Every undead barmaid has an origin story.
Amara Nocturne did not arrive fully formed. She started as a single image: a woman behind a bar, in a Victorian alley thick with fog, with something fundamentally wrong about the way she moved. Not wrong in a horrifying way. Wrong in the way that a beautiful piece of music played in the wrong key is wrong. Off. Uncanny. Compelling.
I knew immediately that she was dead. I knew she was bound. I did not know yet what she was bound to, or what she wanted, or what she was willing to risk to get it.
That is usually how my characters arrive. As a feeling, an image, a wrongness that demands to be explained.
The curse came next. I have always been fascinated by the mechanics of curses in folklore, the specificity of them, the way they are almost always tied to something the cursed person wanted or did. Amara's curse is no different. It is a consequence. A punishment that fits the crime, in the cruel, ironic way that only the best curses do.
And then came the bet.
The title of the novella, The Bet in Nocturne Alley, tells you everything and nothing. There is a bet. It takes place in Nocturne Alley. What the bet is, who makes it, and what it costs... well. That is the story.
I will say this: I wrote Amara because I wanted to explore what it means to be bound to a place, to a past, to a mistake, and what it takes to choose freedom when freedom comes at a price. She is not a hero in the traditional sense. She is a woman making the best of an impossible situation, with imperfect information and a very limited set of options.
I find that far more interesting than a hero with a destiny.
The Bet in Nocturne Alley is available now. I hope you will step into the fog with her.
Written by Lisa A. Moore