Saturday, February 21, 2015

we've moooooooooved!



well, not us...but my blog did.

i finally sold my soul to wordpress and made the big jump over.

will you join me?

Come see me over at An Unruly Life.

Can't wait to see you over there!

Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Crafting a Monster: The Makings of Red-Woman



In the second book in my Shamans of the Divide series, Fall into Fire, I had to come up with a bigger, badder antagonist than the shambling, ogre-demons (called dzoavits) in book one.

The whole idea behind the series was to take local legends and sort of morph them into these intelligent, nasty forces our heroes have to deal with a la Supernatural or Grimm.

In that first book, Ghosts of July, the monsters were more animalistic and not very human in their targeting or violence. They roared a lot...they basically held up a convenience store...but they weren't intelligent in the manner that they could monologue a decent threat against July and Renn.

 So in the second book, I needed more...

I toyed with the idea of a vampire (I know, I know...forgive me.) and somehow, I stumbled upon a website full of Crow legends. There was a very small entry for a being known as Red-Woman who operated out of jealousy--basically killing a woman because she had won the heart of the tribe's heartthrob. In the short legend I found, Red-Woman take's her victim's unborn twin sons and tosses them in a river and  behind a hut.

The legend goes on. The twins actually outsmart the Red-Woman and resurrect their mother. Happy ending, right? Unfortunately, nothing was mentioned about whether or not they actually got rid of the demoness permanently.

I can't say that I actually liked Red-Woman (how can someone actually like a jealous, psychotic baby thrower?) but I saw so much potential with her.

The fun part of fiction is that you can use things like legends as vehicles--a shell for you to use to create something specific to your needs.

In Fall into Fire, I mostly stuck to Red-Woman's roots and gave a tiny not to her beginnings in a scene where my heroine, July, is doing book research. But because the legend was so sparse, I had an open canvas to create my monster.

In the book, Red-Woman feeds off of negative emotions--especially jealousy. The stronger she gets, the more powerful she becomes and eventually, she begins manipulating the emotions of the book's teenage characters. (Probably not such a long shot, there. Having been a teenager many moons ago, I can attest it didn't even take a jealous spirit to incite crazy emotions in me.)

So from this small website, I created Red-Woman...an intelligent, terrifying entity who knows how to play up insecurities and feelings of isolation and regret to manipulate humans.

I did something similar as I write this third installment in the series, but I'll have to tell you more about that after publication. No spoilers!


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Thursday, January 1, 2015

15 things for 2015



I had planned on doing this really long-winded spiel about what 2014 meant to me, but really it breaks down into a couple of bullet points:


  • we moved cross country in May from Texas to Virginia
  • i held four jobs this year--3 were pretty rough and 1 is fantastic
  • we had a pretty healthy year over all, except for this last stretch where even the dog has a cold
  • we learned just how much (and how little) we need to get by--didn't really want to learn that lesson, but knowledge is knowledge, am i right?

Didn't take long to sum up the year, did it?

I love resolutions but really, they're just a bunch of work. And after a while, I hate work. But I love adventures, so I figured the best thing to do is to make a 2015 list of adventures I want to check off.

So here goes:

15 things in 2015


  • Try out for a cooking reality show (I'm looking at you, Anthony Bourdain!)
  • Try hot yoga
  • Do a comedy open mic night
  • Ride a horse
  • Swim in the Atlantic Ocean
  • Jiu Jitsu Tournament
  • Read the Harry Potter series 1-7
  • Family trip to El Paso
  • Swim in a river
  • Vlog every day for a month
  • Visit 3 National Parks
  • Complete a DAR membership application
  • Perfect a pie crust
  • Family camping trip
  • Visit a civil war battlefield


Easy peasy lemon squeezy! Here's to a FUN 2015.

...happy new year, ya'll.....
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