Author's Note

Have you ever walked into a room and felt sure there was someone there with you, but you were quite obviously alone?  Or heard something fall in the next room, and this time you can’t blame it on the cat because she’s curled up in your lap?  Congratulations, you may have experienced a ghost. 

Ghosts are popular topics for writers of all stripes, and why not?  A ghost can bring all kinds of goodies into a story – the spark for the story to begin, a way to impart information to your main character, an obstacle for your main character, spooky atmosphere, the list goes on and on. 

But I think ghosts are popular in story for another reason; because we all wonder what’s past the veil.  We’ve discovered the globe.  We’ve discovered the stars.  We’ve even discovered amazing worlds on the microscopic level.  But the one door that remains stubbornly shut is the one that opens onto the afterlife.  Is there a Heaven and Hell?  If so, what determines where you go?  Do we come back for multiple trips on this plane, or is corporeal life a one shot deal?  Does the afterlife exist at all, or do we just wink out when we take our last breaths?

Who better to answer these questions than someone who has been there?  Like Lewis and Clark mapping out the unknown wilderness, a ghost can being back reports of what’s on the other side.  What’s it like?  Are you happy?  Does it hurt? 

But why would a ghost even come back anyway?  The going reasoning is that the ghost must have “unfinished business” to want to hang around.  It’s usually something important, like fingering the person who murdered them or saving that last bit of energy to warn a loved one of danger, but I wonder if some ghosts stick around for more mundane reasons.  Can you imagine being stuck on this plane because you still have some checks in your purse that you meant to deposit, or you meant to clean the bathroom and never got around to it? 

Ghosts do make an appearance in some of my stories, and in both of the stories I have for available with Echelon Press, their unfinished business is very important.  In “Tony Came Home,” a ghost attends a birth, and in “Over the Hogmanay Threshold” a ghost works to save his grandchild. 

Buy them both here. 

Happy Reading!

It’s funny where a random conversation can take you.  I’d intended today to write a blog about Virginia’s Woolf’s famous piece about a room of one’s own and how things have changed (or not) in modern times, but instead I found myself woolgathering about the subject of genre after a random hallway conversation with a work acquaintance. 

It all started with the subject of pen names and how many authors have them.  She remarked that she had been amazed to find out that some authors have two or three pen names, and write different types of books under each name – like Snuggie Lovelace for romances, Jimmy Lasersight for science fiction, and L. P. Mystereo for mysteries.  My coworker thought that the writers should be proud of their versatility and have a single name that stretched across the genres.  But it’s not really a lack of pride that keeps writers from using the same name no matter what they write; there are other forces at play here. 

I rolled out the usual explanations to her.  Readers like to know what to expect when they pick up a new novel by a certain writer.  Booksellers like to know where to shelve things.  The marketing departments of publishing houses like to know where to spend their advertising dollars.  It would be awfully silly to buy advertising space for the latest fantasy blockbuster in a magazine aimed at mystery enthusiasts.  Having clear genre boundaries and everyone settled down into neat little boxes seems to make everything run a little smoother in the publishing industry.  But smoother doesn’t necessarily make for great books…. 

In fact, the really great books seem to be the ones that break past these boundaries and defy the neat, orderly boxes of categorization.  One of my favorite books, “The Time Traveler’s Wife” by Audrey Niffenegger, does this.  It’s a romance.  It’s science fiction.  It’s a carefully crafted literary character study.  It is a wonderful book that makes me laugh and cry every time I read it.  I think publishers should publish more books like this in spite of the shelving and categorization confusion it might cause. 

Thank goodness the Powers That Be in New York seem to be catching on.  Cross-genre seems to be latest buzz word on literati circles – Romantic Mysteries, Urban Fantasy, Science Fiction Thrillers, the list goes on and on.  So perhaps one day my coworker’s vision will come true and writers will only need one name, no matter how many different kinds of books they write.

Are you wearing green today?  Are you making plans to go out tonight to drink cheap beer gussied up with green food coloring?  Are you ready to claim to be Irish, even if you’re not?  This seems to be the way many Americans celebrate today, St. Patrick’s Day.  But my mind turns in a different direction…. 

Many of my stories are inspired by folklore and fairytale.  There are rich treasure troves of ideas in every culture around the world, just waiting to be mined for story ideas.  I’ve written about Baba Yaga from the Russian tradition, The Morrigan from Celtic tradition, and the Tooth Fairy, using bits and pieces from multiple world cultures (did you know the Tooth Fairy is connected to rodents in France?).  And yes, I have written about leprechauns of the Irish tradition.  A troop of proud leprechauns make an appearance in my short story “In the Town of Henry’s Fence” (as yet unpublished). 

One of the things that really fascinates me about these folk tales is that if you read the old versions, they often differ drastically from what we hear in our modern culture.  Quite often, the older tale is deeper, or more frightening, or just plain more interesting than the modern one.  Leprechauns of old wouldn’t be caught dead shilling for sugary children’s cereal or fresh smelling soap, and they aren’t just happy-go-lucky little men waiting to give you a pot of gold.  The leprechauns of old were solitary fairies, usually appearing as wizened old men, but only as tall as a child.  Leprechauns were cobblers, making or repairing shoes.  They are portrayed as mischievous spirits, and very fond of playing practical jokes.  Some of them did indeed have pots of money, but the old tales tell that the leprechauns recovered it from pots that humans had buried in times of war, and then either forgot about  or were unable to come fetch them.  But there’s nothing said about rainbows or forcing a leprechaun to reveal the location of his stash.  But the part that would probably sit most uncomfortably with modern American audiences is how leprechauns dress.  In virtually all the old tales, leprechauns did not wear green – they wore red. 

So this brings me about to my original point about my mind going in a different direction on St. Patrick’s Day.  I’m not thinking about corned beef and cabbage or green beer; I’m thinking about how I can place an old-fashioned leprechaun in a modern story, and how much fun it would be to watch the characters interact and have to change their preconceived views of each other as the story unfolds. 

While I’m working on that, you might enjoy some of my other tales -

Check out In the Land of Plenty under the Freebies tab on this site, OR

For an old-fashioned feel, try Hounds of Winter and Over the Hogmanay Threshold

For more modern stylings, try Tony Came Home and Frankie’s Diner

Happy Reading – and Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

Romance.  What is it about that word that sets most men I know quivering in fear?  Not all of them mind you, but enough that it makes me wonder if it’s a gender-linked trait to avoid hearts, flowers, and all things mushy. 

Sometimes I wonder, “Is it so hard to make a small gesture?”  Even just a grocery store bouquet would do.  What about that rare man who makes the grand gesture without social prodding?  Perhaps it’s the hopeless romantic in this female’s heart, but I’d like to think such men exist – the type of man who will sweep a woman off her feet without reminders like Valentine’s Day. 

One of the advantages of being a writer is that I get to indulge in my love for the grand gesture without having to wait for someone else to do it.  Not all of my male characters are sensitive romantics, but at least some of them are. 

In “Hounds of Winter,” Devlin is a taciturn, but sensitive, man who lives deep in the forest with his beloved Faylinn.  When Faylinn disappears in the bitter depths of winter, Devlin’s love for Faylinn drives him out into the treacherous night, where even the wind has teeth, to find his lady love.  But restoring the status quo, even if it does mean fighting beasts of the other world, isn’t as grand a gesture as Mel Hippos makes in my short story “In the Land of Plenty.”   You see, Mel is no ordinary man.  He masquerades as one under the wide Montana sky, but he’s really one of four brothers who must ride forth to bring on the end of the world.  His brothers want him to ride but he refuses for one reason, and one reason only – Janie.  For the love of a woman he would stop the Apocalypse.  How’s that for romantic?  (Read it for free here)

So with Valentine’s Day not far past, and a little romance still hanging in the air, why don’t you curl up with Devlin and Mel, and see just how romantic a man can be if he just tries.

I’ve always known that when it came to stories, to read or to write, I was a fantasy kind of girl.  It’s all because of my dad.  My father was a voracious reader (and fast too!) and because of his job he had to fly a lot.  So he would come home from his business trips with big paper grocery sacks full of paperback books, and he’d spill them out over the coffee table for me and my older brother to squabble over.  Dad was pretty evenly divided between fantasy and science fiction, but early on I showed a preference for fantasy and my brother for science fiction, not that we wouldn’t read the other genres, we just knew what we wanted to go for first.  Because of my dad, I soared with Anne McCaffrey’s dragons, I skulked through the dirty alleyways of Robert Asprin’s Thieve’s World, I rode along for Garion’s epic adventure in David Eddings’s Belgariad, and I loved every single minute of it.  So it only seemed natural that I would write fantasy when I figured out that being a writer was all I ever wanted to be. 

But heroic (or high) fantasy, which is what made up the bulk of my dad’s fantasy reading, wasn’t quite the genre for me.  Sure, I’ve done a few pieces that worked quite well in that genre, but it’s not quite “home.”  Every writer has a genre that for him or her is home base.  I found my home in my late 20s, courtesy of a co-worker at my dayjob.  I’d already been writing in this genre for a little while because I’d figured out in grad school that stories without some kind of supernatural or mythical twist didn’t suit me.  But I didn’t know what to call it, it’s just what I did.  Then Sarah told me I should read Charles de Lint.  I was stunned.  Here was home.  Here was someone with enormous talent, and quite a bit of success, doing exactly the type of stuff I yearned to do.  I was completely hooked.  Welcome to urban fantasy, my genre of choice.

Ok, now that I have your attention…. I am participating in the 12 Days of Reading ebook promotion with my publisher, Echelon Press. Starting December 1st and running for 12 days there is a new holiday or winter themed short story released every day. The first 3 days have seen a horror story, a thriller, and a YA piece perfect for your tween reader. I have drawn the 6th position in the promotion, which falls this Sunday. I know Sunday is not usually a high traffic day, what with people having busy lives to begin with and now there is football and holiday preparations on top of it. So, I am running a promotion.

On the day my story debuts (this Sunday, 12/6) I will give away a free copy (pdf download) of my story to the most funny/touching/creative response to my blog post on the Echelon Shorts website (http://echelonpressshorts.wordpress.com/) posted in the first 24 hours.  I hope you’ll take a few minutes out of your busy Sunday to come visit my blog and make a comment, and maybe even win a copy of “Over the Hogmanay Threshold”!

Ready for great holiday ebooks? Join Echelon Shorts between December 1-December 12 as they celebrate 12 Days of Great Reads!

During this celebration, Echelon Shorts will be bringing you the best new holiday releases and posts each day from the authors. Find mystery and romance, mainstream and fantasy, thrillers and young adult stories. The release schedule includes short stories from Carl Brookins, Austin Camacho, Mary Cunningham, Lois Carroll, Christine Verstraete, Michelle D. Sonnier, Lance Zarimba, Karen Syed, Yvonne Walus, Jeffrey Martin, Vonnie Winslow Crist, and Regan Black.

Stop by http://echelonshorts.com to find these posts and stories, and for your chance to win free ebooks!

It started out as a challenge from one of my fellow writers -

We were meeting to have a critique session and it just happened to fall of Friday the 13th, so she challenged us all to write a unique story on Friday the 13th that didn’t fall into the traps of same-old-same-old.  I took the challenge and for days wracked my brains for something new and interesting to say about an ancient superstition.  I researched, looking for something that would spark a story, sometimes it takes just the littlest thing to get the fires of creativity roaring.  At first I came up dry, but then it struck me.  Even though most of the traditions for Friday the 13th involve ill-luck, not all of them do.  What if that means we’ve got it all wrong?  What if it means that Friday the 13th isn’t really all about bad luck?  And my mind was off to the races….

What if, on Friday the 13th, it’s not that you have bad luck, but rather you have no luck at all?  What if, on Friday the 13th, all the luck in the world flies free and roams around loose?  And what if, on Friday the 13th, there were people with the skills and cunning to be able to catch all this free floating luck? 

That is precisely what my short story, “Gathering Luck,” is all about.  I sold it to Sam’s Dot Publishing and they have released it this month in thier recurring anthology, Cover of Darkness.  If you’d like to see what I’m making such a fuss about, you can check it out here: http://www.genremall.com/anthologiesr.htm#coverofdarkness1109

“Tony Came Home”
Now available at Echelon Press Shorts

There are times in life, like birth and death, that lie in the borders between what we know what we don’t, and that sometimes lie beyond what we want to know. Neither here nor there, neither this nor that, these spaces between leave room for unexpected visitors. In the stark light of the local hospital, Maxine helps her daughter-in-law Cheryl bring new life into the world, leaving the door open for one of those unexpected visitors and a peculiar kind of homecoming.

“Frankie’s Diner”
Now available at Echelon Press Shorts

In the New York underworld, people are not always who they seem to be, and places you go each day – the office, or even the diner on the corner of your street – can be anything but safe. And as Marcus finds out, even something as simple as a cup of coffee can be more than meets the eye.
In a world where time isn’t measured in minutes, Marcus finds out that sometimes your time is just up.

“The Price You Pay” Available from Allegory eZine

Everyone knows the hoary old saying, “there’s no such thing as a free lunch.” There’s also no such thing as a heroic act without a price to pay. Elena learns this first hand, the hard way. She must decide how far she will go and what she is willing to sacrifice to save the people she loves. What would you be willing to sacrifice?