Freeze or burn?
While our global weather patterns are shifting (some places are getting warmer and others cooler) and the ice caps are melting I’ve had a long fascination with the opposite.
I’m not sure when it first started, possibly around the time I learned that we are living in what is known as a quaternary glaciation period. We tend to think of ice ages as something that happened during the lives of cave people (yeah, I read Clan of the Cave Bear and the next few after that…) not something that happens to us. If you look around there are no growing glaciers, that’s because we’re in a warm bit, an interglacial bit, but we are still living in an ice age. I find this so cool (no pun intended).
Ice ages became even more interesting when I learned about the Little Ice Age of 1300-1900 (ish). The glaciers grew, the winters were snowier and colder, crops failed, and it was pretty chilly, after what had previously been warmish. The witch trials also happened during this time—because someone had to be blamed, and it gave the church a chance to grab power from those pesky herbwomen who knew too many things.
When I debated the ways to destroy the world Angus lives in I knew it had to be a return of the glaciers. That meant Demonside had to get hotter and dryer (because physics says there is an equal and opposite effect and magic obeys the laws of physics—it can’t be destroyed or created either). I also knew that if the spreading ice sheets got too big there would be no way for the ice age to be stopped, which gave Angus and Saka a ticking clock.
While I froze the humans, I had to heat up the demons. Don’t ask me how the sinking rivers actually work because I don’t know, I just really like the way they rise and fall depending on how much magic is in Demonside. I will admit to authorial hand waving there, but the drying and desert survival was researched, as was what happens in the desert when it rains.
I read nonfiction and watch documentaries because I never know when a piece of research will spark something. In this case I’d been researching (by which I mean reading any article that came across my desk not actually getting out into ice fields and doing any geology) ice ages my whole life for this one series. I’d read about the year with no summer, I knew that crop failure would happen and people would go hungry (especially if there were trade sanctions happening against Vinland) and I knew that not all countries would be equally effected.
With each book I have been able to make the worlds a little worse off.
A part of me really wanted a full blown can’t recover ice age…you’ll have to wait until book three to find out if I gave into temptation.
Rogue in the Making (Studies in Demonology 2)
The blood sacrifices have brought rain to Demonside, but across the void, the Warlock College of Vinland is still storing and gathering magic, heedless of the warnings of the international magical community. The underground is full of warlocks who disagree with the college, but do they care about wizards and demons or only about snatching power? With a foot in each world, Angus is no longer sure whom he can trust. The demons don’t trust humans, and even though he is learning more magic, he will never be one of them. He is human and only tolerated. Some demons would be happy to slit his throat. It’s only because his demon is powerful in his own right that Angus is alive. Saka only has a year to prove that Angus’s people can change and that the magic taken will be rebalanced, but the demons want action. His affection for Angus is clouding his judgment and weakening his position in the tribe. Time is running out, and he must make a choice.
TJ Nichols is an avid runner and martial arts enthusiast who first started writing as child. Many years later while working as a civil designer, TJ decided to pick up a pen and start writing again. Having grown up reading thrillers and fantasy novels, it’s no surprise that mixing danger and magic comes so easily, writing urban fantasy allows TJ to bring magic to the every day. After traveling all over the world and Australia, TJ now lives in Perth, Western Australia.
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