M.C. DeMarco
Author of "Sympathy From the Devil" in Paramourtal
The interview:
MCD: Thanks for inviting us, Sherry. Although I’ve written a trunkload of romantic tales, my Paramourtal story, “Sympathy From the Devil,” was my first romance publication.
Forcas: And your last, I hope.
Ariel: Forcas, it’s not our turn yet.
Forcas: Demons don’t take turns.
Ariel: You’re not--
MCD: No spoilers! Sorry about that, Sherry. My characters can be a little--
Sherry: LOL Tell me about it!
Forcas: Forceful.
Ariel: Childish.
MCD: I was going to say uppity. I usually write science fiction and fantasy, but I had an idea for the Paramourtal anthology about a guardian angel running into her ex-boyfriend in a bar.
Forcas: I wasn’t her boyfriend. It was just a casual fling. You know how the Bronze Age was.
Ariel: They’re mortal, Forcas. They don’t remember the Bronze age. Anyway, Forcas has been in love with me since before the Fall, but he won’t admit it.
Forcas: Me? You’ve been hot for my demon as--
Ariel: Please watch your language, Forcas.
Forcas: --assets all along.
Ariel: If I wanted beachfront property on the Lake of Fire, I could have followed Satan to Hell along with you.
Forcas: Lucifer. And we all know what you wanted.
MCD: Forcas is making some gestures that, fortunately, I don’t have to describe in this context. Could we please get back on topic?
Ariel: I apologize for my companion. What was the topic?
Forcas: My assets.
MCD: My story.
Ariel: I thought it was a well-written story, although a little racy for my tastes.
Forcas: You don’t know from racy, angelcakes.
Ariel: I’ve seen what my charges keep under their mattresses--and what you keep under yours, Forcas.
Forcas: So you know that the author hardly did justice to my assets.
Ariel: The less said about your assets, the better, Forcas.
MCD: Agreed.
Forcas: I never claimed to be Lucifer. Any deficiencies in size or proportion are entirely the author’s fault. Blame her.
Ariel: It’s not what you have; it’s how you use it.
Forcas: I don’t recall any complaints the last time I used it. In fact, you were begging for more.
Ariel: Angels don’t beg.
Forcas: No, they just suck up to authority. I could see pandering to God--
Ariel: Angels worship the Most High voluntarily.
Forcas: And if you don’t volunteer, you get tossed into the Lake of Fire, so sure, I can see your point there. But now you’re pandering to the author, a mere mortal, hoping for a sequel--
MCD: I’m afraid we’ve strayed off-topic again. You know our editor doesn’t like it when you two argue about religion.
Ariel: I apologize. But will there be a sequel?
MCD: I think I’m supposed to ask the questions here. So, Ariel, how did you feel seeing Forcas for the first time in a thousand years?
Ariel: My mind was on my job, of course.
Forcas: Sure it was.
Ariel: Your friend Sherry is looking restless. I think we should go.
Sherry: I thought I was laughing, sorry.
Forcas: Yeah, let’s blow this chick-fest.
MCD: Well, Sherry, I didn’t get very many answers out of them. I’m afraid they’re always like that.
A short excerpt from the story "Sympathy From the Devil":
Ariel couldn’t bear to watch. She put her head in her hands, covering her eyes. “Why couldn’t you resist temptation tonight?”
A gruff but strangely familiar voice replied, “He has to give in some night or other. Why not tonight?”
Ariel peeked through her fingers. Across the table from her sat a demon, who must have materialized while she wasn’t watching. Short horns poked out of his shaggy black hair. He grinned, showing his fangs but also an echo of a smile she’d once known.
“Forcas?”
“Long time no see, Ariel. What’s it been—a century? Two?”
“A thousand years,” she admitted.
“How time flies.”
She could hear his tail flicking back and forth like a whip beneath the round table, a stark contrast to his flat tone. Ariel forced herself to concentrate on her job. Sometimes you ran into a fallen angel at work. You just had to stake out your territory, not rehash the War in Heaven.
“Matt is still mine,” she told Forcas. “Get out of here.”
He nodded toward the redhead. “And Jenny is mine, so I’m staying.” A dark beer materialized in his hand, and he drained half of it in one gulp. Ariel glanced at the mortal couple. “She doesn’t look far gone enough to have her own guardian devil.”
“She’s freshly fallen. Your fellow there is her one-way ticket to the place where the worm dies not and the fire is not quenched.” Forcas took a swig of beer and belched steam, as if quenching his own inner fires.
Ariel absorbed the information. “She’s married?”
“Unhappily. Mr. Gagnon is out of town this week.”
Ariel let go of the edge of the table and sat up straight and righteous. “I suppose you people arranged that too.”
“Not at all. Jenny’s issues go all the way back to her deadbeat father. She replaced him with yet another ass, and now he’s out of town, so—”
“You’re tempting her to abandon her family.” Ariel sighed. As if the vagaries of life were not enough to lead mortals to sin.
“Perish the thought.” Forcas sat up straighter on his barstool, puffed up with devilish pride. “They don’t have kids, and she’s sinning just fine on her own. I’m just here to observe.”
My bio:
M. C. DeMarco lives near Boston, Massachusetts, where she writes speculative fiction after hours. She attended the Odyssey Fantasy Writing Workshop in 2004 and won the NESFA 2005 Science Fiction & Fantasy
Story Contest. Her short stories have appeared in the Strange New Worlds 8, Strange New Worlds 10, and Paramourtal anthologies.
Links:
Please come back tomorrow when Evelyn Welle is joining us.
