Tales from the Ragged Edge

First thing you might be asking yourself is, “What the great, green heck is Cobalt City?”

If that’s you, stay keep reading and I’ll give you the secret history of the city. For those of you who are familiar with my Cobalt City universe of super-hero fiction, I’m giving you the links right up front. A lot of the nitty-gritty used to be here on this page, but I’ve been doing some cleaning. And, quite frankly, all that info is much happier over at the Cobalt City Guide that Timid Pirate Publishing has put up. In addition to things like the Timeline for Cobalt City Fiction and the listing for the various Neighborhoods, they’re putting up detailed listings of the heroes who call the city home, with a new one going up at least once a week. I have it on good authority that they’ll throw in some of the menaces from time to time.

But here’s something they don’t have — the very first story written in the Cobalt City universe. Available only online, Masks features the cycle-riding vigilante known as Gato Loco. At the time that was written, I wasn’t thinking of writing a novel, certainly not one centered around super-heroes.

For one thing, who wrote novels about super-heroes? It wasn’t exactly hot subject matter.

I was married at the time, and my wife convinced me I could write a novel. I had tried before, years earlier, and didn’t have the discipline. I have no idea why she thought I could do it. I didn’t even have an idea for a novel.

Well, that’s not exactly true. See, many of the characters of Cobalt City sprang from a role-playing game enjoyed by my family and friends. I had run the game for a while, and always regretted not telling one particular story before the group stopped playing. The problems with telling that story as a game proved to be benefits when turning it into a novel. Rather than focusing on a large group for the entirety of the narrative, the team was split up and scattered across the globe and between two dimensions. What started as a personal challenge became a sprawling epic about love, loss, duty, and what it means to be human. Oh, and super-powered beings hell-bent on controlling the world. That novel, Cobalt City Blues, became the cornerstone in an entire universe of stories.

So what is Cobalt City? In short, it is a city like few others, a small metropolitan center on the coast of New England where the heroes — and villains — of the world have been drawn for centuries to prove themselves. With a rich tradition stretching back to the Revolutionary War (if not sooner), the city is host to psychics, madmen, technological savants, immortals, mutants, the avatars of old gods, and the occasional robot. It is also a open sandbox for a growing list of talented authors who grew up with the comic books, dreaming of the chance to play with and write larger-than-life heroes.

As of this writing, there have been three more novels, two anthologies, an ongoing audio drama podcast, and individual short fiction written starring these characters. And there is even more planned. In 2011 I plan to finish my long-promised Snowflake origin story as part of the next de la Vega mystery novel, The Panda Sanction. There is a third anthology in the works for fall of this year, promising to be the most cohesive and tightly woven anthology we’ve done yet. And meanwhile, Timid Pirate is presenting free, original short-fiction downloads at the Timid Pirate site with the purpose of giving life to the neighborhoods of the city.

Cobalt City is continuing to grow and expand.

And while I continue to write other projects, I’m still drawn back to the city time and again.