On Signs, Banishing Rituals, and the Throne of Reckoning...

What led me to write paranormal? Nothing less than a sign. The kind of spiritual sign that is akin to the slap of a frozen salmon upside the head. The kind of sign that says, "Wake up, stupid! You haven't been listening! Go. Do. This. Now."

I need the big signs. I can be a bit dense... though I prefer to blame the constant need for multi-tasking. :)

I had been sticking to writing straight historical romance for so long that I had convinced myself that I couldn't/shouldn't/wouldn't try anything else. In fact, I had accumulated so many rejections that I had slowly, steadily, painfully arrived at the certainty that I would always be two steps behind the market trends in romance; that I was just not a person who could ever consider herself lucky. It just wasn't in the cards for me to be successful in romance.

I'd hit a particularly low point while attending an all-day workshop with a nearby group of writer friends. By that time, I'd already received the "SIGN!!!!!!"--an epic, fun, cool idea for a paranormal themed mystery series set in modern day Indiana--but didn't have the courage to follow the idea to fruition. At this everyday writers workshop, there was an exercise that we were all supposed to take part in, one that smacked of a banishing ritual to me. All writers present were supposed to take a length of toilet paper, and on it we were supposed to write a list of all the things that we saw as obstacles or challenges in the way of our success as writers, any frustrations that were affecting our work, any whining we needed to get off of our chests, and we weren't supposed to be nice, or hold back in any way. If we needed to bitch about anything and everything under the sun, this was our chance.

Well, I try to be a nice person on a day-to-day basis, but that wasn't what this exercise was about, and on that particular day, something inside me just . . . snapped. {I think maybe, just maybe, it was my niceness bone...} I measured out a length of toilet paper, then measured out a little more, broke out my gel pen, and started writing. And writing. And writing. Everyone present was laughing at how long it was getting, and at how fast and furious my pen was moving across the, um, page. I won't go into the details, but suffice it to say, anything that had or was going wrong at that point in my adult life was touched upon. It was negative, and it was petty, and it felt SO GOOD to flush that toilet paper down the throne of reckoning.

And it was a turning point for me. Somehow, in some way, that simple act of symbolically flushing away all of the negativity in my life cleared the way and began to open new doors for me, both spiritually and mentally. I wrote the book that I worried I wasn't a good enough writer to do justice. I started plotting out the series in my airy-wispy-atmosphere-filled-seat-of-the-pants way -- enough to get the bones of it, but not enough to remove the element of synchronicity that keeps me going. I found an agent who loved it, who found a publisher who thought it could work. And from those baby steps, we moved forward with The Bewitching Mysteries.

What do I like best about telling Maggie's story? The freedom. The absolute, utter freedom of creating a world filled with characters I love. Characters who speak to me and whisper their stories. Characters who could be walking the streets of the town I live in {but who, of course, aren't}, who are familiar and down-to-earth and filled with the quirks and idiosyncrasies we all seem to have in abundance. I love being able to bring a taste of Indiana, one of those forgotten states that exist almost nebulously somewhere in the middle of this great nation, into the public eye {and yes, we are aware that most people know nothing about us beyond the Indy 500}. I love being able to show a variety of spiritual and religious beliefs, and I love being able to talk about religious intolerance and hopefully demonstrate that it is never a one-sided issue. I love exploring the spirit world, and the ways that it touches our own. And I love writing Maggie. She is a searcher, and through her journey toward self-discovery I have learned so much about so many lovely spiritual paths. And what's more, I get to do it with a wink and a smile.

Love to all on this lovely autumn day,

Mad {madly!}

Tools of the Trade

Over with the Witchy Chicks, we were talking about audio/visual aids and what helps each of us in the writing process. It got me to thinking. Is it somehow wrong that I haven't often delved too deeply into the hows and the whys of writing? I'm not wearing blinders, honest. It's just that sometimes it seems as though by dissecting the process in a mad {heh} attempt to understand it more fully, I might strip some of the magick away . . . and I like to keep that intact, thankyouverymuch.

I can tell you I don't use pictures of people to inspire a character. The character always comes to me first, and in writing this series at least, they have come to me fully blown. Some readers have been suggesting various actors, most quite suitable indeed, that they envision in certain roles, and if that deepens their reading experience, I'm all for it . . . but as for me, it's not something I do often.

Music is always very important to me... although rarely while writing. I most often use music in between writing sessions, though not always to keep me in the Stony Mill world. Oftentimes the music I choose is simply to relax me, or to cater to the latest whim for atmosphere that I crave.

Atmosphere. This is the biggie for me. Atmosphere speaks to me, and it can come in so many different forms. I will often select movies for my DVD collection by the atmosphere in the film. Even if the film wasn't the best, its atmosphere will speak to me in some way. Music can give me atmosphere, but again, I don't often use it while writing -- I find it too involving. Something about the way my brain is wired makes me focus on the music itself rather than the story in front of me. Atmosphere can be found in anything, in any circumstance, if one keeps one's eyes open to it. It's the skirl of dried leaves sweeping down an empty street; the gathering of a bevy of vultures in a single tall tree that overlooks an entire neighborhood; the way a road cutting through a pair of cornfields can seem claustrophobic toward the end of summer; the sound of the wind whispering through said cornfields just before harvest. And now we're approaching autumn, my favorite time of year . . . and so appropriate for my writing. So many lovely and evocative images that propel and inspire my mind on its wild travails.

Atmosphere. I couldn't write without it.


Love to all,


Mad {madly!}

Here a Muse, There a Muse... Where's Your Muse?

When I first began writing, I never really thought of creativity in terms of muses. Nope, back then, it was just me with the writing pad, the typewriter, the word processor, and eventually, the keyboard, hammering away at an idea that wouldn't leave me alone, and struggling to get down on paper what was in my mind. Just me . . . and the {insert writing instrument of the day here}.

Come to think of it, that does sound kind of lonely, doesn't it? Maybe that's why my muse finally swatted me over the head with her fairy dust wand and opened my eyes to her beneficent presence.

I have but one . . . but she has many faces.

I'm not sure quite how to describe her, but I know she's there. At times she is a fluttering, shimmering, sparkling deva that brings humor and wit to my stories, darting here and there about my shoulders as though wanting to be sure I get it all just right. At other times, she is a terrible taskmaster, her wand turning into a staff of power, heavy and gnarled, lending darkness to my writing where needed, and driving me to press on at even the most difficult moments.

When she's with me, the words flow, the ideas are effortless from brain to fingers, and I "drop into the page" as I'm writing, swallowed up by the story that is as much a part of me as my everyday life. When she's sulking because I'm not listening closely enough, every sentence is a battle, an entire paragraph a major accomplishment. She's feisty, opinionated, at times even snarky, and she knows just what I need at any given moment to turn me on, story-alistically speaking. She even knows when to back off, to give me time to recoup my energies. And when it's time to get back to work, she oft-times comes softly in dreams, whispering snippets of story, of people, of lost hopes and secrets and lies, and musing over what might be.

Her name is Leda, by the way. I don't know why. It just is.

How about you? Do you have a muse, or even gang of them? What gets you going, creatively?


Mad {madly}, not crazy, just muse-ically blessed :)

Inexplicable Moments of Connection

I used to smile and nod politely when other authors spoke of their muses, before turning away so they wouldn't see my eyebrows stretching high in amused disbelief. One writer friend goes so far as to serve her muse up with gourmet coffee in a special cup each and every morning that she sits down to write. Another buys her muse pretty little things, a glass bead, a pretty feather. "How... odd," I would think to myself, totally not getting it. I didn't believe for a minute that they thought of their muses as real entities. I mean, we are living in the twenty-first century. Surely such eccentricities went out with all of the modern technological advances and scientific wisdom.

No?

Inspiration does have a way of striking at the strangest times. An unusual turn of phrase in the middle of a conversation remembered later might spark a whole new way of thinking. A snippet of lyric in a song you've heard a thousand times suddenly takes on new meaning. The way the sun parts an unusual cloud formation, casting a strange ad eerie light on the landscape below. An article highlighting the quirks and peculiarities of modern life. Someone you see out of the corner of your eye.

Then there are the dreams.

I have been known to have the rare precognitive dream {always on subjects trivial, though, darn it!}, but far more often I have dreams that are... different from the garden-variety ventures into Wonderland. Dreams where I am not me, where I am not in the here and now, but some faraway place. They are vivid and detailed glimpses into the lives of other people, their motivations, their heartbreak, their desires. Their stories. Sometimes I'm an invisible bystander witnessing the events, sometimes I look out through the eyes of someone there, experiencing it first hand. Sometimes I'm not even female. I've used some of these, while others I have stored for other projects, somewhere down the line. It feels right to do that. Somehow I feel I'm being allowed to see so "they" will have life once more.

So, might it be a being of creativity bestowing these lovely nuggets of inspiration upon me? Or am I connecting the dots on some vast unseen web of creative material? Jumping from one thought dimension to the next? As a wise man once said, "We are all connected."... but how?

You'll have to excuse me now. An old friend is waiting for a sweet cup of tea, served up fresh, with love, from me.

Love to all,


Mad {madly!}