The Fun of Writing A Paranormal

To me, what’s fun about writing a paranormal, is all the creatures you get to explore and play with. My Booke of the Hidden series is paranormal, with a little romance, and a little mystery. In a nutshell; tea proprietor Kylie Strange must capture deadly creatures she’s unwittingly unleashed, while juggling the advances of an alluring and dangerous demon and the very human and handsome sheriff.

For my creatures, I focused on Gaelic/Celtic mythology for the most part. Of course I did.

In the third installment, SHADOWS IN THE MIST, Kylie and her coven of misfit Wiccans are battling several dangers at once. At the end of DEADLY RISING, the second book in the series, Kylie met the demon Andras summoned by some unknown person or persons to assassinate her so they could get the supernatural Booke of the Hidden. And Andras—a flying demon with a face reminiscent of an owl—has proven himself dangerous as he swoops out of the sky in surprise attacks on Kylie when she is least expecting it.

But he isn’t the only flying menace. A rival coven of bikers using black magic has summoned Baphomet, a god bent on vengeance who also wants that Booke of the Hidden for his own purposes.

And let’s not forget that the Booke itself has released another creature, a ghoul who mimics the dead when it feeds off of their corpses.

*SPOILER* Kylie’s ex Jeff who came to town to try to convince her to come back to him was turned into a werewolf in the last book (and has his own series of Werewolf mysteries called Moonriser), and now Kylie’s got to contend with the fact that ultimately she was responsible for this happening to him because the First Werewolf came out of the Booke and she had failed to kill it in time before it infected him.

And to top it off, some other unknown force has set upon the little village of Moody Bog the Draugr, zombie freaking Vikings!

I do believe they are the creepiest things I have yet written. The Draugr, these undead warriors of old. They are from Nordic legends spanning the icier regions of northern Europe, from Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Iceland. They were said to control the weather, make it darker in the daytime, shapeshift into a broken-backed, earless skeletal horse, or even a cat who would sit on your chest and get heavier and heavier until they suffocated their victims…but that’s just any cat, really.

But what the Draugr were truly all about was their treasure hoard. Their gold. And they plague Moody Bog, Maine in search of their missing hoard and wreaking havoc along the way.

And Erasmus Dark—the Demon of the Booke, attracted to Kylie for her bravery and seeming fearlessness, even as he hungers to devour her soul—can’t seem to stop the Draugr’s inexorable and deadly shamble through the village. Talk about your complicated relationships.

Zombies freak me out. I don’t like watching films about them unless it’s more comedic, but still. I really hate them. I was surprised that I wanted to use them in this book, bu I guess you can own them if you write them. But it’s the idea of perhaps someone you know now becoming a mindless creature bent on tearing you apart to eat your brains and flesh. That there might be the possibility that it could be real through some disease. Add to that their Viking heritage and they become a horrifying and unstoppable force. That’s what makes it especially creepy and a rather fun antagonist in the book, along with all the other antagonists. And it all culminates on Halloween when the Booke is set to release its own hoard of baddies for Kylie to slay…or to slay her!

There are meant to be scary moments in these books. The paranormal ARE scary, but it’s all tempered with humor and fun characters you come to love. Happy Halloween!