Series: A Crescent City Novel (Book 2)
Hardcover: 384 pages
Publisher: John Joseph Adams/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (May 21, 2019)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1328876713
ISBN-13: 978-1328876713
Praise for GATHER THE FORTUNES
“Camp’s prose is suspenseful and rich with feeling, highlighting an incredible heroine. VERDICT: Full of magic and numerous mythologies but still tied to the lush New Orleans setting, this Crescent City is one readers will not want to leave.” —Library Journal, STARRED“Savory…Renai’s second outing is as raucous as her first, and the magic is just as double-edged and slippery… Renai is a real standout of a heroine, a powerful African-American woman cutting through bad or desperate situations in living and dead realms of increasing chaos, armed with snark, courage, and a storm of magic drawn from deep within her. This will be a feast for all lovers of urban and dark fantasy.” —Publishers Weekly, STARRED “The second Crescent City book (after The City of Lost Fortunes, 2018) once again displays Camp’s ability to weave different mythological beliefs in fascinating ways. Readers will relate to Renai as she learns her most trusted guides are unreliable in this fast-paced urban fantasy.” —Booklist, STARRED
“In this second installment of his Crescent City urban fantasy series, Camp raises the stakes and broadens the scope of his alternate world…the richness and inventiveness of Camp’s vision and the vivacity, warmth, and compassion of his leading woman keep you alert to whatever’s happening next. As with the real New Orleans, once you leave this creepier but just as colorful variant, you’ll be eager to go back.” —Kirkus Reviews
“What a joy it is to return to Bryan Camp’s weird, dark, vivid, gorgeous magical New Orleans. Highly recommended!” —Sam J. Miller, award-winning author of Blackfish City
“The magic and mythological heft of Bryan Camp’s debut doesn’t lose any momentum in Gather the Fortunes. He captures the essence and resilience of a still healing New Orleans by digging into the parts of a city too often ignored by the well-to-do and powerful. If The City of Lost Fortunes was a love letter to New Orleans then its next installment is an Earl King blue’s song.” —Brent Lambert, editor at FIYAH Magazine
Renaissance Raines has found her place among the psychopomps—the guides who lead the souls of the recently departed through the Seven Gates of the Underworld—and done her best to avoid the notice of gods and mortals alike. But when a young boy named Ramses St. Cyr manages to escape his foretold death, Renai finds herself at the center of a deity-thick plot unfolding in New Orleans. Someone helped Ramses slip free of his destined end — someone willing to risk everything to steal a little slice of power for themselves.
Is it one of the storm gods that’s descended on the city? The death god who’s locked the Gates of the Underworld? Or the manipulative sorcerer who also cheated Death? When she finds the schemer, there’s gonna be all kinds of hell to pay, because there are scarier things than death in the Crescent City. Renaissance Raines is one of them.
Bryan Camp is a graduate of the Clarion West Writer’s Workshop and the University of New Orleans’ Low-Residency MFA program. He started his first novel, The City of Lost Fortunes, in the backseat of his parents’ car as they evacuated for Hurricane Katrina. He has been, at various points in his life: a security guard at a stockcar race track, a printer in a flag factory, an office worker in an oil refinery, and a high school English teacher. He can be found on twitter @bryancamp and at bryancamp.com. He lives in New Orleans with his wife and their three cats, one of whom is named after a superhero.
INTERVIEW
- What is on your nightstand?
A whole stack of books, both library books and ARCs: Storm of Locusts by Rebecca Roanhorse, Gideon the Ninth by Tamysn Muir, Magic for Liars by Sarah Gailey, The Shadowed Sun by N.K. Jemisin, and The Dragon Republic by R.F. Kuang. I’ve also got one of those camping headlamp things so that I can read at night without disturbing my wife. Also, often, a cat.
- What author would you totally fan?
I’ve managed to meet Kelly Link and Chuck Palahnuick and John Crowley and George R. R. Martin and Ann Leckie and Nisi Shawl and I still kept my cool, so I like to think I’d be pretty chill with any mortal author out there. That said, if I ever had the opportunity to exchange words with Catherynne M. Valente I would absolutely lose my mind. And yes, this response was 100% humble brag.
- What makes you cringe?
There’s a handful of words that I can’t spell right on the first, second, sometimes the third time that I type them. I get them so wrong that even spell check just basically gives me the shrug emoji. That moment when I, a professional writer, have to google a word in order to spell it correctly? That makes me cringe.
- Do you obsessively plot out each point or just go with the flow?
I plot things out a lot more than I used to. I’m not a rigid, obsessive plotter by any stretch of the imagination, but when I was working on my first novel, I had literally years to write a whole draft without much of a plan from scene to scene. In the second novel, I had just under a year to get a solid, working draft together, so I had to know where I was going when I started out. In the thing I’m working on now, there are four point of view characters instead of just one, so there’s a lot more in terms of moving parts that have to align and mesh and the like, so I’ve definitely got an outline that I’m working from. I’m flexible, and I still surprise myself all the time in the moment of putting the words down, but yeah, there’s definitely a plan and a guide that I’m following.
- Is there a word you love to use?
George Carlin—pour one out—had his bit about the seven words you’re not allowed to say on television. I don’t use one of them because, when it’s used as a pejorative, it’s pretty homophobic, but the other six I use pretty frequently. They are . . . kidding, kidding. Google them if you don’t know ‘em.
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