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@claire-h, You know, I seem to be getting that a lot lately on Story Embers… 😛

(Also, thank you very much! I’m glad you liked it. I look forward to Amara’s description, that’ll help make her twin different.)

 

Horns & Hair:

I’ve hemmed and hawed on her horns, so I guess I’ll nail it down finally.

Iron horns – texture of cast-iron, rough and pitted, minor surface deformities (bumps and spikes and pits) – organic with a metal texture and color.

When she’s channeling her powers intensely (breaking gates with her mind, for example) or when her emotions and morals are in turmoil (though often the two situations coincide), her horns glow like molten iron and hot enough to ignite wood. For reasons unknown (magic) this does not burn her, though it is quite uncomfortable.

 

Hair –

It does grow, and it is indeed a challenge for her. It was actually kind of fun, pacing around one afternoon and thinking about what kind of hair care products Myrrha would need to deal with having copper hair. (Lemon juice comes to mind.) The patina would give her some pretty wild hair colors if she let it get out of hand. Trimming it wouldn’t be awful; she wouldn’t need exceptionally strong shears. However I imagine that she’d probably keep it shoulder-length, both for weight and because no one likes being repeatedly poked by spiky bits of copper all day.

Potentially, she could use repeated baths in vinegar to gradually erode her hair and soften it a smidge. I give it an authorial handwave for durability

Oh, and I forgot to say yes to you drawing the countess in her clothing. I’m more than capable of doing up her armor in a reasonably satisfying fashion but I have yet to master her clothes.

 

Regarding the other stuff:

You are most certainly right about the reality of the Roaring Twenties – the Roaring part is all headlines, sensationalism and yellow journalism. We remember Al Capone, speakeasies and Mae West, but we forget the everyday citizen who actually obeyed the law – or at least didn’t flaunt their disobedience.

 

The Pre-WWI Story:

So, kinda sorta no. I began writing it before I became a Christian, stalled, and when I became a Christian I had other matters on my mind than finishing it. But, looking back, it actually had a lot of merit setting wise (even if one particular character’s name was abjectly juvenile).

I was inspired a lot by pulp fiction stories (anachronistic by two decades, I know), world’s fair sci-fi and spy dramas, and so came up with How to Save the World in Ninety Days or Less –  a story about the niece of a rogue British spy trying to solve the mystery of her grandfather’s unfortunate demise, following the directions she receives in his post-mortem letters to dead-drop points to find the next clue. Aiding her is a burlesque dancer who does ‘private shows’ for the local Irish and Sicilian mobs (assassin), a medical student and budget concierge mob doc, and a hard-boiled bulldog detective and his pet alcoholic human (Pinky the detective dog and Richard Gunn, private eye).

All the while hounded by her villainous uncle and his band of Irish saboteurs, a Sicilian mob boss, a broken-minded Louisiana Jesuit Inquisitor trying to atone for her past failures, and a Japanese hyper-nationalist colonel deliberately trying to provoke a war between the United States and China so that his country can carve out a bigger slice of China.

Honestly?

It was pretty wild. I have NO IDEA how I fit so many random ideas into this story nor how my writing became several levels of magnitude more serious thereafter.

Some of the ideas I explored in the story stuck with me, like the magic system (the use of emotions and others’ mental energy to fuel spells sowed the seeds for how Myrrha’s magic would come to work). I may yet return to it… if I can finish Rest for the Wicked first…

(It also functioned as a hilarious excuse to finally include a Chinese character in my work, since I tend to write in a medieval European fantasy or historical environment with minimal chance for Chinese individuals to be present).