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The world of Deadtown is haunted by demons. They come out at night: shrieking, howling, and tormenting the vulnerable. Vicky Vaughn, Boston's only professional demon slayer, is there to send your demons back into the ether--if you can afford her fee.

In Deadtown there are two kinds of demons: those that are conjured and those that have independent existence. Personal demons, the ones Vicky kills for her clients, are conjured demons. They don't exist until someone summons them and gives them form. The summoning can happen deliberately--as when a sorcerer conjures Harpies (revenge demons) and sends them to attack an enemy-or it can happen unconsciously. Without intending to, people can conjure their own demons.

How does that work? When you don't face a fear, worry, or regret, the issue tends to grow. It visits you as you lie in bed at night, creeping into your thoughts and maybe--if you manage to sleep--invading your dreams. The bigger the problem grows, the more demons it conjures. Personal demons gobble up fear, guilt, and other negative emotions like candy.

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Deadtown features Victory Vaughn, a Welsh Cerddorion shapeshifter who kills other people's demons for a living. Vicky specializes in personal demons, the kinds that torment individuals when they're all alone with their deepest, darkest fears and secrets.

The idea that sparked Deadtown came from reading an agent's blog. The agent was talking about clichés and meaningless phrases that crept into query letters; as an example, she mentioned a character who "wrestles with his own personal demons" and, getting literal-minded for a moment, she wondered who else could possibly wrestle with your personal demons besides you. I got literal-minded, too, and started to imagine a character who'd do exactly that. (And wouldn't it be fantastic if you really could hire someone to exterminate the fears that haunt your dreams or the pangs of guilt and regret that gnaw at your guts at two o'clock in the morning?) 

So I had an idea. But I didn't yet have a character who'd bring that idea to life. I set to work developing one.

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Deadtown, the first book in my new urban fantasy series, hit the shelves a couple of weeks ago. The series features Vicky Vaughn, a shapeshifter of the Welsh Cerddorion race who exterminates other people's personal demons for a living. Because it's a brand-new series, I thought I'd start here by introducing Vicky's world.

Three years ago Boston's paranormals were just beginning to come forward and lobby for human acceptance, led by activist werewolf lawyer Alexander Kane. When a plague tore through downtown Boston, infecting and killing every human in its path, the paranormal community stepped in to help. Paranormals were immune to the virus, so they gathered up the dead and enforced the quarantine zone. But then the plague victims began to rise.

Immediately, the walls that had been erected to keep curious humans out of the quarantine zone became barriers to keep the zombies in. Understandable, right? The virus had already mutated into something harmless, but no one knew that at the time. The plague victims might still be contagious. And they were different, frighteningly so. (Three days of decaying will do that to a person.) The newly risen zombies could think and talk, but they had spongy, greenish-gray skin and the whites of their eyes glowed blood red. They couldn't tolerate sunlight. Something happened to their muscles between death and reanimation that made them incredibly strong. And they were subject to seemingly insatiable hunger--a hunger that intensified to a frenzy whenever a zombie caught a whiff of human blood. The quarantine zone became a ghetto, a place where all paranormals were required by law to live. Deadtown.

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Nancy Holzner is one of our guest bloggers during the week of January 11th. If you have any questions for Nancy Holzner, add a comment to any of her posts. Here is some more information about Deadtown:

First in a brand new urban fantasy series that's "fresh and funny, with a great new take on zombies" (Karen Chance) and "full of dangerous magic and populated with characters so realistic, they almost jump off the page" (Ilona Andrews).

If you were undead, you'd be home by now...

They call it Deadtown: the city's quarantined section for its inhuman and undead residents. Most humans stay far from its borders-but Victory Vaughn, Boston's only professional demon slayer, isn't exactly human.

View our feature on Nancy Holzner's Deadtown.