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12/10/2005 Entry: "Tregarde Is Back - at least in reissue"

Burning Water

Before there was Anita Blake or Vicki Nelson, there was Diana Tregarde - writer, witch and Guardian. Tregarde is the predecessor of the smart, sexy, female occult detectives. Sometimes she works with a psychic Dallas cop, sometimes trouble finds her by itself. Whether dealing with vampires, gypsies, or Aztec gods, Tregarde is the type of strong, independent fighter of evil we've come to expect these days.


Children of the Night

Lackey wrote three books in this series - BURNING WATER (1989), CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT (1990), JINX HIGH (1991) - before poor sales and a few psychotic fans convinced her to turn elsewhere. Over the years, Lackey has flatly and absolutely stated that she will not write any more Tregarde books. Now 16 years later and a huge surge in paranormal Fantasy, it appears that Lackey was just ahead of her genre. And Tor is (yay!) rereleasing these books, starting with BURNING WATER in January 2005 and CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT in August. Compared to current publishing, the Tregarde books seem almost restrained -- and compared to Lackey's writing now, they are quite unpolished -- but they are still fun reads. And there's a romance that had just barely started. Maybe, just maybe, Lackey will reconsider and give us more!

--BURNING WATER at Amazon
--CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT at Amazon

Replies: 4 Comments

These books look and sound really good. I also have heard about another vampire hunter/dark fantasy/paranormal fantasy type series - Sonya Blue series - that came out before the Anita Blake series did. I can't remember who the author was; Nancy Collins maybe? Anyway, I just wanted to know if those were before these books or at around the exact same time (I want to know who "started" this type of fantasy).

Have a nice day~

Posted by Selia @ 12/11/2005 02:19 AM ET


Well, considering that Sonya Blue is a vampire herself, I think you'd have to go back to Bram Stoker's Dracula. :)

Posted by Rebekah @ 12/11/2005 03:40 PM ET


I haven't actually read the Sonya Blue series, but I seemed to remember someone saying that Sonya Blue was a vampire who hunted other vampires (I don't remember why though). That's why I asked about that series. Dracula wasn't exactly what I meant, because my thinking was more with the paranoramal detective thing, where not all vampires or monsters or whatever are evil. (In Dracula, weren't all monsters evil? I never read it although I should.) Thanks for answering my previous post.

Have a nice day~

Posted by Selia @ 12/11/2005 07:27 PM ET


I just found a very interesting article written by Rosemary Edgehill about this exact topic (she calls them "occult detectives").
http://www.sff.net/people/eluki/murder_magic.html
It looks like Marion Zimmer Bradley's WITCH HILL might be among the earliest of the female paranormal detectives (though it sounds like she is more of a sidekick than main character).

Posted by Rebekah @ 12/11/2005 08:16 PM ET



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