beasts of tabat

Look at the pretty press release Wordfire put together!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Dryads. Minotaurs. Centaurs. Can magical creatures force social revolution in Tabat?

Monument, Colorado. WordFire Press is proud to announce the release of HEARTS OF TABAT, Book 2 of the Tabat Quartet by Nebula and World Fantasy Award Nominee, Cat Rambo.

“a fascinating world of magic, intrigue, and revolution.” “”Publisher’s Weekly on Beasts of Tabat

In Tabat, Beasts — magical creatures like dryads, minotaurs, and centaurs — question a social order forcing them into its lowest level. Adelina Nettlepurse, scholar and secret owner of Spinner Press, watches history being made around her as the city prepares for change, only to find herself faced with the greatest challenge of her life.

In the second book of the Tabat Quartet, award-winning author Cat Rambo expands the breathtaking story from Beasts of Tabat with new points of view as Adelina, Sebastiano, and others add their voices. Tabat is a world, a society, and a cast of characters unlike any you have read before.

Adelina Nettlepurse, noted historian and secret owner of Spinner Press, watches the politics and intrigue with interest, only to find herself drawn into its heart by a dangerous text and a wholly unsuitable love affair with a man well below her station. When Adelina’s best friend, glamorous and charming gladiator Bella Kanto, is convicted of sorcery and exiled, the city of Tabat undergoes increasing turmoil as even the weather changes to reflect the confusion and loss of one of its most beloved heroes.

For interviews, more information, or to request a review copy, please contact us at info@wordfire.com.

Hearts of Tabat
Trade paperback $19.99. ISBN 978-1-61475-637-8
Ebook $5.99. ISBN 978-1-61475-638-9

Coming May, 2018

WordFire Press is a mid-size new-model publisher founded by New York Times bestselling authors Kevin J. Anderson and Rebecca Moesta. You can find us at wordfirepress.com. Tweet us @WordFirePress. Follow us on Facebook at facebook.com/WordfireIncWordfirePress.

So my promise to myself is that the sequel to Beasts of Tabat, Hearts of Tabat, will be DONE by November 14th, which is my birthday, and which I plan to spend with Skyrim and a nice sativa (legal here in the marvelous land of WA) and not one ounce of work throughout the day as a thank you to me for working my butt off the last six weeks and getting this DONE.

The book is scheduled to be released at Emerald City Comicon next year, so you may see why the time pressure has stepped up in intensity. I told myself I’d get it done this year, and I have, along with a whole bunch of stories, not one but two collections, the update of Creating an Online Presence for Writers, a bajillion trips, and opening the Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers, including cool new classes from Rachel Swirsky and Juliette Wade, so I feel darn good about how much I got accomplished this year despite SFWA’s demanding maw chewing up my time on a consistent basis.

I thought, however, it would be useful perhaps for people grappling with novels to see what the last bits of work involve. I’ve been incorporating edits from the hardcopy manuscript but still have lots and lots of comments in the e-copy to address. In the process of adding those, I was able to look at the manuscript from a high-enough level that I could sort out all the chronology (oh dear GODDESS please let that statement be true, because that’s been the biggest pain in the rear so far) and make sure that everything made sense, that storylines were resolved, and that all the hidden plotlines got bubbled up in a meaningful way.

I’m adding in a few stray scenes that got dropped somehow, and then I’ll do the following passes (this is taken from the TODO list currently hovering at the beginning of the manuscript in Scrivener).

I’ll get through as many of these today as I can, but at some point I’ll have to print it out, because I want to take it on the road with me. I’m headed to a conference on nonprofit storytelling (ha) on Wednesday and back on the 13th, which is a complication I really wish I hadn’t introduced into my life, along with a class I’m teaching on the 12th (ditto the regret for the timing, but it’ll be a fun class), which is one reason I deserve a little Skyrim next Monday.

Anyway, here’s the todo list that I’ve been making as I went through and added my edits in:

Do a search on:
“¢ One of, not for the first, little, square
“¢ Penny-wides (penny)
“¢ Swam, abandon, tilt
(These are words I’ve noticed I use a lot, and I want to make sure they’re not over-used or consistent.)

Points that need to be checked or addressed:
Position of Temples on Beasts
Is Lucy set up as a name?
Are there too many duplicate things, like Lucy getting dismissed twice, multiple fights with Eloquence, etc? Outline events and examine.

Echoes:
Terra-cotta trade god dolls
Riot and Duke’s Occasion

Passes that need to be made:
“¢ Titles and capitalization
“¢ Read through each person’s story and map out times against BoT
“¢ Mapping pass – streets align
“¢ Trade God pass, check all the names against morphology
“¢ Names – consistent Bannister/Faustino, Serafina/whatserface, Marta/Ruhua, all of Elo/Obed’s sisters
“¢ Thought patterns (x 4)
“¢ (spoiler removed) clues
“¢ Mother references from Elo and Obed
“¢ Motivation for Lucy’s (spoiler removed)
“¢ Passes on significant locations: the stables, Sebastiano’s bedroom, Adelina’s, College of Mages, Great Hive chamber, the press, Adelina’s office, Letha’s stillroom, Silvercloth breakfast room, Murga’s tent
“¢ Possible redundancies: Adelina’s hiding of the press, Dryad forest and furnace, orange paper, election explanation, Sphinx

With the passes, I’m going through looking at a specific aspect, usually. For example, looking at each time a particular location occurs in order to make sure there are no contradictions and that the successive iterations build on each other rather than being redundant. That was the biggest flaw (IMO) of Beasts’s multiple drafts, a legacy of how many agents and editors wanted changes to the point where the book got rewritten a dozen times.

So we’ll see. I think this is a better book than the first one, which is reassuring, but there is always that perhaps I am deluding myself and this is just a manuscript with all work and no play makes Cat a dull girl repeated over and over again feeling lurking in the back of my head when I get to this stage.

Now, back to work.

#sfwapro

Today I finished Hearts of Tabat. Sure, I’ll go back and do some smoothing before sending it off to beta readers on Monday, but the book is done, the scenes are there, and (roughly) in the order they should be. The last scene took a lot of circling — I went out and walked five miles, came back, poked at it, went into the other room and made some notes, came back and kept pecking away.

I felt resistant to getting that last scene down on paper — I know that after a year and half with this book I am simultaneously exultant that it is, finally, done and sense has been wrestled from the seething mass of incoherence, and at the same time reluctant to let go of what has occupied a substantial part of my head for quite some time.

It’s an odd floaty but incomplete feeling. I feel as though I’m not sure what I should be doing, and a little anxious yet jubilant. There is a certain fear that beta readers will get something and go, “this is not a book”. Particularly when I’m trying something a bit adventurous with the structure, which I’ll save talk of for another time. I think they’ll like it; it’s as rich in Tabatian flavor as the first book and considerably more things happen in this one, to address the main criticism of that first.

Since I haven’t posted any stories on Patreon this month, I put up the first three chapters, but only for patrons. I figure they make the writing of the novels possible by supporting the stories. If you’re a patron, I look forward to hearing what you think.

I know that I need to read through the draft at least once and make sure all the names are correct; they shifted around a lot during the writing and most of the characters have gone through at least two permutations (Ariadne/Adelina, Skilto/Sebastiano, Crocofissia/Serafina) as have some of the surnames. There’s also some scraps of notes I’ve jotted down: loose ends to tuck into the narrative here and there.

But it feels as though there are a lot fewer redundant passages in Hearts than in Beasts, mainly because this manuscript hasn’t, like its poor counterpart, had multiple editors and agents leave their mark on it.

I’m also reassured that being SFWA President will not destroy my career; I wasn’t sure I would be able to finish a book while in office, but here you go. I promised Wayne if I didn’t get two done this year I wouldn’t run again; now I’m halfway.

At seven, I’ve got a Mandarin lesson via Skype, but I’d rather play Fallout. However, I will be good, and make poor Grace listen to my vowels and exhort me to “practiss, more practiss” before I will go indulge. Tomorrow I will plunge in the other big project due at the end of the month and frantically plow through that, but for the rest of the night, I get to play video games and not feel a gram of guilt for doing so.

May is for getting the YA novel finished; it’s currently about half written. I finally figured out the title, which is Conflagration.

2015 was a good year for publications, including a few nonfiction ones. Huzzah! Part of that was the Patreon campaign, another was the flurry of promotional pieces I released to accompany my first novel. 34 stories published in one year is a record for me, although many of them were flash pieces and/or self-published either as publicity for my novel or for my Patreon campaign. Here’s the month by month breakdown, with some stats and what’s coming up in 2016.

January
I wrote nonfiction column #PurpleSF for Clarkesworld Magazine and my short story “The Ghosteater” appeared in Thirteen: Tales of Transformation, edited by Mark Teppo. The story involves a traveler, Dr. Fantomas, and his companion, who are asked to investigate a haunted restaurant, and it takes place in Tabat.

February
I lounged about the house eating bonbons in February. Well, not really. But I didn’t get anything published.

March
My flash fiction “Bit Player” appeared in Daily Science Fiction, after I wrote it during one of my Flash Fiction Workshops. I went to Emerald City Comicon and had my first book release party there, plus sold it at the Wordfire booth, meeting all sorts of delightful people in the process.

April
The cruelest month was also the busiest month, with the official launch of my first fantasy novel, Beasts of Tabat, the first volume of a fantasy quartet set in the world in which I have placed multiple stories.

I also had stories appear in Airships and Automatons (“Memphis Barbecue”), Beneath Ceaseless Skies (a novelette set in Tabat and related to Beasts of Tabat, “Primaflora’s Journey“), Daily Science Fiction (another story produced in one of my classes, “You Have Always Lived in the Castle“).

I put up Tabat-related flash pieces throughout the month, fifteen total, and another, “A Souvenir of Tabat”, appeared on Quarterreads.

May
“The Subtler Art,” a story set in relatively new locale Serendib, appeared in Blackguards: Tales of Assassins, Mercenaries, and Rogues, featuring retired assassin The Dark and her spouse the wizard-alchemist Tericatus in a game of marital oneupmanship. Also appearing that month was The Haunted Snail, a flash piece (yup, written during one of my classes) in DAILY SCIENCE FICTION, and two Patreon stories, a horror piece titled “Reality Storage” and a story set in the same world as the Blackguards piece, “The Owlkit, the Candymaker, the Beekeeper, and the Brewer”.

And Ad Astra: the SFWA 50th Anniversary Cookbook, which I co-edited with Fran Wilde, appeared, and was a thing of joy and wonder, mostly due to Fran’s effort, as well as those of Sean Wallace. I will remind you all that the cookbook is eligible for a nomination for Best Related Work when Hugo nominations come around, mainly because I love that little book and think it deserves a nod.

June
Patreon story 2611, a horror story set in the apartment complex we have been trying to move out of for several years, appeared. I wrote this last year while we were living in a horrible temporary apartment and trying to get everything packed up and ready to go; most of the events are based in reality.

July
I went on retreat down to southern California and got some work done on Beasts’ sequel, Hearts of Tabat. “California Ghosts” appeared on my blog for Patreon as I switched the campaign over to publicly viewable.

August
Steampunk story “Snakes on a Train” appeared on my blog as part of the Patreon campaign. During the same month I attended Sasquan in Spokane, which was a lot of fun, and read “The Owlkit, the Candymaker, the Beekeeper, and the Brewer” there.

September
Talking in the Night, a literary flash piece appeared on my blog for the Patreon campaign. At the same time, “Marvelous Contrivances of the Heart” appeared in Recycled Pulp, edited by John Helfers. That story owes much to the old Twilight Zone episodes and I hope it manages to evocatively tell the story of an unlikely artist and the consequences of the pieces he creates.

And we moved into Seattle proper, or rather West Seattle, which is AWESOME, and involves an apartment with multiple great writing spaces, including a kitchen table that looks out towards the sound and the mountains.

October
My first on-demand class, Literary Techniques for Speculative Fiction Writers, went up. I took 1500 words of notes for the live workshop, which is based on one I developed for Clarion West and which is one of my most popular classes, and ended up expanding them to 15,000, so I think counting this as a non-fiction publication is quite valid. I still need to go back and reformat and clean this one up somewhat since I’ve learned so much about formatting and setup since then; that’s on the list for January.

At the end of the month, flash piece “As the Crow Flies, So Does the Road” appeared in Grendel Song, newly revived by Paul Jessup.

November
I put up steampunk story, “Laurel Finch, Laurel Finch, Where Do You Wander?” on my website as part of the Patreon campaign. Also “Reflections from Mirror World 57,” a story made up of superhero flash pieces for Outliers.

Two more on-demand classes went up, the Character Building Workshop and Reading to an Audience. As I worked on the former, my ideas about how to shape these classes continued to refine themselves; I’m looking forward to using a lot of what I learned in doing these in classes for 2016.

One piece of past experience that’s been useful in assembling them is a stint of work I did writing study guides for college textbooks, for a range of classes that included economics, retail marketing, and terrorism. I used the software’s capacity to create mini-quizzes with the Character Building Workshop, in a way that led to my only complaint, someone who thought the quizzes were silly.

They are silly — mainly because they’re intended as an amusing interlude that nonetheless gives you a chance to review the core concepts of the material just presented. I’d be curious to hear other takes on them from people who’ve looked at the classes. Should I cut those?

December
December publications included my take on Mrs. Claus in “He Knows When You’re Awake” for Jenn Brozek’s Naughty or Nice holiday anthology, and forthcoming “Dark Shadows on the Earth”.

I also finished up with another nonfiction essay for Clarkesworld Magazine, this time On Reading the Classics and an essay on what I hope for SFWA in 2016 for this blog.

I hope to have one last writing class, Moving from Idea to Draft, done by the end of the year and am working on that, but these classes tend to get more complicated as I write them and this is no exception.

2016
Stories coming out in 2016 include “Red in Tooth and Cog” in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (booyah, that is a longtime goal and I am still so tickled to have hit it; “The Mermaid Club,” a conspiracy tale about underground feminists, co-written with Mike Resnick; science fantasy, “Haunted,” co-written with Bud Sparhawk; “Call and Answer, Plant and Harvest,” set in the same city as the owlkit and Blackguards stories, which will appear in in Beneath Ceaseless Skies; “Tongues of Moon Toad” in The Bestiary; Preferences in Chasing Shadows (edited by David Brin) and The Threadbare Magician in Genius Loci, among others.

Status of Current Projects
I need to finish up Hearts of Tabat, and that book was the main casualty of a year whose events included cancer on one side of the family, dementia on another, and a death among my favorite in-laws. I have about 115k words on it and need to make them all make sense and flow nicely into each other. I know the main action of the two books after that. I have some other stuff I’d like to write.

Collaborations coming up include a couple with Rachel Swirsky, one with David Boop, a stroy with Emily Skaftun and Randy henderson that we need to finish up, and one with Tod McCoy.

Upcoming on-demand classes include Creating an Online Presence for Writers, Flash Fiction, Revising and Rewriting, Linguistics for Speculative Fiction Writers with Juliette Wade, Creating Your E-book with Tod McCoy and quite a bit more. And there’s another round of live workshops coming up in January-March.

Books coming out include:

• Neither Here Nor There, another two-sided collection, this time with a focus on fantasy (Hydra House)
• Hearts of Tabat (Wordfire Press) and (maybe) Exiles of Tabat
• Creating an Online Presence for Writers, 2nd edition

Some Overall Stats:
Stories published in 2015: 33, including flash pieces
Novels published: 1
Nonfiction books published: 1
Number of on-demand classes published: 4
Large writers organizations on which I served on the board: 1
Number of books read: bunches and bunches
Number of blog posts written: I will fill in this number when I have more time.

Happy holidays to all my readers. I hope your end of the year ruminations leave you feeling happy with what you’ve brought to the world over the last twelve months, and that you’re moving forward into productivity and joy in 2016.

#mc_embed_signup{background:#fff; clear:left; font:14px Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; }
/* Add your own MailChimp form style overrides in your site stylesheet or in this style block.
We recommend moving this block and the preceding CSS link to the HEAD of your HTML file. */

Today’s wordcount: 3001 (so far. plenty of daylight left.)
Current Hearts of Tabat wordcount: 119954
Total word count for the week so far (day 6): 23568
Total word count for this retreat: 70229
Worked on Hearts of Tabat, “Moderator,” untitled piece
Works finished on this retreat: “California Ghosts,” “My Name is Scrooge,” “Blue Train Blues,” “Misconceptions of Gods and Demons”
Taught week 3 of the Writing F&SF stories class, prepping to teach Delivery & Description tomorrow.

We have no water at the moment, or at least a pump is broken and we must conserve what we have in case of fires. Hopefully fixed soon, but I drove into Santa Cruz this afternoon and had a nice chat with the guy at the Pure Water store, who recommended all sorts of local places and doings.

I have been reading and reading here. I was watching no TV but Wayne and I usually watch Big Brother each year, so we started watching it while he was here and now have been watching it together while Facetime-ing. Yes, we are huge geeks.

I’m holing up and working hard on the sequel to Beasts of Tabat. I let myself have July 1 off because that was a travel day, but yesterday I managed 5k words, though that last half was like pulling teeth. This morning I got up and sat down without checking e-mail and got 1000 out of the way. My goal is 25k each week until the middle of August, which should see me with Hearts of Tabat in a decent final draft, several stories I’ve promised to people completed, the YA novel further along down the road, and perhaps even some more of Exiles of Tabat (book 3) drafted. I will be teaching while here — tomorrow is the first section of Writing Your Way into Your Novel.

To keep myself honest, I’ll be posting word count and WIP excerpts.

So, yesterday:
Word count – 5k
Hearts of Tabat current word count – 82184
SFWA time – hour and a half on call plus e-mail plus skim thru discussion boards

From Hearts of Tabat, an early chapter, still in rough draft form.

This is what a riot looked like. Pink velvet darkened to plum by spilled punch, and flickers of angry firelight glistening on the sticky surface. Two shattered windows, broken glass spiderwbs in reverse, light from the aetheric lamps hanging over the street outside washing in, acitinic blue white over the parquet floor that had been Benarda’s pride, two hundred and thirty different kinds of wood, each dedicated to a different Trade God, zebra-striped bits of southern wood like dappled petals around her boots, as though she trod on clots of dirt-streaked snow, chips of mammoth ivory salting the petals in tiny white freckles.

A punch bowl, shattered by the first brick that had come in, landing soundly in the middle beside the overturned table, sending punch and bits of curved luster-glass everywhere, a great puddle of liquid changing the colors of the woods beneath them, tinting them dark and rose.

Two paintings askew on the walls, others lying on the floor in a jumble that drew the eye as much as their subject matter, impious and arresting, the torches that had set the rioters outside afire. Someone must have known what the paintings would be like, must have tipped people off, organized the crowd.

There. Marta’s eyes, glittering hate at Adelina across the room. Gods, even now the woman would rather hold her grudge against Bella rather than worry about keeping herself alive.

This is what a riot sounded like: angry shouts coming in through the windows, drowning out the frightened whispers all around Adelina (“Was that Bella Kanto who just went out? Of course I knew she’d be here.) Benarda somewhere behind the scenes, ordering someone else to do something, it was unclear what. The woman’s best chances of keeping her gallery further intact had just walked out the door in order to stand down the crowd, which had grown from the few dozen that had been here when she and Bella had first arrived, immediately after the now-absent Duke’s speech

This is what a riot smelled like: smoke and sweat and alcohol and all the mingled pomades and perfumes ““ who was still wearing vetiver, that went out last season? And what was that intriguing cinnamon and musk blend, was that an actual edge of rum in it or some remnant of the punch?

That was what a riot felt like: Leona’s small fingers in Adelina’s own, Bella’s tiny cousin and the center of all this clamor breathing hard, the gasps and gulps of air she took in when stressed.

Adelina’s own pulse beat fists against the hollow of her throat, pressed tight fingers behind her brows every time the streetlight struck her eyes, hammered at the pit of her belly, unnerving her.

I’m getting ready to head off to the Nebulas in about an hour. Ten years ago at this time, I was getting ready to go off to Clarion West for six weeks. I’d quit my job at Microsoft and my husband had agreed to shoulder the mortgage solo for a while so I could follow my dream.

Now it’s a decade later. A lot of stuff has happened. I’ve had some stories published. I got to read in New York at the KGB bar with Chip Delany. I got nominated for awards a few times. I edited some cool stuff. I ran for Vice President of SFWA and won, and now I’m coming up on being President. And I published a novel.

And now that novel is here in a big wonderful bundle of fantasy, curated by Kevin J. Anderson. Here’s a picture of all that epic goodness:

StoryBundle lets you adjust your own price to get a whole bunch of epic and excellent titles. A minimum bid of $5 gets you the basic set of six books: The Magic Touch, by Jody Lynn Nye; Gamearth, by Kevin J. Anderson, The Crown and the Dragon, by John Payne, One Horn to Rule Them All, edited by Lisa Mangum, Invisible Moon, by James A. Owen, and Beasts of Tabat. Make that $15 and it includes A Stranger to Command, by Sherwood Smith, Hard Times in Dragon City, by Matt Forbeck, The Alchemist, by Paolo Baciagalupi, The Executioness, by Tobias Buckell, The Ghosts of the Conquered, by Matthew Caine, and Glamour of the God-Touched, by Ron Collins. There’s also a bonus story by Kevin J. Anderson and Neil Peart from Rush, “The Bookseller’s tale.”

Want it? I’ve got five bundles to give away and I’m trying to a Rafflecopter giveaway. Spread the word and you can win!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

A flyer, kept carefully folded, in the top drawer of Bella Kanto’s dresser. Dated some twenty-five years earlier, the paper crumbling and worn, and never looked at since being placed there.

VALUABLE GROUP OF ASSORTED BEASTS AND ANIMALS

Trained by Renowned Beast Trainer Jolietta Kanto, Her Estate

Will Be Sold At Auction

On the 12th Day of Autumn, at the Black Dome

At 2nd Afternoon Bell

***

Two serviceable male Minotaurs, of approximately 25 years, trained in simple guard duties and of proven loyalty and good breeding.

One stout Satyr, capable of gardening and light field work.

One hearty Centaur female, trained in cookery and housekeeping.

One Oracular Pig, of unremarkable accuracy.

Two hands of small hunting dragons of good bloodline and health, with two females currently in brood.

Brace of Riddling Deer, elderly.

One Dog-Man, incapable of breeding but trained for fugitive-hunting.

***

Sold For No Fault; With The Best City Guarantee

Sale Positive And Without Reserve

Terms: CASH

***
Love the world of Tabat and want to spend longer in it? Check out Hearts of Tabat, the latest Tabat novel! Or get sneak peeks, behind the scenes looks, snippets of work in progres, and more via Cat’s Patreon.

• Hearts of Tabat on Amazon
• Hearts of Tabat on Baen Books
• Hearts of Tabat on B&N
• Hearts of Tabat on Kobo
• Hearts of Tabat on Powell’s
• Hearts of Tabat on Smashwords

#sfwapro

In the lull between bells, the campus walks were deserted and their scent trails stale, the pupils all in their classes this late morning. They worked them hard at the College of Mages, and no student would have a break until after a lunch of bread and fishy oil and the moments they could snatch for chatting, flirtation, naps, or mischief, before they were forced to plod on to other debates in other classrooms.

The sunlight was weak in this place, a thin draught of heat unlike the fierce burn of home, particularly in late winter. The Sphinx lay on a stone slab outside the Hall of Instruction, wishing for the comfortable give of sand and listening to the voices from inside: an instructor teaching her first year pupils about the Lists.

The Sphinx combed her hair with a paw. Black strands, dull from infrequent brushing, had fallen in front of her face — discolored claws slid through them, dirt-darkened to a matching color. A fly crawled across her tawny flank, and her limber tail swatted it away as she listened.

“How do we know,” a student asked. “What is Beast and what is Man?”

The instructor’s voice was mild, although she had answered this question before at the lecture’s beginning. “The races that are Human and the races that are Beasts are set forth in the Lists.”

“What if the listmakers were wrong?” a student asked. There was brief, shocked silence at the words before the instructor said “We do not believe that they were wrong.”

The words’ quiet conviction made her hackles rise, the fine fur at the nape of her neck, where it shaded between hair and mane, bristle. Irked and restless, she rose, abandoning her puddle of sunlight to move along the gravel paths of the College, in and out of the pine and cedar shadows.

An itch between the pads of her paws, furry grooves full of sensitive hairs, told her that somewhere in the crypts below the college, Carolus was teaching a class on summoning ghosts. There was electricity and regret in the air, and spiritual energy stirred on the breeze, pulled here and there by forces of attraction and repulsion.

A wiggle of ectoplasm circled her ear, an incipient ghost trying to figure out whether or not it wanted to be born. Another flick of her tufted tail, as big as a fat feast carp, dispelled it back into shredded wisps, and it did not reform as she passed out of range.

She patrolled along the high iron fence that kept the townsfolk out and the students in, intricate ironwork that held containment sigils, woven together so thick and strong that passing through the gates felt like sliding through velvet and steel curtains, heavy weights catching at her. She resisted their impediment to pause outside, surveying the street.

Only one passerby paid her much attention ““ some northerner newly come to town, country dust still thick on him and his eyes wide with wonder at the city’s nature as it unfolded strange thing after strange thing. Including her, who he eyed with trepidation as he moved along the street. He was a mouse, a boy who would snap beneath one pounce.

She watched him with her wide golden eyes, knowing their unnerving nature. Outside the city, Beasts were more dangerous ““ her uncanny fellows stalked the humans through the wilderness, and claimed hundreds each year, but she had become Civilized in her role as the doyenne of the College of Mages. She was legendary to the students — generations had tried to evade her detection when sneaking in or out of the grounds. Though she was forbidden to harm them, they acted as though she would. As though she was still dangerous.

Perhaps she was.

#sfwapro

An Instructive Listing of the Major Artists of Tabat, being Pamphlet #5 of the series of “A Visitor’s Guide to Notables of Tabat,” Spinner Press, author unknown.

Tabat’s art tradition is well established, and not a mere copy of the practices and schools of the Old Continent, as has been charged against the artists of Verranzo’s New City. Tabat’s artists build upon the traditions of the past while innovating and creating anew in a way that reflects the diversity and history of the city. When making conversation about the city’s art, it is useful to know the names of its leading figures.

1The cousin of famous Gladiator Bella Kanto, Leonoa Kanto is a figure in her own right, known for an eye that catches remarkable depth of detail and a willingness to speak about her work and how it relates to the day’s influences unmatched by other artists.

Descendent of a long line of sculptors and artists, Coe Firaubo has produced statues that adorn the Ducal gardens and the College of Mages grounds, where his most famous work, “Truth defeats the Serpents of Falsehood,” is situated.
An artist who has only recently risen to prominence, Etaya Wain uses nothing but natural elements in his artwork, employing homemade dyes and natural substances, many of them specifically taken from the north and celebrating its influence on Tabat.

Tailuaba Cloudseeker chooses to draw on supernatural influences (and magical animals) in the creation of her work, and both her subjects and her methods reflect her former Training as a Mage.

All of Tabat has lately been buzzing about unknown artist Flora, whose work is made of dried flowers, stuffed Fairies, and other creative taxidermy. The work is sold through Bernarda Manycloaks’ gallery, which has refused to disclose anything more about the artist and his or her work.

***
Love the world of Tabat and want to spend longer in it? Check out Hearts of Tabat, the latest Tabat novel! Or get sneak peeks, behind the scenes looks, snippets of work in progres, and more via Cat’s Patreon.

• Hearts of Tabat on Amazon
• Hearts of Tabat on Baen Books
• Hearts of Tabat on B&N
• Hearts of Tabat on Kobo
• Hearts of Tabat on Powell’s
• Hearts of Tabat on Smashwords

#sfwapro