Nancy A. Collins (b 1959) is an American author of horror fiction and comic books. She is best known for her Sonja Blue series of vampire novels, starting with the Bram Stoker Award-winning Sunglasses After Dark, and for her association with the Church of the Subgenius, where she is known as "Nanzi Regalia".
In the world of comics, she is best known for her work on Swamp Thing and Vampirella.
She was nominated for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 1990 and 1991.
Works with a page on this Wiki:
- The Sonja Blue series
Tropes in her other works:
- Evil Smells Bad: Thanks to the entire species having individual Signature Scents—which can be altered for the worse by spiritual corruption or even negative emotions—the worst of the worst Kymerans in the Golgotham trilogy tend to eventually acquire burnt, acrid, or sulfurous odors.
- Mage Species: The Golgotham trilogy has both supernaturally-gifted humans like the latent ferromancer heroine and a distinct species called Kymerans, who are the descendants of the last survivors of Atlantis-by-any-other-name. Their distinguishing traits are as follows:
- Look more-or-less like attractive humans, but have cat eyes, jewel-toned hair (it used to be rigidly segregated along primary lines, but that's since been relaxed...if mainly out of necessity), and six fingers on each hand. Loss of their sixth fingers will De-power a Kymeran, although it's specifically those fingers which are essential; the loss of an entire hand or even arm can be remedied, with no significant impairment to magical ability, by a magitek prosthesis.
- There is no apparent gender imbalance, in any direction, within their species. The term "warlock" is used in reference to their men, but "witch" is also used as a gender-neutral term.
- Morality varies by individual, and runs the gamut from heroic to unmitigably vile.
- Interfertile with humans (in fact, hormonal contraceptives lose some degree of reliability for interspecies couples if only formulated for one partner's species), although their approximately six-month gestation tends to make for high-risk pregnancies in such cases. Any resulting child will probably be a "norlock."
- Oh: and they, to a person, have unusual natural body odor (although not unpleasantly so unless the Kymeran is either an unpleasant individual or at a particularly low point emotionally) and adventurous palates.
- Monster Clown: "The Dreamclown", a short story. The titular clown, rather than being a garish and grotesque creature, is portrayed as a graceful mime-acrobat, in the style of the French Pierrot. It spends evenings on the street outside the house of two boys (the narrator and his brother), entertaining them with its enchanting, almost seductive performance. The narrator's brother is drawn in by the Clown's act, and loses his soul.
- Muggle Born of Mages: "Norlocks" are sometimes born to the Kymeran Mage Species in the Golgotham trilogy; they generally have five fingers per hand instead of the usual six, and are considered disabled by other Kymerans due to the species' focus on magic. Kymeran Half-Human Hybrids are likely to be norlocks; explicit mention is made of Tymm—son of the protagonist and deuteragonist in the series—having five-fingered hands like his (human) mother, although one does wonder how her being a ferromancer would affect him.
- People of Hair Color: Plays into the history of the Kymeran Mage Species in the Urban Fantasy trilogy Golgotham: Before Kymera sank into the ocean, their hair was exclusively in primary colors and rigidly coded to caste: blue for aristocrats, yellow for artisans, and red for peons. While the Racial Remnant who survived the crisis intermarried out of necessity (adding secondary colors to the range of possibilities), traditionalists still tend to hold some degree of bias against anyone with warm-toned hair, (although even most of them only consider it all that important that the heir to the throne have Supernatural Gold Eyes). The only mentions made of Kymeran skin tones are in reference to specific individuals; therefore, it's probably safe to say that the same variations (or lack thereof) exist among all three castes and their descendants.
- Rat King: In the Urban Fantasy novel Left Hand Magic, a supernatural conglomeration of twelve New York street rats tries to eat the heroine's puppy. Luckily, her witchy boyfriend's familiar instead ends up eating the rat king.
- Signature Scent: Kymerans in the Urban Fantasy series Golgotham each have a very distinct individual scent. Good or neutral Kymerans tend to have herbal or floral scents (although Supreme Chef Lafo instead smells like Bananas Foster and corn dogs); evil Kymerans tend more towards sulfur, fish oil, scorched metal, and other similarly delightful things. Additionally, a change in scent can be a warning flag: Erys—who later turns out to be Nina's comatose body hijacked by an astral-projecting Esau—has an "unnatural" mix of molasses and dill; Dori's scent goes from bergamot and orchids (when she's a garden-variety bigoted yandere annoyance) to ashes and black pepper (when she starts committing assault and being an accessory to worse crimes); and even Hexe's usual chypre/citrus/leather sours and picks up a hint of mold when he's being corupted against his will by an Artifact of Doom and is on the verge of irreparably alienating his pregnant consort.
