I Have Dreamed a Little Dream, Part 2
by Karen Wiesner
"Believe in your dreams. They were given to you for a reason." ~Katrina Mayer
As a writer, the question I get most often is where my ideas come from a lot. While I can honestly say everywhere, more often than not, dreams play a huge role of my fiction writing. Something about that twilight between sleep and dreams is a veritable playground for imagination! Bloodmoon Cove Spirits Series is one of my series, in particular, in which many of the stories within it stemmed from a fragment of a dream that I was able to develop into a story. In the course of the next several posts, I'll be going over how these these nightmarish gifts from the ether came to me.
This is the second of four posts focusing on my Bloodmoon Cove Spirits Series and the vivid nightmares or ideas that inspired the titles.
Karen Wiesner's Bloodmoon Cove Spirits Series
** Nestled on Lake Superior in northern Wisconsin is a small, secluded town called Bloodmoon Cove with volatile weather, suspicious folk…and newly awakened ghosts.
Don’t close your eyes… **
BOUND SPIRITS, Book 1
** As a child, Esme was kidnapped and locked in a cold, dark basement. Her friends were rodents, insects, and the changeable terror that held her hostage. The only thing that kept her sane those nightmare years were her books. She’s been on the run since her escape a few months ago, never expecting to find another bound spirit come back to life. **
I’d wanted to write a ghost story for a long time—inspired after reading THE WOMAN IN BLACK and THE MAN IN THE PICTURE by Susan Hill (actually, nearly any ghost story written by her). I love that atmospheric kind of story with almost a gothic horror edge. After brainstorming over the course of many months, I came up with the idea of having the ghost story in a very unlikely place—a campground/county park. As soon as the setting was established, I thought, In fiction, what is a ghost but a bound spirit? Well, that gave me a great idea about having a heroine who’d been kidnapped as a child and held captive for most of her life until her escape. So…another bound spirit.
Reviews and Honors for BOUND SPIRITS:
5 star
review and Reviewer's Top Pick from Readers Favorite
5 star
review from Huntress Reviews
5 star
review from Harriet Klausner
5 star
review from Linda's Reviews
5 star
review from author Jenna Whittaker
5 star
review from author Barbara Custer
4 star
review from RT Book Reviews
4 star
review from The Romance Reviews
4 star review from author Marilyn Byerly
THE BLOODMOON CURSE, Book 2
** An unsuspecting nurse is lured to an ancient family mansion said to hold both ghosts and horrifying secrets in order to care for three orphaned children. Amberlyn was brought to Bloodmoon Manor to uphold the family legacy. Either she finds a way to escape with the children…or she becomes the next bloodmoon bride. **
Way back
when I first got the idea for writing this book, my intention was to write a
“modern gothic”. Everyone laughed at this because it’s like an oxymoron. But I
wanted to write something with the palpable atmosphere you find in old fashioned
gothics, only I wanted to put it in a more modern setting. I also loved the
idea of putting the heroine in a place where she was basically trapped, no way
in or out.
Reviews
and Honors for THE BLOODMOON CURSE:
2006
Dream Realm Award Finalist
2006
eCataromance Reviewer’s Choice Award Nominee
2015
BTS Red Carpet Reader's Choice Award Nominee
5 star
review from Huntress Reviews
5 star
review from Fallen Angel Reviews
Fallen
Angel Reviews Recommended Read Award
5 star
review from EuroReviews
5 star
review from Sime~Gen
5 star
review from eCataromance
5 star
review from Gotta Write Network
5 star
review from Linda's Reviews
5 star
review from The Romance Reviews
4 1/2
star review from Once Upon a Romance
4 1/2
star review from The Romance Studio
4 star review from BTSemag
CROOKED HOUSE, Book 3
** Some doors, once opened, can never be closed again… Corinne has become the heir of her dead husband's family estate. Crooked House lives up to its disturbing name, as does the last of the line who disappears so often she could believe he's a ghost. But to believe is to accept the claims of ghost hunter, Rafe Yager: The longer she stays in Crooked House, the less chance she'll ever leave. **
The basis of CROOKED HOUSE, Book 3 of my Bloodmoon Cove Spirits Series, was formed when, in a dream, I saw a woman visiting some obscure relative of her brand-new husband. The house was weird and creepy, to say the least. When I woke up, I decided to merge bits of this with an idea I'd been toying with them about having the hero's sister in THE BLOODMOON CURSE be the heroine in another “modern gothic”. I was going to send Janine to some obscure relative, kind of like in Naomi A. Hintze’s novel YOU'LL LIKE MY MOTHER, a favorite story when I was a teenager. I’d planned to name it THE FAMILY or CROOKED HOUSE, both of which inspire something menacing in the right genre. I was also playing a horror video game around that time that gave me some ideas about getting stuck in a house inhabited with ghosts and other menacing supernatural creatures sucking out human physical energy.
CROOKED HOUSE has a lot of the classic elements of a ghost story--vengeful ghost, haunted house, tough-guy hero and vulnerable heroine--with some unique twists and turns in the form of a cursed ring, a novice white-witch best friend who literally has no idea what she's doing, a ramshackle house in Bloodmoon Cove serving as a portal into the spirit world, along with a reluctant ghost hunter that's one of the last descendants of the (fictional) Mino-Miskwi Native American tribe whose elders disappeared during a ritual at their sacred place at the top of Bloodmoon Mountain a hundred years ago. That ritual ripped a hole in the mountain and let loose a flood of spirits that haunt Erie County.
This is funny and a little creepy real life event, but I live in an old Dutch Colonial style house (think “Amityville Horror”). Since we moved in this house, we've had what we call demon flies (which are something I wrote into CROOKED HOUSE). Literally, we’ll kill one and another one…or a dozen…will appear a second later. I once closed myself into our small sunroom, closed all the windows, and put towels under the door to prevent the flies from escaping. Then I proceed to kill them one right after the other. This went on for ten minutes or so, and I must have had a hundred dead flies in the room with me. I suddenly got freaked out because this was completely unnatural and terrifying. I fled the room and didn’t go back into it for a long time afterward. Incidentally, we're said to live in the most haunted house in our town and the unexplained spirit(s) that keeps messing with our electronics could be the reason why. I'm only mostly joking there.
Reviews
and Honors:
5 star
review from Linda's Reviews
4 star
review from Readers Favorite
4 star review from Huntress Reviews
Have you ever been in a house reputed to be haunted? Leave a comment to tell me about it!
Find out more about Bloodmoon
Cove Spirits Series here:
https://www.writers-exchange.com/bloodmoon-cove-spirits-series/
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08MLBJ7XP
Happy reading!
Karen Wiesner is an award-winning,
multi-genre author of over 140 titles and 16 series. Visit her here:
https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/
http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor
https://www.goodreads.com/karenwiesner
http://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/
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