Showing posts with label paranormal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label paranormal. Show all posts

Friday, March 01, 2024

Karen S. Wiesner: The Hit List: Young Adult Series Favorites {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: Twilight Saga by Stephenie Meyer


The Hit List: Young Adult Series Favorites

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: Twilight Saga by Stephenie Meyer

by Karen S. Wiesner

In the first half of the 2000s, Young Adult series were all the rage, dominating the attention of teenagers and adults alike. Several that became household topics at the height of their popularity, enjoying fame as both book and movie series, seem to have fallen by the wayside since. Even still, I find many of those unique tales are well worth returning to for a fresh perspective. Over the next month or two, I thought I'd revisit a few series that would make any hit list of past favorites.

Although this series has been around a long time and, if people wanted to read it, they probably already have, in fairness, I'm including this disclaimer because some of the entries in the series that follow the first four might be unfamiliar to readers who may want to read them first: Warning! Spoilers ahead!

I resisted this paranormal series much longer than everyone else. I'm not sure why. I do remember for most of the years I'd lived in a town where almost no one reads. I was one of the very few. I wondered how the library survived. Given that, unfathomably I began seeing people reading these massive books in public around town, as if they simply couldn't be parted from them while devouring the stories. So I gave in. I quickly realized I was indeed missing something, and I spend mere days finishing all four books, though I can't say I loved the series from start to finish. The first one was the jewel in the crown and for the first half of Book 4, I thought the magic might return, but it never actually did.


By all rights, I think I should have liked teenage Bella. She's clumsy, a loner, drawn to odd things, never quite fits in anywhere, and she's the responsible, mature one especially compared to her mother. That she was a caretaker was right up my alley. Yet I never could quite get myself to like her, in large part because she starts out as an intriguing, unique character and turns into someone who seems to disintegrate rather pathetically whenever disaster struck. And it often did in this series.

I could completely understand why Bella felt drawn to Edward, a vampire. I even liked Jacob, who becomes a werewolf. It was a very cool concept. But when the author decided to make Bella fall in love with Edward and Jacob (though Bella ultimately--like me--came down on Team Edward), I found myself repelled. Edward wanted to love Bella for her lifetime. Though he would grieve when she died and he'd have to go on without her, he absolutely did not want to make her into a vampire. In the end, he agreed to it, but never willingly and he didn't actually go through with until there was no choice--Bella would have died otherwise. Jacob went all rage-wolf about the thought of Bella becoming a vampire because she would change. Not once was I convinced he cared what her opinion was about the whole thing. I found Jacob selfish and controlling. It was hard for me to like him when he decided he was in the best position to decide what Bella should do with her own life. But he ended up coming over to their side when he bonded with Bella and Edward's very strange, powerful child in a definitive way that meant he became her life-long protector, to the death.

The threat in the series was the Volturi, who made the laws for all vampires. This was an interesting, tense conflict, especially after Bella became a vampire. Ultimately, the four-book saga ended on a satisfying note. The movie adaptations were faithful. Kristen Stewart was about the only real problem I had with any of the installments. Something about the actress in all her films is off-putting to me. I wasn't crazy about Bella in the books and having Stewart playing her only compounded my issues. 

Also included in the series (though maybe it shouldn't be) is a novella, detailing basically little more than the title: a short second life of Bree Tanner, a newborn vampire who came and went, disturbing tragedy, 'nuff said. No, literally, the title was all we really needed. I'm sorry to say that I found this novella nothing short of painful to read. 

Unfortunately, tragedy didn't end there. To coincide with the tenth anniversary of the series, the publisher released a staggering, 400-page reimagining of the initial story with Edward and Bella's genders swapped as Edythe and Beau. I tried, I really tried, to read this but I died a little with each subsequent page. I never finished it. There are simply some things that should never be done, kind of like the whole Frankenstein debacle, and this is certainly one of them.

I remember when the Twilight Saga was at its pinnacle of popularity, someone illegally released a version of the first book written by the author in the perspective of Edward Cullen instead of Bella. I never felt right about reading it when it was available that way--in a forbidden way. So I never read it, but when Midnight Sun was officially released as a legit book in its own right, I tried to read it. I thought I'd love it because I loved him in Bella's point of view. Instead, Edward came off as the most frightening kind of psycho--and a vampire to boot. I never finished it because the Edward I'd come to love in the original books would have been ashamed for anyone to see him in this disgraceful way. I couldn't do that to him. I slammed shut the book, and it's stayed sealed ever since.

After Midnight Sun came out in 2022, the author announced she'd outlined two new Twilight novels. She planned on working on them after she'd completed an original book first (presumably The Chemist, released in November 2016). As of this review, nothing Twilight Saga related has appeared on the horizon.

Ultimately, I recommend this series, mainly for the first book and the first half of Breaking Dawn. Would I read anything new in the series? Probably, especially if it is actually something new, not shocking character swaps or alternate viewpoints, or not-short-enough tragedies that simply shouldn't be told. I give the author kudos most of all for a really cool concept that, though many tried, no one else managed to duplicate in terms of execution and success.

Next week, I'll review another favorite YA series published in the early 2000s.

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

Find out more about her books and see her art here: http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/


Friday, December 03, 2021

Karen Wiesner: I Have Dreamed a Little Dream (Authors and Dream Inspiration), Part 4


I Have Dreamed a Little Dream, Part 4

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 a series of posts, I've revealed how these nightmarish gifts from the ether came to me. 

This is the final 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… **

What's coming up next in the series:

One of the things I love the most as I'm developing this series is that the characters from previous books make solid (i.e. not simply "glimpses" from one book to the next) appearances in later books. Considering how small Bloodmoon Cove is and how involved they are in each other's lives, it makes sense that the developing characters would be seen all through subsequent stories. I can hardly wait to write each one of these books in order to expand the world I'm creating with them. I hope readers will also be just as excited in seeing more from this series as I am.

BONE OF MY BONE, Book 7 

(release date estimate: April 2022)

** When Bennet was eight, he fell for Ice despite how she concealed who she was and where she came from. When they were 19, she disappeared. Still grieving a year later, he's floored at her return. Her comment about "how to bury what won't stay dead" compels him to solve her mysteries. But how does a mortal fight creation's first murderer when the entity bears an immortal seal and made a pact with the devil? **

I've outlined and I'm currently writing this novel. This is a newer idea I had for the series. At the end of 2020, I couldn’t stop coming up with notes for after a very vivid dream I had of the first “scene” in the story. I already had the title and had some very loose ideas about the story before I had the dream. At that point, I was sure that, with this much material, I could move right into outlining it. Past experience has taught me that, if I can complete an outline, I always know I can write the story. If I can't outline it, I'll either take it off my list of Works in Progress or simply reschedule the release date and work on it at a later time, when hopefully I'm more inspired after a great deal of time trying to brainstorm new ideas for it.

LOST AND FOUND, A Bloodmoon Cove Spirits Series 2-in-1 including "Lost", Book 8, and "Found", Book 9 

** "Lost": Damaris remembers nothing of the past 48 hours. A retired couple found her in their woods. Their remodeling efforts uncover a hidden enclosure that cages what they don't dare set free.

"Found": What does a lifelong bachelor do when the woman of his dreams steps into his sanctuary and he finds all he's been missing…but revealing the truth behind their meeting could tear them apart for all time? ** 

The main characters in both books (I'm unsure whether they'll be novellas or novels at this point) will work for the library, so LOST AND FOUND was a great title that played on that. The idea for "Lost" came from a nightmare I'd had about a woman whose car broke down on the edge of the woods and she woke up in a cabin deep in the woods owned by an older couple without technology who are digging up something in the basement of their home. The idea for "Found" came about when my sister was talking about a story she wanted to write about a ghost in a library. 

HELL HATH NO FURY, Book 10

(release date estimate: April 2023)

** Eager to get a cake decorating business up and running, Isabelle inherits an old house in Bloodmoon Cove that seems like a boon…until she pieces together the tragic story of a poor immigrant who lived in this house and the woman he scorned. When Kesara committed suicide over his rejection, her heart-broken mother plotted revenge. Newly awakened to the legacy Isabelle has inherited, two ghosts plan to finish what they started a hundred years before. **


This story came from another dream I had about a young immigrant who came over to America because of lack of opportunity in his own country and fell in love with the daughter of the man who employed him. The bakery angle with the man's ancestor being willed the house the immigrant and his wife lived in wove itself into the story, given my love for TV shows focused on baking.

 

HAUNTED LEGACY, Book 11

(release date estimate: October 2023)

** After a teenage pregnancy, Danielle and Andy unsuccessfully made a go of marriage. After the split, Andy started a business while Dani’s art career took off with the help of Douglas Marx, whose reputation is spoken of in the same hushed tones as black magic. When Doug invites her to join him in Bloodmoon Cove, Dani notices a painting that haunts her as the figure in the painting becomes familiar—more and more like her own… **


The idea for this story has been with me for many, many years, titled for most of that time GILDED PROMISES and a contemporary romance without any supernatural aspects. I had the idea to make the story a suspense with Dani’s art agent being a villain. A little later, the painting I had in the outline I'd started (though never finished) made me wonder how I could make this a supernatural kind of story. I love Susan Hills THE MAN IN THE PICTURE, and who isn't deeply disturbed by Oscar Wilde's THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY? I wanted to put a paranormal spin on my original idea, and merging it into my Bloodmoon Cove Spirits Series seemed natural. The title changed, stemming from the concept that not only would Dani’s agent be a villain but he would have a supernatural aid in his villainy—a painting handed down from father to son for generations that “captures” and drains the life from a victim, thereby transferring it to this creature.


ELDRITCH JUSTICE, Book 12

(release date estimate: January 2024)

** Rafe Yager (of CROOKED HOUSE, Book 3) has settled in Bloodmoon Cove with his wife Corinne. Given his former ghost hunting, he can't put aside his paranormal past as easily as he'd like to. He's been following the trail of a law firm that caters to the dead with unfinished business. His quest leads to the sinister Thoth, scribe of the underworld and Ma'at, justice personified …and the weighing of his own heart on the scale against the feather of truth. **

Rafe and Cori's story started in CROOKED HOUSE, but I wasn't ready to let go of them when I was finished with that tale, nor of an intriguing plot thread that actually started earlier in the series about a lawyer that caters to the dead with unfinished legal business (RETURN TO BLOODMOON MANOR, Book 4).


GHOSTLY TALES FROM ERIE COUNTY including "Bad Blood", "Dead Man's Road", "The Haunting of Desolation Cottage", "Keeper of Grimoire", "Cappy's Cupid", and "The Ancient One"

(release date estimate: October 2024)

** Short, haunted stories set in Bloodmoon Cove and Grimoire, Erie County, Wisconsin. **

I knew as soon as I conceived of Bloodmoon Cove Spirits Series that I'd want to do a collection of ghost short stories with the volume covering some of the early years of the town as well as following up on the previous novels. The characters--main and secondary--introduced in all that came before will make appearances in the shorts.

Dreaming fragments of a story has happened to me so many times now that I've taken to having a tablet and pen in my nightstand so I can write down everything I remember immediately after waking up. The longer I wait, the more chance I'll forget something that will drift back into the twilight, never to be grasped again. I never know when these pieces might become full-fledged stories. Sometimes it feels a lot like I'm making lemons into lemonade with these gifts from the ether, but isn't that the essence of what being a writer is?

Do you have a pen and paper by your bedside just in case you wake from a compelling dream and need to write it down fast, before it floats away? 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/ 

http://www.writers-exchange.com/blog/ 

https://www.amazon.com/author/karenwiesner

Friday, November 26, 2021

Karen Wiesner: I Have Dreamed a Little Dream (Authors and Dream Inspiration), Part 3


I Have Dreamed a Little Dream, Part 3

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 third 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… **

RETURN TO BLOODMOON MANOR, Book 4 {sequel to THE BLOODMOON CURSE, Book 2}

** Back into the mouth of hell… Daniel and Hannah are newly married with their first child on the way when Hannah is bequeathed Bloodmoon Manor. After a lifetime of poverty, the wealth associated with that house appeals to her despite that she’d barely escaped it last time with her life. Daniel’s worst fears are justified. They’ve been lured here deliberately, and the horrors that haunt the manor aren’t willing to let Hannah leave ever again… **

Late into the night, I was revising THE BLOODMOON COVE for reissue as Book 2 of my Bloodmoon Cove Spirits Series, and I had some pretty disturbing dreams. When I woke up, I knew I had to write the story of the secondary characters, Hannah and Daniel, from that book. The sequel, RETURN TO BLOODMOON MANOR, was born. I always adore stories where the characters are trapped in a location that lends itself to horror and fright.

Reviews and Honors for RETURN TO BLOODMOON MANOR:

5 star review from Linda's Reviews

5 star review from Huntress Reviews

5 star review from Readers Favorite

5 star review from author Barbara Raffin

REUNITED, Book 5

** Twyla has spent the last three years suffering under the hands of her husband Dominic. His death gives her a new lease on life: Freedom and the chance to fall in love with her old friend Gray, now the Erie County sheriff. But her happiness isn't meant to be. Dominic's vengeful ghost followed her home and he's determined to reunite them in death and the afterlife so she never again forgets who she belongs to… **


The idea of having an abused wife whose husband comes back from the dead to haunt her came to me first. After kicking the idea around inside my head for a few days, I got a lightbulb about how to blend this into the Bloodmoon Cove Spirits Series. In Book 1 of the series, BOUND SPIRITS, the hero John Kotter has a cousin he hung out with in Bloodmoon Park (which belonged to his family). Then I wondered who would best help his cousin Twyla deal with her vengeful, dead husband. I’d already written a sheriff into BOUND SPIRITS and I decided to develop Graham "Gray" Mecham into the hero of this book. When I wrote the first draft, all these things were in place, setting up for REUNITED.

When it came time to write, the story took a turn for the very disturbing, but it works in this story so well. The dark content involved an aspect of life I hope to never be truly familiar with. Honestly, while researching and outlining this book, I didn't want to do too much research. I only did what was absolutely necessary and those few items didn't take me to places I could never erase from my own mind. This is my only book that actually has a content warning on it: Contains mature content that may not be suitable for sensitive audiences. 

Reviews and Honors for REUNITED:

5 star review from Linda's Reviews

5 star review from Readers Favorite

4 star review from Huntress Reviews

HIDDEN, Book 6

** What you don't know can hurt you…

Sybilla marries her much older entrepreneur partner Tobias. Their publishing house produces a book series focused on unusual homes. After suffering memory loss about his past, Tobias inherits an isolated estate at the top of a mountain. Uncovering its mysteries becomes their next project.

The voice of a ghost urges, Find me, leading Syl to hidden rooms and the skeletons of a family desperate to escape its demons… **

HIDDEN is based on a scary dream I had over and over in the course of years, since I was a teenager. Kind of like the Vermeer's painting within a painting, in my dream the heroine has a recurring nightmare over the course of years about moving into a house where there are hidden rooms in which horrors have taken place. In this case, the house she's moving into is Howling Halls, which has been mentioned a few times in previous books in the series. It's one of the only two estates built on Bloodmoon Mountain. (The other was Bloodmoon Manor, featured in Books 1 and 4.)

In the dreams I'd had myself, we were moving into a brand new house, and as I'm unpacking, I realize that the house has so many more rooms than I remembered from when we were touring it in anticipation of buying the house. There's also a terrifying feeling of something evil in some of the new rooms. I also had some dreams about a ghostly child throwing temper tantrums and her grandmother trying to soothe her that I incorporated into this book.

I admit I was wary about writing this story. It’s the first one that I scared the crap out of myself while outlining it. I barely got any sleep those two weeks. It’s a horror, so it makes sense, but when I told my son this, he wanted to document how often horror writers actually scare themselves, lol. I figure, how can you scare anyone else if you can’t scare yourself? But in truth everyone has different levels of what scares them.

Review for HIDDEN:

5 star review from Linda's Reviews

Have you ever a recurring dream? 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/ 

http://www.writers-exchange.com/blog/ 

https://www.amazon.com/author/karenwiesner

Friday, November 19, 2021

Karen Wiesner: I Have Dreamed a Little Dream (Authors and Dream Inspiration), Part 2


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/ 

http://www.writers-exchange.com/blog/ 

https://www.amazon.com/author/karenwiesner

Friday, November 12, 2021

Karen Wiesner: I Have Dreamed a Little Dream (Authors and Dream Inspiration), Part 1


I Have Dreamed a Little Dream, Part 1

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 will be the first 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… **

While writing up the proposal for BOUND SPIRITS, which became the first book in my Bloodmoon Cove Spirits Series, I had an idea about writing a series of ghost stories. I love scary, terrifying ghost/spirits stories as well as fun or playful ghost ones, but I also like the idea of exploring well beyond the boundaries of what a typical ghost story is considered to encompass. I intend to delve into the depths of supernatural elements with haunted places, cursed objects, portals to other worlds and/or time periods, and even unfathomable creatures from those other realms that have crossed into ours on Bloodmoon Mountain.

At the time I was working on this spark of a series concept, I was also strongly considering pulling a standalone novel I've written, THE BLOODMOON CURSE, from its publisher at time, as it'd been lagging there for quite some time. THE BLOODMOON CURSE was very mildly a ghost story, so it certainly fit the theme. Also, the book featured a small (fictional) town called Bloodmoon Cove, and I thought that would be the perfect setting for an otherworldly series. The Bloodmoon Cove Spirits Series was born.

In late 2013, I got the rights back to THE BLOODMOON CURSE. I'd already finished BOUND SPIRTS long before that time and didn't want to wait around for it to be published, so I decided to make BOUND SPIRITS the first book in this new series. THE BLOODMOON CURSE became the second.

The (fictional) county the Bloodmoon Cove Spirits Series is set is Erie County--what I think is a clever play on Lake Erie, which is one of the nearby Great Lakes (named for a Native American tribe in the area), and also because the town and those surrounding it (including the fiction city of Grimoire that's been featured often in the series) are “eerie”.


Have you ever dreamed something that became the basis of a story? 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/ 

http://www.writers-exchange.com/blog/ 

https://www.amazon.com/author/karenwiesner

Friday, October 15, 2021

Karen Wiesner: The Stories Behind Classic Fairy Tales (Woodcutter's Grim Series), Part 8

 

WOODCUTTER’S GRIM SERIES—

Classic Tales of Horror Retold 

This is the final of eight posts focusing on my Woodcutter's Grim Series and the stories behind classic fairy tales. 

For the ten generations since the evil first came to Woodcutter's Grim, the Guardians have sworn an oath to protect the town from the childhood horrors that lurk in the black woods. Without them, the town would be defenseless…and the terrors would escape to the world at large.  

BRIDGE OF FIRE, Book 10: 

INTO THE SUN, Part 3 

by Karen Wiesner

 

Supernatural Fantasy Romance Novel 

** Loosely based on "The Three Billy Goats Gruff". A shape-shifting goat, William Gruff escaped being bound to the evil pervading Woodcutter's Grim, the sole shelter for supernatural creatures. Years later, he and his pregnant wife, Adaryn Azar, a phoenix, have no choice but to flee there themselves. But just one phoenix can exist in the world. Will the powerful magic Liam wields consume him before he can build the only bridge that can take him and Adaryn into the sun of Eternal Paradise? ** 

While I was outlining Part 2 of BRIDGE OF FIRE: Book 10, I became aware that one of the things that had never felt "connected" between the Woodcutter's Grim Series "Real World" and the "Mirror Darkly World" introduced in HUNTER'S BLUES, Book 9 was that the Protectorate Guardian in the Mirror Darkly World was a Pallaton (Reece). Why would that be? What caused the change/discrepancy between the two worlds? Since that book was already written and published, I had to abide by the decision and create a plausible explanation for the fact. 

I finished all three outlines for the parts of BRIDGE OF FIRE, then moved onto another massive project that took up most of my time. Nevertheless, in the back of my mind, I was thinking about the apparent discrepancy. In the very least, I wanted to answer the question for myself. I had a dim but gradually brightening lightbulb come on during this time: I'd already inserted two Pallatons in A NEW BEGINNING, Part 2 and INTO THE SUN, Part 3 in the characters of Nazarha and her mother. When I went back into the outline to refresh myself just before I started writing Part 1, I had a brilliant spotlight of illumination. I knew how to connect the Mirror Darkly and Real worlds. The explanation finally resolved what suddenly seemed like a major discrepancy (to me anyway) in the series. 

But that wasn't the only question that was bugging me. Even after I'd written the first draft of all three parts of BRIDGE OF FIRE, something else was niggling at me about who Nazarha Pallaton was in relation to the main female character, Adaryn Azar, throughout the three segments. Coming up with the answer to that is when I truly felt like this series was gratifyingly complete and strong in a way it'd never been before (again, only to me--I seriously doubt any of my readers even noticed). 

I feel great nostalgia in coming to a conclusion with Woodcutter's Grim Series--Classic Tales of Horror Retold. When I began it, I was a contemporary romance author who didn't believe I had what it took to write horror or fantasy, my two personal favorite genres. But, with Woodcutter's Grim, I got to develop stories with vampires, werewolves, dragons, phoenixes, various shapeshifters and creatures of lore, and I even mostly made up a monster of my own (the Unspeakable/Polyhedra). I dealt with alternate worlds, the ultimate good and the ultimate evil, a secret organization with roles that are passed on from one generation to the next (the Protectorate), familiar faces I've come to love and look forward to revisiting again and again, all while combining fairy and folk tales, mythology, fables, parables, nursery rhymes and poems into one complex, fantastical world. I hope my readers have loved taking this journey as much as I have and will want to drop by this town all over again with future readings. 

At this time, I'm playing with the idea of a "prequel" trilogy for the Woodcutter's Grim Series to develop the origin of the Unspeakable creature I created for BRIDGE OF FIRE. Only the future will tell if anything comes of my brainstorming. 

Unique creatures of folklore are something that fascinates me immensely. Leave a comment to tell me about your favorites! 

Next week, I plan to post one of what will be many writing craft articles. 

Find out more about this book and Woodcutter's Grim Series here: 

http://www.writers-exchange.com/woodcutters-grim-series/ 

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08MLBYBH1 

Karen 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/ 

http://www.writers-exchange.com/blog/ 

https://www.amazon.com/author/karenwiesner