Mystic Monday

Since I have officially entered the writing world as an author, I thought I would start November by answering our Paranormal October questions.  

Let’s start with some trivia about me:

Q. Do you have a movie that you must watch every Halloween? What's your favorite scary movie? Do you have a favorite scary character or character type?

A. It rotates. This has to be the first October where I didn’t watch any of the usual suspects and opted for ones I haven’t seen before. Haven’t found too many good ones yet this year. The usual suspects are (in no particular order): Halloween series, Friday the 13th movie and series, the Scream movies, the I Know movies, The First Power (Lou Diamond Phillips), The Order (Heath Ledger), Rosemary’s Baby, When a Stranger Calls, When a Stranger Calls Back, Prince of Darkness. I don’t really have a favorite.

Q. Do you have any Halloween traditions like decorating your house, having house parties, wearing costumes, etc.?

A. I like to decorate, but I haven’t decorated much the past couple of years. This is the first year I actually decorated the house for Halloween. I hope to do more next year.

Q. If you do you dress up for Halloween, what will you be dressed up as this year? What was your all-time most favorite costume that you ever wore? Why?

A. I dress up in fan gear for Packer (NFL) and Bucks (NBA) games all the time. Since the Milwaukee Bucks’ first home game was on Halloween, I just wore my fan gear. My favorite costume wasn’t worn at Halloween. It was the makeshift pirate/mage costume I wore to Gen Con when it was still in Milwaukee. I wore a really neat colored shirt. It wasn’t quite blue, but it wasn’t quite purple either. It was a mix between the two. I also bought a small crystal the same color as my shirt that year. I wore really cool black boots too!

Q. Are you superstitious? Do you find yourself knocking on wood or throwing salt over your shoulder? If not one of these two, what is your superstition?

A. Superstitious? Not really, I just knock on wood when I talk about something that hasn’t happened yet, so I don’t jinx it, and I don’t like to mention bad things about a sports player during a game (such as “he has a tendency to fumble”) because it just might come true on the next play.

Q. Do you believe in ghosts? If so, have you ever had a ghostly encounter and tell us about it?

A. Yes, I do believe in ghosts. I’ve had encounters with ones I’ve seen and those I couldn’t. My first one was when I was six and the most recent one was earlier this year. I was six, it was the first time I slept in my bedroom on the second floor of the house. It was converted from an attic. While the room was being finished, my mother shouted, “Get out of here!” I told her she told me to bring something to her, but she continued to tell me that she was talking to the dog. We didn’t have a dog until the next summer. The dog belonged to the previous owners.

Then, sometime after that, I was freaked by something I saw. Everyone tried to convince me I had a nightmare, but that’s not true. I saw my sister walk through the hall from her room, walk through the white being (which dissipated when she walked through it) and I jumped and screamed when she touched me. Not because I was asleep and she startled me, but because I was that afraid.

Q. Tell us 3 funny or strange things that happened to you, or someone you know, on past Halloweens.

A. For me, the tricks start on October 1st and continue through the 30th. The pranksters constantly like to hide my keys, my rings, and anything else I might need, so I can’t leave the house on time. I can’t tell you the number of times I would look for my keys in the same spot (where I set them down in the first place only to not see them. Then, after searching all over the house four times and pleading with the spirits to, “please knock it off because this isn’t funny any more and I need to leave,” I will find them right where I originally put them but moved slightly.

We always hear people walking around above our heads when he sit in the living room, but when we check the bedroom and the crawl space, we never find anything. It’s always creepy.

Q. If you could be any paranormal creature, what would it be and why?

A. I would have mind powers if I could. I would like the power of telekinesis, teleportation, and the ability to communicate without speaking.

Now, let’s get to my writing:

Q. Why the paranormal genre? What was the draw for you?

A. I was always into science fiction. Weird, odd and bizarre stuff fascinated me. I also like reading science fiction and fantasy stories, so it was only a matter of time until I started writing in the genre myself.

Q. If you could describe your paranormal writing with a word or phrase, what would it be? Please be creative and look beyond words like vampire, werewolf, etc., and delve into the core of your writing to tell us what word or phrase you want readers to take with them when they've finished reading your story.

A. Not sure. Honest. I haven’t written enough to know my own work enough to find one word that describes it.

Q. Do you prefer playing tricks on people or bestowing treats? Does that show through in your writing? If so, how?

A. I’m a trick and a treat person. It shows in my writing because I like to have one prankster or joker in every story, but I also like to have good things happen to the good characters.

Q. Who decides what creatures you write about, you or your muse? What kind of influence do you have over your story, or is the muse always the one stirring the cauldron?

A. Oh, definitely my muse and the characters she introduces me to. I have zero influence, even though I’d like to think I do.

Q. What was the creature that you had the most fun creating and why?

A. Nightshade is the creature I am having the most learning about. He is a black common door dragon from my Centurion 54 world.

Q. If you had the opportunity to meet just one of your characters in real life, who would it be and why? Which of your characters would you never want to meet under any circumstance and why?

A. It’s a toss up. I would like to meet Brandon and Drake for sure. They are two tough but sexy men that make women swoon and fight over them. They are fierce protectors and extremely loyal. Cleo and Zack would be cool to meet too. And I would like to meet Lily and Jake too because they just seem so neat.

I would not want to meet Falcon. So far, he hasn’t revealed much to about himself to me other than that he is a killer, can move among the public unnoticed and can be a ghost when he wants to be. No one has been able to identify him or has seen him and lived to tell the tale, except for Brandon. He’s been searching for Falcon ever since they crossed paths when Falcon killed his mother and his fiancé.