Norwescon; March 28-31
Seatac (Seattle) WA

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I am thrilled with this development. I love this story and feel as if the books were somewhat overshadowed by both previous and subsequent work. The Bridge series is different from much of my other work. How so?

Scale: The four books span eleven years, three worlds, and a war that has been going on for a thousand years. The varied viewpoints include a heroine who is not an ingenue, a man with an extra soul stuck in his body, a dead man, a child who believes he is evil, a young sorceress good at math (!!), a young man who believes-- Ah, no more. That would be telling!

Adventure? Most definitely! Strangers who appear out of nowhere. Sinister pursuits. Portals. An urgent mystery with clues in the past - well several of those! Lost memory. Corruption of an innocent. Agents in place...and everything goes wrong. Training up a Dark Lord. Mountain treks. Desert war camps. Coded maps. Caves that can cleanse the spirit.

Magic: One world where it has been exterminated...but not quite. One world where magic is fundamental to life and culture...and is also the seed of corruption. Some of the most influential characters have none at all. How does that work?

Relationships: Not only companionship in adventure, but love, children, family, unlikely friendships, treachery, skullduggery, betrayal, torment...yes all those, too. They are Carol Berg books, after all.

A Summoning of Demons, the third adventure of the Chimera, and my third novel under the name of Cate Glass is out now.

So what's new or different in Summoning? Our four partners have had a quiet summer since the harrowing culmination of their second mission. The most menacing threat to the city comes from a petty crew of kidnappers called the Cavalieri Teschio - or Skull Knights - who have moved from taking laborers' children for small ransoms to snatching youths of better families. But about the time our four sorcerers start to think that the Shadow Lord has decided the Chimera crew is too risky to employ, an earthquake strikes the city. Rapidly escalating events--Romy's plague of lurid dreams, increased anti-sorcery harangues from the Philosophic Confraternity, heavier patrols by the grotesque, ever-present magic sniffers -- culminate in a message from the Shadow Lord about an arranged marriage with a reluctant bride. He wishes the marriage stopped, fearing it will result in severe consequences for Cantagna's "reasonable governance" - that power-hungry fanatics will gain influence over the voices of reason. And by the way, the rushed arrangements give the Chimera only two days to figure out how to stop an ironclad contract. In the midst of this frantic enterprise, a mysterious friend returns with dire warnings for Romy's safety...