Beth Cato is joining us today to talk about her novel, A House Between Sea and Sky. Here’s the publisher’s description:
In 1920s California, two people in need of healing find strange refuge in a house with a mind of its own in an enthralling fantasy by the author of A Thousand Recipes for Revenge.
Grieving Hollywood writer Fayette Wynne arrives in Carmel-by-the-Sea in 1926 to finish her latest project in peace. All alone, save for the preternatural sourdough starter her family has nurtured for years, Fayette is also resentful. The proven healing powers of the bread made with her starter were insufficient to save her beloved mother. For Fayette, it’s time to try and push past the pain and anger and move on.
Then, during a violent storm, Fayette saves rising star Rex Hallstrom during a moment of crisis. Their shelter: a peculiar cliffside house, its door flung open as if beckoning them. Sentient, curious, and lonely, it recognizes in Fayette a unique magic even older than its own.
In the days that follow, as a friendship grows between Fayette and Rex, they discover local legends surrounding the isolated house: It appeared in the span of a single night, its cursed origins said to be Hell itself. But for two souls who need to move forward, it provides unexpected comfort and hope. In fact, Fayette and Rex have never felt more alive. Neither has the house, whose mysteries are unending and whose wicked history may be too powerful to ignore.
What’s Beth’s favorite bit?
The voice of the titular sentient house of my new cozy-literary fantasy novel A House Between Sea and Sky emerged as soon as I conceived the character. I knew that the perspective needed to be distinct from the chapters that come from the viewpoint of my human lead. House needed to establish who it was right away:
I am a house, but I am more than a house, and so I can smell, taste, hear, see, and feel. Oh, I can feel.
I smell blood against the tang of the ocean and the freshness of water from the sky. Blood is a liquid long familiar to me, one I have sipped and guzzled as circumstances required. Sometimes one drinks what one is given. It’s polite. Also, blood is messy, and I cannot bear for it to linger upon my surfaces. I will not be stained.
To my ear, House is childlike as well as ancient. It was created to be a witch’s hut, and dutifully acted as required for centuries. That meant coping with some blood and gore. House was not a fan.
For me, as someone with obsessive-compulsive disorder, it was very important that House’s fervent need for tidiness was not done for giggles. House was subservient to its witch, but its OCD allows it to control its life in a small, vital way–and it also understands that people (even witches) do appreciate a clean house.
As my book begins, though, House has been abandoned for years. It is perched on a precarious cliff in Carmel-by-the-Sea in California. The year is 1926. House is far from its homeland. Its magic has allowed it to hide itself from the sight of most everyone around. It has dozed for quite some time… and then it awakens, sensing that there is a human nearby flavored by a magic even more ancient than its own. This woman can see House, and so House also studies her in fascination.
And then, during a violent storm a short while later, the woman returns, dragging a limp man. House chooses to open its front door to offer them sanctuary.
The book could easily become a horror story at that point. After all, this is a residence experienced with gore. This is a different kind of story, though, one that at heart is about found family between an anxious and loveable murder house, a grieving woman, and a despairing man. There is a lot of darkness within the plot, but also, the bright light of hope. House’s voice establishes that right at the end of its first chapter, too.
I am not their home, but I can be a refuge. I can, maybe, know the warmth of bodies and voices again, my hollowness less hollow.
I open my entry to them in invitation.
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BIO:
A 2015 Nebula finalist, Beth Cato is the author of the cozy mystery CHEDDAR LUCK NEXT TIME as well as fantasy like A THOUSAND RECIPES FOR REVENGE. She’s a Hanford, California native now moored in Red Wing, Minnesota. She usually has one or two cats in close orbit. Find out more at BethCato.com; follow her on BlueSky at @BethCato and Instagram at @catocatsandcheese.