Guest post by Jami Gray

I have always loved the darker fairy tales, not the Disney kind they’re just too…bright and shiny.  The real Brother Grimm stories, now those were exciting.  Their monsters were scarier because they hid behind masks of normality, think the woodcutter’s wife in Hansel and Gretel.

When I write, I tend to develop my characters first and then their world opens up and away we go.  For Raine McCord, the heroine of Shadow’s Edge, her first spark came when I was listening to a favorite group (which I’ll keep nameless for now) and heard the following lyric:

See the animal in his cage that you built
Are you sure what side you’re on?
Better not look him too closely in the eye
Are you sure what side of the glass you are on?

This started me down the spiral of questions and answers until Raine starting haunting me from dark corners.  When she finally cornered me in a rain drenched alley in Portland, I just couldn’t refuse her request and Shadow’s Edge was born.

A common theme found in Urban Fantasy is that your hero or heroine have to be tough.  Otherwise all the creatures out there prowling around (vamps, weres, zombies, demons, feral slugs, etc.) will tear them to pieces.  Between the magic screwing things up and the massive amounts of supernatural creatures strolling around, their lives are never boring.  It’s what makes UF stories great.

For Raine, she has quite a few things to overcome. Some are external –human scientists, a twisted killer, a sexy partner, the rain.  Those she can deal with, one way or the other.  It’s the internal factors that make her who she is.  She’s  Kyn, the race of supernatural beings fairy tales all came from, and she’s a feared warrior known as a Wraith.  She’s tough, no arguing that.  Yet, thanks to some creative experiments when she was a teen-ager she’s not just Kyn, but something more, something frightening, even to her.

Shadow’s Edge follows Raine down a bloody trail of bodies into the shadowy world of power plays and half-truths, while forcing her to face the monster crouched inside.  Now it’s her turn to decide who’s really the monster–the one destroying the ones around them or the one who’s hunting them?

I warned you, I like my fairy tales dark and twisted!
Happy Holidays!

It takes a monster to hunt one, and for Raine McCord, forged in the maelstrom of magic and science, she’s the one for the job. In a world where the supernatural live in a shadowy existence with the mundane, a series of disappearances and deaths threatens the secrecy of her kind and indicates someone knows the monsters are alive and kicking.  Partnering up with the sexy and tantalizing Gavin Durand proves to be a challenge as dangerous as the prey she hunts.

When the trail points back to the foundation which warped Raine’s magic as a child, her torturous past raises its ugly head.  Gavin and Raine sift through a maze of lies, murder and betrayal to discover not only each other, but the emerging threat to them and the entire magical community.

Growing up on the Arizona-Mexico border, Jami Gray was adopted at the age of 14 and suddenly became the fifth eldest of 37 children. She graduated from Arizona State University with a Bachelor’s in Journalism and three minors-History, English, and Theater.  Shortly after marrying her techie-geek hubby (who moonlighted as her best friend in high school) she completed a Masters in Organizational Management from University of Phoenix Oregon.

Now, years later, she’s back in the Southwest where  she’s outnumbered in her own home by two Star Wars obsessed boys, one Star Wars obsessed husband, and an overly-friendly, 105-pound male lab.  Writing is what saves her sanity.

Buy Link:    www.BlackOpalBooks.com

Website:     www.JamiGray.com

Blogs:          www.7EvilDwarves.wordpress.com or www.JamiGray.wordpress.com

Facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/jamigray.author

Twitter:       http://twitter.com/#!/JamiGrayAuthor

Guest post by Michelle Grogan

Do you have an idea for a great story percolating just below the surface but you’re having trouble getting it out of your head and down onto paper? Yeah, I’ve been there – plenty of times. I know what I want. I know what I want to say. But it’s just not ready to step out into the light of day. But this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t still keep those juices of creativity flowing. The best way I have found to do this is to find random prompts – sometimes those prompts can manifest into some great stories of their own.

Now, it’s easy to become bogged down in all the prompts that are out there and lose focus on why you want to use prompts in the first place. And of course, it’s not always easy to find one that appeals to you. Well, I’m here to alleviate some of those worries!!! In my search for a stock of prompts that I could store away in a file for when I needed to that hit of inspiration to get those stubborn creative juices flowing, I came across this great website dedicated to prompts of all kinds!!

Check out Creative Writing Prompts. At first glance it might not look like much – I mean the sheer number of prompts being offered – 346 – can be a little overwhelming, but not let that scare you. The fun comes when you hover your pointer icon over one of the numbers and a prompt pops up for you! Clicking on the number will move it to the number one spot. There are prompts for all kinds of writers! Not sure how to start that amazing story in your head? Hover over number 113 – Begin with “Today I will . . .” and write for 10 minutes. Play with the idea of writing a poem? Move your mouse to number 103 – Create a poem using Emily Dickinson’s “Bring me the sunset in a cup” as a starting point. Want to challenge yourself? Check out number 24 – Imagine your life is now a book. In 100 words, write the blurb for it; or number 122 – Use all these words in a poem: crash, crumpled paper, straw, gravel, ochre; even try number 143 – In 200 words, describe a day in the life of a window washer . . . hey, you never know, the window washer can be the witness to a major crime and has to describe what he was doing and what he saw.

So don’t sweat it if when you sit down to write, you draw a blank or you need a moment away from your story because you’re struggling with it or need to find a new direction to go. Settle in with a good prompt and you’ll soon find that the ideas are flowing faster than you can keep up with them!!

In fact, I’m going to take some of my own advice – I’ve been feeling a little stuck creatively, think I’ll hop on over and settle in with a good prompt.

Happy writing!! J

Bio: By day, Michelle Grogan is a Literacy Coach working with students with learning/behavioral/emotional disorders improve their reading and writing skills; by night–she’s the self-published author of Forbidden Love (currently in kindle format on Amazon.com) living with her fiance in Westchester County. Reading has always brought get joy to Michelle’s life, allowing her to experience new worlds and meet a plethora of new characters. Her love of reading lead to her love of writing and creating her own characters and discovering their stories. As a child, those stories were acted out with Barbies and My Little Ponies . . . as she got older, she put pen to paper and embarked on her own writing journey. Still an avid reading, Michelle’s favorite authors include James Patterson, Andrew Gross, Rachel Vincent, Jordan Dane, James Rollins, among so many others!!

by Malcolm R. Campbell

Hippocrates believed that nature is the best healer and that the chief duty of a doctor was making natural healing possible. Naturalist John Muir believed that spending time in the wilderness was spiritually and psychologically therapeutic.

As a hiker, mountain climber and conservationist, I feel Earthpower and the truth of Hippocrates’ and Muir’s beliefs every time I walk in wild places. Readers of my contemporary fantasy Sarabande will find that behind the good guys, bad guys and the twists and turns of the story, my recurring theme is that nature is wise in the realm of healing.

In his epic fantasies about another world, Stephen Donaldson refers to the Earth’s natural wisdom and energy as Earthpower, while calling those who love the Earth and seek to preserve its wild places as engaged in Landservice. I wish these terms were part of our real-world vocabulary. For all the good that they do, science and technology seem to have led us away from the natural world and its wisdom.

My title character in Sarabande comes from a world where magic is accepted as real into our world where magic is viewed as either sleight of hand or superstition. She has quite an adjustment to make as she travels from Montana to Illinois in search of an old friend who might help her get rid of a ghost. When she is injured and a Native American healer takes care of her wounds in a natural place where the energy is very strong, she asks if he would have done the same thing if his own son had been hurt.

Since Sarabande comes from another world and has no Social Security Number or other papers, he tells her he can’t take her to a hospital for treatment of her broken leg. However, he would have taken his son to a hospital: “’The doctors and nurses there are efficient at treating mechanical and structural problems,’ he said. ‘We would talk to the Great Mystery afterwards about the important matters.’”

For Sarabande—like most of us—the “important matters” are often more complex than broken bones. Sometimes our spirits and our hearts are broken. Sarabande finds that others don’t always understand what’s broken inside and want their friends to just stop complaining and “get on with life.” Yet, in the mountains, nature and a very special coyote know what she needs to become whole again…a bit of magic and a lot of empathy.

While fantasy is fantasy partly because of its magic and its other worlds, I hope my readers will finish Sarabande not only thinking the novel had a compelling story to tell but that even without the overt magic of fiction and such terms as Earthpower, nature has compelling wisdom for us in our world as well.

“Kevin’s Lore was mighty with Earthpower, and pure with Landservice. Health and gaiety flowed in the land, and the bright Earth jewel of Andelain bedizened the Land’s heart with precious woods and stones.” – “The Illearth War” by Stephen R. Donaldson

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Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of two contemporary fantasies, Sarabande and The Sun Singer, and a magical realism saga Garden of Heaven: an Odyssey. All three books draw on the magic of the shining mountains of Glacier National Park.

Buy Sarabande now!

While modern parannormal romance and urban fantasy is filled with vampire hunters, I love the idea of an old-fashioned exorcist. My guest today, Tawny Stokes, is here to talk about how she gave a face-lift to the old trope. Comment and you could win a free copy of the THE DEMON WHISPERER.

Guest Post by Tawny Stokes

I love me some monsters. The more the merrier in my opinion. I’ve been reading monster fiction since I could read. My literary mainstay as a child was Stephen King, John Saul, Dean Koontz. Which probably says a lot about me and why I write what I write. Just about every book I’ve ever written has had a monster or two in it. Sometimes they are bad, and sometimes they are good. Sometimes they are the main character and sometimes they are the villain.

My lastest book the DEMON WHISPERER has a pretty good monster factor. Caden Butcher is an exorcist you see, he’s knee deep in the 3 Ds, demon, death and destruction. In this book he’s dealing with all kinds of stuff, like vengeful demons, the undead, and a rather malicious zombie named Uncle Eldon. It’s his girlfriend, Aspen’s, uncle. She’s a necromancer and she accidentlally rose him and can’t put him back. Oh, and Caden’s BFF is a charming demon named Dan, who looks a lot like Sid Vicious.

So here is my monster list:

Demon – both bad and good
Necromancer – good
Zombies – good and very very bad (Uncle Eldon)
Jinn – bad

Do you like monster fiction? What’s your favorite monster to read about?

I will give 3 copies (ebooks only) of my book Demon Whisperer, to commenters.

Bio: Tawny Stokes has always been a writer. From an early age, she’d spin tales of serial killers in love, vampires taking over the world, and sometimes about fluffy bunnies turned bunnicidal maniacs.  An honour student in high school, with a penchant for math and English, you’d never know it by the foot high blue Mohawk and Doc Martens, which often got her into trouble.  No longer a Mohawk wearer, Tawny still enjoys old school punk rock, trance, zombie movies, teen horror films, and fluffy bunnies.  She lives in Canada with her fantastical daughter, two cats, and spends most of her time creating new stories for teens.  Her current YA books are Static and Demon Whisperer.  www.tawnystokes.com
Tawny also writes adult paranormal/urban fantasy fiction under the name Vivi Anna, and is an aspiring screenwriter.