Blog Archives
Monsters Aren’t Really Monsters
Pulling Teeth and Other Stories follows a reluctant werewolf as she tries to find a place to fit in and understand her life. What was the inspiration for the setup to this collection of short stories?
Most of the stories in this collection happened by accident. I wanted to write a prologue for the first novel length story that showed a snippet of my main character, Regina’s, childhood. But it didn’t stop growing, and I didn’t want to cut any of it down to prologue size, so it became its own novella, Dead Girl Moon. The other stories in this collection started as writing exercises.
I do not write linearly and, while I have a loose series outline, I do not outline individual stories, so the scenes sometimes come out randomly. I had a few fragments of stories that I didn’t know what to do with but didn’t want to throw away, so I thought a collection would be a good way to tie those events into Regina’s timeline.
Regina is in all the stories and goes through many changes. What were some driving ideals behind your character’s development?
I wanted to bring Regina from a place/situation where she was relatively powerless and put her in a place where she could make choices for herself. As a child, the surrounding adults still influence her, but she learns how to test boundaries and has more agency. She doesn’t always make good choices and has to deal with the consequences of her actions. I love writing Regina because she is always learning and adapting.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
Underneath all of my Slaughter Chronicles stories is the idea that the monsters aren’t really monsters. Regina and the werewolves who adopt her are dangerous, but not ruthless (mostly). The only creatures that Regina has been hurt by are regular humans. I also wanted to explore opposing ideas and bring them together, like science and magic, good and evil. No one character is entirely one or the other, and it’s up to the reader to pass judgement.
What is the next book that you are working on and when will it be available?
I’m working on the first full-length novel in The Slaughter Chronicles. It picks up nine years after Pulling Teeth and Regina is in her twenties. She is a seasoned Void hunter and gets into all kinds of trouble. I’m hoping to publish that in June or July of this year.
I recently published a short story called The Wish Maker. It is a dystopian retelling of “The Monkey’s Paw” by William W. Jacobs.
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Earth and the Void, where the shadows are never empty.
Human, monster, and monster hunter.
In a world full of unseen dangers and hidden treachery, hunters are all that stand between humanity and the jaws of darkness.
When little Regina Slaughter unwillingly became a werewolf at the tender age of nine, she lost her whole family soon after. Now on the monster side of life, Regina learns that there are no limits to the kinds of monsters hunters can be.
Caged and subjected to horrifying experimentations at the whim of HADES’s werewolf hunters, Regina is destined for a tragic end.
But after a daring rescue, Regina finds a new family with the Alpha of the most improbable werewolf pack in rural America. A pack of former werewolf hunters turned in the line of duty. Hidden from HADES’s Central Command by their own top Void hunter, these ex-hunters pay for protection from their former comrades with their own flesh and blood.
Where HADES’s werewolf and vampire hunters use modern technology to hunt their prey, HADES’s elite Void hunters use more archaic and sinister methods to keep the creatures of the Void at bay.
Werewolf Regina is far from perfect, but that won’t stop the top Void hunter from molding her into his version of the perfect killing machine, despite the pack Beta’s misgivings about her murky past.
Growing up within the very organization that caged her, Regina starts a new life as an apprentice Void hunter.
The Slaughter Chronicles is a grimdark fantasy horror series of novels and short fiction about a world where humans don’t believe in monsters, but they are very much real. And they will eat you. Join Regina Slaughter, Void hunter and werewolf, as she navigates the secret world of monster and monster hunters.
The Cloud Gone Haywire
Sector 10 follows a tech-conglomerate that inadvertently causes Earth to time travel into an alternate reality where humanity may not survive. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
Sector 10 is the prequel to Cloud 9 and both novels are set in the Cloud Series and the world it creates with cloud computing as its theme. Virtual reality is the main inspiration for creating an alternate reality. But other emerging science like horticultural LED lighting in greenhouses or verticle farms, different artificial light recipes, and other photobiology agriculture inspired the idea of an outbreak. A classic science fiction trope is the entire idea of an alien invasion and also deadly contagions wreaking havoc on the world. Sector 10 combines these ideas into a new form of physics that brings about an outbreak of radiation seeping over from a parallel universe. Quantum computing and advanced physics are making things like teleportation more real, of not just our bodies, but our consciousness.
I found the science in the novel to be well developed. What kind of research did you do to make sure you got it all right?
The science in Sector 10 was all about breaking boundaries of what constitutes reality and making the Earth a melting-pot for not only natural evolution but also genetic modification. Whether that be the eugenics and plastic surgery that made these Greys possible, or Yhemlen living among dinosaurs, and let’s not forget humans were suffering at the hands of the Cloud gone haywire. I wanted to integrate the Cloud and the physics of space travel together. As you may know, computers in deep space are prone to problems related to radiation but in Sector 10 we find that the inverse is more true and that the Cloud helps navigation through alternate reality and time. The main idea of it all – we live in a simulation. And because of it, the Cloud is directing our manipulation of reality and atomic physics that is the basis of the science we know. Also, photobiology was a big inspiration for how parallel universes were being accessed via light and highlighting special relativity. But if we run with the idea of humanity as part of a simulation, what came about in my research most was how to give order to seemingly chaotic processes.
The science inserted in the fiction, I felt, was well balanced. How did you manage to keep it grounded while still providing the fantastic edge science fiction stories usually provide?
Characterization was key. I want readers to feel an emotional response to the people of the novel and make their own assumptions or conclusions about what the story is presenting. The danger present in the Cloud malfunction was that it was being integral to the world stage. Ellis Island in New York was where people came to make a new life in America. Similarly, the Cloud is the mechanism that is allowing Ellis Bartram and his crew of scientists to make upload their minds via total immersion, and also giving an avenue for radiation to leak through. The urban setting of Washington, D.C. was also a vital addition to the science in that classified information, the such that’s available at our nation’s capital, needed to be publicized, but was being withheld by powers who were intent on solving a mysterious event. In all, science was affecting everyone because of its reach and influence and is something that our world of computing could attest to.
What is the next book that you are working on and when will it be available?
The sequel to Cloud 9 and Sector 10 will be titled, Recon 8, and in the beginning, will be set in the year 2111, so a couple of years after Cloud 9. Solar punk will be a major influence in Recon 8 and will both brighten and provide nuance to the technology and provide “green” movement vibes that will make a return in this novel as an anchor of society. That book should be published by 2025, but to know the plot and see what else happens, we’ll have to wait.
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For Us Who Were Abused
Life Growing Up shares your experiences growing up and dealing with abuse. Why was this an important book for you to write?
To be completely honest, I wanted to relieve myself of so much anger. While writing this book, I felt much tension alleviate and less stress.
There are a total of twelve of us siblings, eight brothers and three sisters, and each one of us has a story to tell and share, this one was mines. I also wrote it because of how angry and bothered I was with Child Protective Services who ignored our cries for help over the years that we were growing up. I believe their involvement could of made a difference and would have saved us from daily abuse.
I appreciated the candid nature with which you told your story. What was the hardest thing for you to write about?
The hardest part for me was writing about the abuse itself. I hated reliving the sexual abuse parts along with the times my father physically hurt me as well as my siblings. I don’t like talking about it because it brings back very heartbreaking memories. The hardest part to write about was when my Nine year old brother “Quithoberto” died seven days after falling from a wonder bread and hitting his head on the concrete. Just a week before he died, my father had beaten him up pretty bad. I loved him very much, still do. I never forget him, I miss him dearly even until this very day. Though I wrote in the book that he was one of the lucky ones, because he would never get hurt again by our father, unlike us.
What is a common misconception you feel people have about child abuse?
Some of the misconceptions that people have about child abuse is that it only happens in lower socioeconomics families which is not true. It also happens in both middle and upper class prejudice and self-deceptions and fueled by statistics derived mainly from sources involved in the treatment of child abuse in lower class families. In reality, both mid and upper class families are more difficult to obtain, but current literature demonstrate and or prove that child abuse occurs in all socioeconomic levels. The belief that abuse occurs only because parents misjudge their strength when physically disciplining their children is a simplistic view of abusing behavior that fails to consider the complex dynamics underlying parental abusive patterns. The preferred or main view that children are sexually abused primary by assailants unknown to them is undetermined by statistics showing that the majority of sexually abused children have been victimized by someone known to them, often being relatives. The misconceptions that child abuse occurs most frequently in school aged children is challenged by statistics showing that almost half of those abused are under the age Six. Unfortunately, while some argue that criminal prosecution is the best way to handle child abusers, the difficulty of gaining a conviction and the need of abusing parents for rehabilitation argues for civil action’s being the most effective one.
What do you hope is one thing readers take away from your story?
Well I know that I am not the only one to have experienced child abuse in anyway, there are thousands out there. Why do you that think some children who grow up with severe inflicted child abuse turn of the system? Many of them just like us, were let down by Child Protective Services. Many children have died under the watch of Child Protective Services and this is the reason why now in our present times Child Protective Services have improved in their methods. If you are one of the fortunate lucky ones that were never abused by your parents, then you have absolutely no idea was it is like for us who were abused. So I encourage you to do research on the topic or subject at hand and see for yourself how bad it is. Also, report any kind of suspected abuse, don’t keep silent, help the child. I wish someone had cared enough to help us out of a life of misery, because that’s exactly what it was, a life of misery, day in and out, for years.
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This Long-Suffering Literary Endeavor
Paris Blue tells the story of your first love. Why was this an important book for you to write?
Such a big question, and such a good one.
I might start by quoting a line I recently discovered from Maya Angelou in which she said, “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” For over forty years I knew I had a story I would need to tell some day. Readers have recognized that there is something about this tale that goes beyond a simple story of first love. It follows the arc of my life over thirty years, into adulthood, happy marriage, and children, so it is also very much about the role of memory in our lives.
Also, the book describes how I searched for answers and closure for so many decades from the trauma at age twenty-two when the romance suddenly ended, and in a way, I essentially had to write my own ending, which brought about its own sort of catharsis.
I appreciated the candid nature with which you told your story. What was the hardest thing for you to write about?
Oh, another great question. At one point in my decades-long journey of trying to tell this story, I changed the book into “fiction,” or at least I tried. I made it into a novel in which I tried to fictionalize certain parts and detach myself from the more personal parts. And I did this in order to protect my family, most notably my wonderful husband. Even though he has been unbelievably supportive about this long-suffering literary endeavor, I didn’t want to put in first-person writing the intensity of emotions that first love generates. Or draw attention to the music and poetry that I shared with the Frenchman that I don’t share in the same way with my husband. In the end, however, I realized that writing a memoir was the correct, most honest form and genre that this story had to be.
What is one piece of advice you wish someone had given you when you were younger?
HA! I really don’t know how to answer this! Even though this story caused me a great deal of suffering at age twenty-two, I probably don’t wish it had happened any other way. If I answered something like, “I wish someone had told me that married men stay married” or “I wish someone had advised me to read the signals,” that would be way too simplistic and would not do justice to the subtleties of this fairytale (and I wouldn’t have a book).
What do you hope readers take away from your story?
That, when an intense, romantic and passionate “first love” ends suddenly without answers, it can take a lifetime to get over.
That words, music, and Paris can drive love to madness.
That our memories are not to be deleted and canceled, but treasured, whatever the outcome, and that they are our “life and food for future years.” (Wordsworth)
Author Links: GoodReads | Twitter | Facebook | Website
Against a magical backdrop of Paris and classical music, Paris Blue is true fairy-tale memoir (with a dark underbelly) about the tenacious grip of first love.
Izza Rekindled My Passion
Izza’s Tea Party follows a young girl as she goes to her grandmother’s house for a tea party and learns about the stove and hot liquid safety. What was the inspiration for your story?
Years ago, when I became a mother of three adorable boys, my passion for preventing children from injuries matured and grew into motherly love. I realized how much my children depended on my vigilance. A child’s safe upbringing and ability to thrive as a productive community member depends on caregivers. My goal became my passion as research also shows that parents play the most essential role in childhood burn prevention.
This philosophy inspired all my future endeavors from becoming a humanitarian to a loving grandmother and now book author. When I was fighting cancer, my granddaughter Izza rekindled my passion by becoming an inspiration for this book. Izza helped develop the characters using her toys and as I recovered from cancer these characters became alive in “Izza’s Tea Party.”
The art in this book is fantastic. What was the art collaboration process like with illustrator Jack Delany?
Serving as a humanitarian for over 25 years, I have seen firsthand how a small risky act can shatter a child’s life in a moment. One moment the child is playing happily at home and then the other moment an unexpected accident happens like a child has scalded himself by spilling a hot cup of tea that the caregiver just put on the coffee table or by trying to grab a lit candle on the counter. It is unfortunate that many caregivers are unaware that such accidents can occur and that they may be dangerous.
As a book author, I am eager to share with readers my passion for promoting a safe home environment. I wanted to educate them about risky behavior that can be modified into precautionary behavior. Prevention is the best cure is my one and only reason for becoming an author.
When I was writing the book, I intended the illustration to be very child-friendly so that every child can relate to the story. The concept of always keeping children five steps away from hot beverages and stoves took a long time to develop. The concept was developed with the collaboration of Dr. Ahmad Shahzad, who works with children with burn injuries on a daily basis at Shalamar Hospital, Lahore, Pakistan. The first time I saw the illustration of five colorful semi-circular shapes surrounding the stove with toes pointing away from the stove, tears began to flow down my cheeks as I realized I had finally seen my idea represented in a colorful illustration.
It is extremely impressive to see Izza’s Tea Party artwork. During my battle with cancer, my granddaughter Izza rekindled my passion for this book and contributed to the development of the characters by using her toys. Jack Delany’s creative, and colorful illustrations brought these characters to life.
I appreciate you taking the time to read about Izza’s Tea Party illustration process.
What was the writing process like for this book?
It was a memorable experience for me to write Izza’s Tea Party. During that time, I was battling cancer for my life. As I struggled through this dark time, my only source of light was my grandchildren. They supported, motivated, and inspired me wholeheartedly. Every day, for hours, they reminded me that I wanted to write a book on children’s safety and prevention. Izza, my granddaughter, would then help me develop the book’s characters as she played with her toys. My grandson, Adam, would then read aloud to me.
In a flash of inspiration, it seems like I promised them I would fight this monstrous illness and become a published author just like that.
The diagnosis of cancer and the battle to overcome it were grim for me, but it certainly made my blessings shine brighter in light of it. I am grateful to be a published book author. It is an honor for me to share the light of safety and prevention with children throughout the world.
What is the next book that you are working on and when will it be available?
The second book in the Safety and Prevention Book Series will be entitled “Izza, the Babysitter”. The book is scheduled to be published by Christmas 2022.
Author Links: GoodReads | Twitter | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Website
The Importance Of Representation
Proud in Her Hijab follows a young Muslim girl that is teased at school over her hijab and shows how she deals with the feelings it causes. What was the inspiration for your story?
I am a mom of four amazing children – 2 girls and 2 boys. The inspirations are also my kids, their years of questions they bring from school as they get asked about their hair type, braid styles, and my girls’ hijab. There aren’t many books about hijab and we already have most of them that are out there so during the pandemic we decided to write our story with characters and names that look like our family. I can’t stress enough the importance of representation and how my girls feel empowered seeing and walking to this book in their respective classrooms. The main message is to uplift and empower girls who choose to wear hijab and be proud of their identities. Also to create awareness for readers about the importance of appreciating diversity and inclusion and embedding appreciation for other’s faith and cultural differences.
The art in this book is fantastic. What was the art collaboration process like with illustrator Mia Hay?
Mia Hay is the formatter and designer of the book. She is awesome and very professional. I didn’t have a good experience working with the illustrator being unprofessional and not delivering on time. However, Mia stepped in to finish and finalize the missing pieces and designed the book. She is also my 2nd book’s designer and we are very aligned working together. I wanted to thank her.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
Besides the two important lessons mentioned above. The book outlines the main themes of the book at the back. Such as
Be proud of who you are, your beliefs and embrace your identities.
Respect and be kind to everyone including to those who are different from you.
Be brave and stand up for yourself.
Don’t shy away from sharing what you go through. It’s ok to share you feelings to your family and friends.
Get to know someone before judging them.
What is the next book that you are working on and when will it be available?
Yes. I just released my 2nd children’s book titled “Oh, No …Hacked Again!” It’s a story teaching children the importance of online safety and sparking interest for young readers to pursue the field of STEM esp. cybersecurity as a future career option.
Author Links: GoodReads | Twitter | Facebook | Website
“Is she bald?”
“Is her hair dirty?”
There is a fine line between curiosity and ridicule.
Iman must find courage to face the school children.
Proud in Her Hijab is a story that empowers and uplifts girls who choose to wear a hijab while encouraging friendship and respect.
If you are looking for a hijab story of inspiration & courage for your children and loved ones, look no further.
This book is for you!
“A relatable tale of pride and identity that is paired neatly with colorful and expressive illustrations. The summary of themes at the end of the book is a good review for younger readers, and offers a chance for conversation and discussion for parents reading with a child. Kemal has crafted a heartwarming and practical book that elevates kindness, patience, understanding, and cultural sensitivity, which is an essential message for any faith.” Self-Publishing Review
Nope. But I’ll walk you back.
Based on a True (Traumatic) Brain History tells your story of addiction and path to sobriety and how you dealt with life after receiving a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). Why was this an important book for you to write?
It was important mainly because of how the TBI I experienced in 2015, and the recovery from it…was all too similar to my recovery from addiction and alcoholism. The two had so many obvious differences, yet the recovery and perspective I had when trying to heal were so similar. It just seemed like a book that had to be written. It morphed into the autobiography it is.
I appreciated the candid nature with which you told your story. What was the hardest thing for you to write about?
The hardest part of the book? Reliving drunken nights, high out of my mind, and remembering how I felt about the pending next day. The dread and fear of trying to play a composed, well-put together 20-something year old, while everything was falling apart on the inside.
What is one piece of advice someone gave you that changed your life?
When I told a friend that if I was on the edge of a cliff, and if he would push me off, he said to me, “Nope. But I’ll walk you back.” That comment and phrase saved my life that day. It’s a good way to calm someoneone down, if they’re feeling like they can’t handle stuff.
What do you hope is one thing readers take away from your story?
The obstacle is the way. Challenges in the journey of life…are simply just that. They amount to the journey itself.
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Family History Journey
Pages and Leaflets of North Oxfordshire: My Lineage Pre 1700-1959 tells your family’s history for eight generations. Why was this an important book for you write?
To be able to share my lineage with others and for all the research not to go to waste. To provide a guide to people starting out on their family history journey.
What was the research process like for this book?
Fairly straightforward. I split the research into sections: lineage and children (from records held in the public library and family knowledge) which was placed into a family tree. Copy Wills (from various websites) Church history( from various websites) and miscellaneous information about the villages. The information was then merged, as applicable.
What was one thing you learned while researching your family that had the greatest impact on you?
How poor the family was and the number of generations it took for them to truly better themselves.
What do you hope is one thing readers take away from your family’s story?
Every family has a different story to tell and so, peoples’ roots can be diverse.
Author Links: Facebook | Twitter | Website
In Pages and Leaflets of North Oxfordshire, author Angela Fortnum shares a well-researched family history of her maternal grandfathers, offering a compelling window into the life and times of her ancestors. This history chronicles the Page family’s shift from agricultural and labourer life to self-employment and small holding, and it also lists the changes in the family’s religious beliefs over time. Angela includes as well a discussion of the richness and diversity of the church and chapel buildings that were linked in some way to her family, each of which tells a story of their own.
In the end, the story of the Page family lives on today, as Pages and Leaflets of North Oxfordshire stands as a legacy to Angela and her mother’s family and the great changes they experienced over the centuries.
LITERARY TITAN 