Urban Fantasy Author Offers Different Take On "End Of World"

Events in author Lynne Cantwell's "The Pipe Woman Chronicles" urban fantasy series kick off on the 2012 winter solstice, and there's nary a galactic superwave in sight.

Arlington, VA (I-Newswire) December 13, 2012 - Author Lynne Cantwell says you can forget all that stuff about the Mayan calendar, galactic superwaves, the shifting of the Earth’s poles, and other assorted disasters that are supposed to occur on the winter solstice this year. Instead, in her urban fantasy series The Pipe Woman Chronicles, Cantwell has designated December 21st as the date when a Denver, Colo., mediator named Naomi Witherspoon learns she has been drafted by a Native American goddess. Witherspoon’s task: to mediate an agreement between the Earth’s pagan pantheons and the Christian God. Tapped, the third book in the five-book series, was released earlier this month. The first book, Seized, was published in March; book two, Fissured, was released in August.

Cantwell began writing Seized in the fall of 2011, when hysteria over the supposed end of the world was just beginning to ramp up. “Over the centuries, a lot of people have used religion as justification for all kinds of horrible human acts,” she said. “While some people think the world will end on the solstice, others believe what will actually happen is a change in human consciousness – one that might lead to a more humanistic spiritual view. Of course, that idea scares some people, too.” She is extremely skeptical that the world will be any different on December 21st than it was the day before. “But it makes a good premise for a series of novels,” she said.

Cantwell is the author of five fantasy novels. An award-winning former broadcast journalist, she has written for CNN and Mutual NBC Radio News. Her young adult novel, SwanSong, was a finalist for the 2012 Global Ebook Award in classic fantasy. In addition to her fiction, Cantwell is active in the indie publishing community. She is a contributing author for Indies Unlimited and writes a monthly column for the Indie Exchange. She holds a journalism degree from Indiana University and an M.A. in fiction writing from the Johns Hopkins University. She lives near Washington, DC.