Finished... Well, almost.

Six years. Apparently, that is the time it takes for a person such as myself to finish a book. It started with a little idiom: curiosity killed the cat. What if the cat were a mortal sixteen year old girl, Katrina, who got mixed up with the wrong crowd of vampires and was turned into one? From that idea, Katrina transformed into a vampire hunter with a rocky past and Lady Eleanor was born.


I know what your thinking. What makes this story so much different from the thousands of female prophecy stories. I most definitely did not rip off Buffy! The difference is the vampire involvement and the mythology behind it all.

Ahhh, did the mythology pique your interest? We do live in a literary period developed by Stan Lee. Here is the disclaimer on the mythology. It does not open with a glimpse of Odin or Thor, but the mythology is there. There are subtle references and underlying hints throughout though it builds throughout the next two books in the Lost and Found Series. I have spend many of the last six years studying the Poetic Edda. I have read the Prose Edda and the Saga of the Volsungs multiple times. I have downloaded different translations and even worked to translate a few lines myself. All of this in an effort to stay as true to the original meanings as possible with the help of Maria Kvilhaug, better known as The Lady of the Labrynth. No where in my story lines will you find Freya refereed to as the goddess of love because that is a modern notion!

As my curiosity about the mythology grew, so did my hunt for true historical events and people to take on the major roles of the upcoming wars. You will find that Felipe Castillo came from a true battle on the Iberian Penninsula. Francesca is the fictional daughter of a true king. John Cole Knight of Agincourt truly existed as well. And Joseph's wife- Well, you'll have to read to find out!


The battle scenes. I will admit, they are my weakness. The action and the bloodlust dances around in my brain. When it comes time to pull those scenes from my head and draw them in yours, it all runs flat. There is no glory or gore for that matter. I rewrote the ending of Taken a dozen times at least! I resorted to googling the best battle scenes in literature and was surprised by the results. In the end, I just read a lot of George RR Martin's battle scenes and drew diagrams and made charts. Honestly, I resorted to methods I would have used while working on my English degree. The end result was well worth the trouble! Enough to get the point across yet not enough to turn readers away!

Updated ebook versions have been synced to Amazon, Smashwords and Barnes and Noble. A permafree version is available through MineEye as well. I encourage anyone who has downloaded a copy from Amazon over the last five years to stop into MineEye for the new edition as Amazon will not allow you to repurchase. For that, I am truly sorry and I am working on a way around the system!

If you are interested in a physical copy, I am still working on that. Once the proof arrives and is approved, it will be available through CreateSpace or Amazon. I will also order and offer signed copies for $20, though they will be minimal.

Happy Reading!!! I am off to work on the sequel. Hopefully, it's not six years in the making!

On writing

When I first picked up my pen and started scribbling about a man who'd taken a girl to bed and woke up in the morning to find her decapitated head on his nightstand, it was easy. The words flowed like water allowing the characters to jump from my imagination like true people in the world. Then all at once, it stopped. I hit a wall and just couldn't figure out how to pass through it so, I gave up. Then I wrote 30 pages about a boy chosen to protect the world from and evil scientist but when he crossed into a new dimension, I couldn't find the right words and I quit again.

I can continue through the dozen or so stories gathering dust in my documents folder, but we don't have that much time. The truth is I always believed writing to be an easy (an well paying) job. You sit down to a computer, pound out a hundred thousand words and make millions. That's all there is too it, right?

WRONG!

Writing is the hardest thing I have ever done and I'm raising a hormonal over achieving middle schooler, a strong willed pre-teen and a destructive monkey boy. They're cake compared to Katrina and Landon and all the vampires surrounding them. I've found that the trick is in the determination and open mindedness. No matter the storyline, there are going to be hiccups along the way. A writer must disregard social stigma and allow ideas to flow onto paper and those pesky writer's blocks will not be so frequent.


In the four year process of writing Taken, I realized a few things. First of all, writing is debilitating and invigorating all at the same time. You create these characters and these worlds and think you have utter control over them but, you're dead wrong. A strong creation will build their own personalities and take control of the story without you ever realizing. A good writer is simply a typing tool. Katrina is no longer my creation but a strong person herself.

Right now, you think I've fallen off the deep end. I haven't. Katrina was never supposed to be a Hunter and Landon was never supposed to fall in love with her. He was supposed to be turned and she was supposed to die at his hand!

The other, and most important, thing I've learned is that writing does not manifest itself into dollar signs. Simply sitting here and pouring my heart and soul onto paper will not make me a millionaire tomorrow. Don't write for fame and fortune. Write because you love it. Write hard and pray.

Let me return to my point. Writing is hard. You start with an idea that grows with vigor and ease. You type like the world depends on your words per minute. Then, unexpectedly, you find yourself stuck and staring at a condemning cursor blinking insults at you. Determination is the only thing that kept Taken from become an inactive member of the documents folder.

Read for FREE!

Bannerman's Castle

Hudson Valley Photography

If you read Taken, you remember a brief mention of a castle at which Joseph arranged a meeting of the Cole Legacy. This location was my first inspiration for Lady Eleanor and Kol's home in the new world. I sometimes regret that in the three years since, I have chosen a new home (a topic for another day) though the Castle still resides in my dreams. In my writing, it still remains unnamed. In the real world, it goes by the name of Bannerman's Castle and rests on Pollepel Island in the Hudson River.

I remember vividly the day I was researching possible meeting places for the Legacy. Joseph said he would summon the family to the castle and all I could think was four days was not enough time for Lady Eleanor to travel to her homeland. Growing up in New England and having often crossed the Hudson River, I knew there were huge houses and wonderful castles littering the Hudson Valley, so I started googling.The photos posted on the Hudson Valley Photography website were so breathtaking that I knew right then and there I had to use them in some way.

As you can tell, the castle is in ruins giving me free reign to design the inside as I see fit. In my imagination, Lady Eleanor, bent over her cane, hobbles up the grand front staircase with the help of her youngest son, Joseph. A bird's eye view captures her white hair in it's typical tight bun and a long dress covered with a black cloak. Beside her, Joseph's brilliant ginger hair stands out against the darkening surroundings. Once inside, they hand their jackets over to the evening's hired servant and step forward through a set of grand french doors to the head of a large staircase to be met by the gleaming blue and green eyes of the Legacies children.

Photo by Neil Caplan via bannermancastle.org

 

When I designed these scenes in Taken, the history of the castle didn't matter. I just needed a meeting place. As my writing builds, I find that I need to know the real history of the island. Without it, I can not weave it into the my own story as I have done with so many other true life events and locations.

The true history of Pollepel Island and Bannerman Castle are just as rich as that of the Cole Legacy. I will not attempt to summarize it here as I am just today grazing the subject. However, both  Hudson Valley Photography and bannermancastle.org have wonderful summaries on the subject!