it better than I ever could:
It is the story of Richard Mayhew, a young London businessman with a good heart and an ordinary life, which is changed forever when he discovers a girl bleeding on the sidewalk. He stops to help her — an act of kindness that plunges him into a world he never dreamed existed. Slipping through the cracks of reality, Richard lands in Neverwhere — a London of shadows and darkness, monsters and saints, murderers and angels that exists entirely in a subterranean labyrinth. Neverwhere is home to Door, the mysterious girl Richard helped in the London Above. Here in Neverwhere, Door is a powerful noblewoman who has vowed to find the evil agent of her family’s slaughter and thwart the destruction of this strange underworld kingdom. If Richard is ever to return to his former life and home, he must join Lady Door’s quest to save her world — and may well die trying.
Megan Mackie is a writer, actor, and playwright. She started her writing career as an indie author and had such smashing success in her first year with her inaugural book The Finder of the Lucky Devil, that she made the transition to traditional publishing. She has become a personality at many cons, recognizable by her iconic leather hat and engaging smile. She has recently joined Bard’s Tower, a mobile con bookstore, and has sold her books next to great authors such as Peter David, Melinda Snodgrass, Dan Wells, Claudia Gray, John Jackson Miller, and Jim Butcher, to name a few.
She has written four novels including: The Finder of the Lucky Devil, The Saint of Liars, Death and the Crone, and Saint Code: Lost all of which will be re-releasing through eSpec Books. She is also a contributing writer in the role-playing game Legendlore soon to be published by Onyx Path Publishing.
Outside of writing she likes to play games: board games, RPGs, and video games. She has a regular Pathfinder group who is working their way through Rapanthuk. She lives in Chicago with her husband and children, dog, three cats, and her mother in the apartment upstairs.
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Author Photo by Devron Enarson of Dev Photography
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[…] We have re-released Megan Mackie’s books Saint Code: The Lost and The Finder of the Lucky Devil. We have one more book to re-release, The Saint of Liars, then we are free to focus on her two new titles, The Devil’s Day and Saint Code: Constable. All of these books take place in an alternate, futuristic Chicago we’ve coined cyber-magical Chicago. If you aren’t familiar with Megan, here is a guest post she wrote for Speculative Chic.) […]