[who did it] CD Publications, October, 2001. Leisure Books, April, 2002, mass-market paperback

[chance of gettin'] Pretty damn good since it's brand new. You can the signed limited edtion hardcover from The Official Edward Lee Bookstore.

[the skinny] The Cemetery Dance edition of CITY INFERNAL was limited to 1000 autographed copies and 52 tray-cased deluxe editions. Lee's fourteenth published novel and one he says “Might be my best.” Premise: Goth girl-in-jeopardy a’la the Wizard of Oz, only in this case Oz is Hell. Just as human society has evolved over the last 5000 years, so has Hell–into a vast sorcery-based technocracy, an evil metropolis of unfathomable skyscrapers, damned human souls, fallen angels, and all manner of demon. Lee creates his own modern mythos with this urbanization of the underworld, known as The Mephistopolis. Protagonist Cassie Heydon isn’t your typical disaffected Goth girl; she soon learns that she’s the personification of an occult myth: an “Etheress,” a living woman who can physically penetrate the boundaries of Hell and walk among the damned. Lee scribed this phantasmagoric 80,000-word evil fantasy in two and a half months, and found the process rejuvenating after leaving Seattle and making a first abortive attempt to relocate in Florida. “Writers are weird about their creative environments,” Lee says. “Changing locations sometimes causes a huge writer’s block. I was burned out in Seattle--too much rain--so I was flip-flopping between Maryland and Florida, trying to find a new place to live while knowing I had the deadline for CITY INFERNAL on my back. Next thing I knew, I only had three months and I hadn’t written a page, but the minute I sat down to write, I couldn’t stop. It was the most thrilling and rewarding creative experience of my life.” Lee wrote CITY at his mother’s house in Maryland, then moved for a second time to Florida a week after turning in the completed manuscript to his editor at Leisure. (He now resides a few blocks from the Gulf of Mexico, near Treasure Island). Lee wants desperately to turn CITY INFERNAL into a trilogy saga, and has outlines already written, PURGATORIA and ANGEL INFERNAL.