Hi, friends. I was thinking about creatures the other day. No big surprise there. My mind often wonders that way. I’m a wuss when it comes to haunted houses, ghosts, and most things supernatural (despite writing about them), but creatures are another story. Leave the demonic slant out and I’m a fan girl.
Looking back, it started with the old soap opera Dark Shadows. Yeah, I’m dating myself. Everyone knows Barnabas Collins, but I was thoroughly smitten with Quentin Collins. I was six years old and captivated by the idea of someone turning into a werewolf. The thought of the moon altering someone’s behavior held me enthralled. Small wonder, the first book I had published was a werewolf tale.
A creature I discovered in Rhode Island, late 1990s
A few years later, I saw Night of the Gargoyles, a movie that introduced me to flying creatures haunting the southwest. Around the same time, I watched a sci-fi movie with my parents. I have no idea what the name was, or what it was about. I just remember a huge insect like creature being emblazoned against the sky (still vivid in my head). Let it be known I detest 95% of insects, but this was a creature. An alien, most likely.
In my tweens and teens I discovered dragons, unicorns, and all manner of beasties from myth. That led to a love of reading and writing epic fantasy. In my thirties, I drifted away from fantasy into magical realism. The creatures became more subtle, sometimes wrapped in human guise. After that I fell in love with the bizarre. Stories of curiosities, creatures from cryptozoology, tales of visitors from other worlds.
With the Mothman statue in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, 2013
Do I believe this stuff? Well, that’s as much a mystery as the cryptids, isn’t it? Let’s just say I’m mostly a skeptic who loves the possibility of “what if.” Despite all the logic and rationality of the world, the detailed facts unearthed by science and technology, I never want to lose the wonder and magic of childhood when everything carried the gloss of “what if.”
Creatures aren’t everyone’s cup of tea. But for all the hairy-winged-scaled-hunched over-misunderstood creatures out there, I’m a fan girl. What about you? Have you got a favorite.
Take a trip with me to 1982 and the small riverside town of Point Pleasant, West Virginia. Discover a community beset by a series of inexplicable events—strange lights in the sky, the arrival of mysterious men in black clothing, sightings of a winged monster known as the Mothman. If all of that sounds like a bizarre combination, these events actually befell Point Pleasant during the period of 1966-67, most of them documented in the book The Mothman Prophecies by John Keel.
“What exactly did you want to show me?” Ryan asked, trying to keep Wilson on track.
I promised myself I was going to promote FOOD FOR POE this November and December. A holiday novella, Poe is a mash-up of Hallmark romance and urban legend, with a rescue cat at the center. This is one of my indie releases. I created the book cover for Poe and think it does a good job of mimicking the light, but quirky, mood of the story.
They say the middle child usually gets the least amount of attention, but in my opinion, A COLD TOMORROW is the jewel of the series. Maybe it’s because I love the subject matter. The Mothman is still front and center, but the focus also includes UFOs and the arrival of mysterious Men in Black.
BLURB:
This is a club-wide event, with blog stops happening each day through August 31
A THOUSAND YESTERYEARS is the first novel in my Point Pleasant Series, but the story is complete (no cliff-hanger endings with the need to read further for closure). A blend of fact, fiction and creepy urban folklore, the novel plays off the legend of the Mothman and the true-life tragedy of the Silver Bridge collapse, a catastrophe that decimated the town of Point Pleasant, West Virginia.
Behind a legend lies the truth…
