Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

[ER]

Fantasy writer Chelsea Quinn Yarbro died on August 31, 2025, but I only heard today.

[indianasmith]

I read a few of her things back in the day.
Entertaining writer at times, but MAN! did she hate Christianity!

[ER]

I read a few of her things back in the day.
Entertaining writer at times, but MAN! did she hate Christianity!

That's certainly true in her life as in her fiction. She had a talent for presenting history in her books more accurately than someone like Ken Follett, but her MO to the point of stereotype was stock characters of abused women rescued by her recurring hero, and Christian figures who came off as cartoon villains.

Through Greg's sister Diana and my late friend Mitch I had some peripheral involvement twenty years ago with the San Francisco Michael group she was part of, and came away realizing she was among the most acerbic people I ever encountered.

[Archivist]

She's passed away? I read a number of her St Germain novels in the early 90s, and put a number of her later novels in my wishlist only last year or so after rediscovering them. The last novel I read was Better In The Dark (1993).

@ER - it's funny that you say that about her, because it seems to come across in her writing. Her writing never seems to give the impression of happiness, if that makes sense. Everything is doom, gloom, setbacks, obstacles, pain and the like. Perhaps that's why I stopped reading her novels decades ago. For vampire novels with a sense of joy, the earlier Anne Rice novels are much better.