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!

Free! Free!

Saturday mornings mean some kind of sporting event. Today is soccer. I can't really complain as it is the one sport my children play that doesn't leave me yawning and bored. And I've been told bringing a book to one of my child's sporting events is unacceptable. Only a true non-reader would say such revolting words. A book is NEVER unacceptable.

This brings me to today's topic. Books. Yes, I understand that the every day's topic is books. I don't need you to remind me. In fact, today's post is simply because I am to lazy to walk upstairs and grab my book!

She's such a cute volleyball player!

So, what aspect of books, you ask? Ebooks. They are everywhere. It makes transmitting the written word so much easier for us nerdy types who love to sit and ramble words into a computer, but let me ask you a question now. Do you feel that the fact that anyone can write and publish a book these days is hurting the book world?

Let me put it into the words of my favorite book reviewer over at Book-Attic. "I don't like to review indie books because they are usually so full of errors that I can't push through it. Sorry, no offense, Mom." No offense? No offense! What the heck. I would like to say I take offense, but I was just another one of the ill edited books in the ebook world for a while. I was in such a hurry to get my book out there and have the world fall in love with it so I could become J.K. Rowling rich that I didn't figure a few misplaced commas and grammar errors were a big deal. Then this happened.

It gets 5 stars for having an interesting story idea. It loses 3 stars for poor grammar and multiple spelling mistakes, repeatedly repeating the same word repeatedly and failing to maintain consistency. Humans can't become vampires until they are 18. Oh here is a grave of one who is 8. Vampires can only be permanently killed by 6 daggers that only one vampire hunter knows the location of (and is willing to die without sharing the location. After all, it isn't like that would be useful for a group of vampire hunters to know) but vampires are killed by getting their blood sucked out, shot, stabbed and impaled. The main character is uber important, but gets left with someone who is planning to kill her on her 17th birthday for 14 years. Oh and the same girl meets a boy and marries him after knowing him for 2 weeks, thereby making them both immortal. Not sure what book the other reviewers were reading, but it either wasn't this one or we have drastically different expectations for our reading material.                                                                    -Amazon Reviewer

Can you say ouch? When this review hit Amazon, I was dumbstruck. How could ANYONE be so hateful. I stewed for a few days. Made a few hateful posts on Facebook, then it hit me, this reviewer, though most of his reviews are not gracious, was right. So, I pulled it back and reread it and republished it. The only problem is now Taken is known for it's crap editing and repeatedly repetitive words.

So here, I offer it for free!!! All I ask is that you read it and review it somewhere online and comment back here with a link to that review. Good, bad or indifferent. Let me know what you think!

I will leave these links for 8 days, deleting them 4/19 at midnight. Share away!

Taken (.epub)

Taken (.mobi)

Now, you have something to read at your soccer games as well! 

Oh, silly me. My book has been right at my elbow this whole time! Off to read.