James P. Blaylock, twice winner of the World Fantasy Award, is a southern California writer whose short stories, novels, and collections have been published around the world. He was one of the literary pioneers of the Steampunk movement along with Tim Powers and K.W. Jeter. His short story "Unidentified Objects" was nominated for an O. Henry Award in 1990. Despite his close association with Steampunk, most of his work is contemporary, realistic fantasy set in southern California. His novel The Rainy Season was chosen by Orange Coast Magazine as one of the ten quintessential Orange County novels.

The Christian Trilogy 2: The Paper Grail by James P. Blaylock

Howard Barton came to Mendocino in search of a folded scrap of paper. Not just any old scrap of paper, but one bearing what might be a sketch by the legendary Japanese artist, Hoku-sai. But Howard, unfortunately, is not the only one who wants the sketch...

There's old Heloise Lamey, whose lush and noxious garden is watered with blood, ink, and stranger substances.

And the enigmatic Mr. Jimmers, whose workshop holds a bizarre invention designed to raise the dead.

Even Howard's Uncle Roy, a builder of haunted houses and founder of The Museum of Modern Mysteries, has an interest in the sketch.

CURATOR'S NOTE

I'm a huge fan of these books, so that's really all I have to say, and if you've never discovered them then you're in for a very magical treat! – Lavie Tidhar

 

REVIEWS

  • "Weird and wonderful touches abound; Blaylock makes good use of his coastal setting, extracting his own brand of magic from familiar places and familiar things."

    – San Francisco Chronicle
 

BOOK PREVIEW

Excerpt

1

THE SKYWRITING IN his dream wasn't a word or phrase; it was five white clouds drifting in a blue sky. There was no airplane gusting out smoke, only the five clouds very gradually appearing, exactly positioned, like a constellation growing visible in evening twilight. This time there was the heavy, rhythmic sound of the ocean in the distance, and Howard confused it with the sound of the seasons turning like a mill wheel. He knew in the dream that it was autumn. The pattern of the cloudy skywriting was always the same, and always suggested the same thing, but the seasons kept changing, following the course of the waking year.

In the dream, Howard walked into the mill, which was built of stone, and he stood before the fire in the hearth. A cold wind off the ocean blew at his back. There was no heat in the fire at all, and so he stirred the coals with a stick that he found in his hand, only half surprised that leafy green tendrils sprouted from the stick and twined up his arm in the few moments that he held it.

The fire popped and leaped, throwing embers onto the hearthstones. He knew he was dreaming, and he knew that in a moment he would kneel on the hearth and burn his knee on a hot ember, and that he would feel the pain of the burn even though it was a dream and the fire was cold. And then he would touch the clear fluid that seeped from the burn and taste it, only vaguely surprised that it had the piny smell and flavor of tree sap. There would be a message in the five clouds now, spelling out his fate, but when he walked back outside to read it, the mill wouldn't be a mill any longer. It would be a stone house on a cliffside with the ocean pounding on rocks below and the sky above dark with impending rain.

He woke up this time to the sound of waves breaking along the Point Reyes coastline. It was just dawn. He had slept that night in the back of his camper, parked at Stinson Beach, having driven the few miles from the campground at Mount Tamalpais yesterday morning. Already the dream was fading from his mind. As always, he couldn't remember why it had seemed so vastly important to him, but it had left him with the ghostly suggestions of urgency and dread, and with the peculiar certainty that the five white clouds hadn't been real clouds at all, but had been painted by some unseen hand on the sky above his dream.