Characters - His story.

In the post before the last, I shared a little glimpse into my head, into my writing process. Today I’m going to share a little something about where the Mortal Monsters series will be heading.

The first three books are Mackenzie and Eli’s books. It’s their story. Beyond that, there will be several stand alone, offshoot books that are the stories of some of the characters you’ll meet in the first three books.

I’ve been thinking of these characters for a long time. Some of them I’ve even begun their stories. One in particular has my heart. It torments me with want for me to tell it. This one particular character, he has a theme song. A song that puts me in his world, in his story, in his life…

I am not sure if his book will be the first to be released after Mack and Eli’s arc is complete or the second, but he’s in my head, in my veins, this morning and I want to share him with you. So, I thought I’d give you a short, cryptic glimpse and let you know what is to come, what you can expect from the series in the future. So there are no surprises when you pick up book four or five and maybe six.

This particular character’s theme song is: In My Veins by Andrew Belle

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vlcrjw1ZISE

Here it is on youtube – I’d use the one from Andrew Belle’s youtube channel, but the image this person used when they posted the video captures the tone in my head perfectly.

I dreamed him and his story up before Eli and Mackenzie came along. When I was weaving him into their story, I had moments when I wanted to rebel against the course his story has already taken. I thought, maybe I could just change it up, but his path is already set, and if I didn’t follow it, his story wouldn’t be the one I have to tell. I wouldn’t be able to tell it, and show you his life, who he is and why I’m completely in love with him.

If I were to change his course, you’d never get to meet the other’s in his story that have stories of their own, ones that also deserve to be told.

I think I love him and his story so much because it’s so personal. There is so much of me in it, of the people who have come into my life and left their mark. One in particular stood out to me this morning. He has shaped parts of this character, and I can’t wait for you all to meet him. I hope you’ll fall as deeply for him as I have… both the character and the one who exists in real life that’s colored parts of him.

 

 

Cover Reveal - Powerless by Monica Millard

BOOK INFO:
Powerless by Monica Millard
(Mortal Monsters #2)
Publication date: October 27th 2015
Genres: Young Adult, Paranormal

Synopsis:

Werewolf, shapeshifter, seer. If you’d said these words to me two months ago, I’d have said they were the things of stories and legends. Now, they’re my classmates, my friends and even those closest to me. Best friend, boyfriend and my own mother.

So what does that make me? I’m something different. Something dangerous?

I’ve kept my abilities locked up tight, hidden, even from myself, but the shapeshifter that was after Eli set them free, when he kidnapped and tortured me. With no one left to rescue me, I was forced to accept what I am in order to free myself and save Eli.

Now that my abilities have been awakened, I can’t turn them off. If I can’t get control, they might destroy me, and everyone else with me.

I might just be the strongest supernatural there is, but I feel completely powerless.

 

 

Add it on Goodreads:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26320125-powerless

 

My 3 am visitor

I have lived in Alaska my whole life (except a few small stints outside visiting other states). I grew up with wildlife in my backyard, or the front or sides, even the porch. Moose are a common occurrence in Alaska, as well as in my writing. You just get used to them, learn to live around them and hope you never get up close and personal.

I’ve been up close and personal a few times.

When I was a kid, still in school, it was dark when I waited for the bus. No matter how early the hour was or how late. In the winter, it’s dark longer here. In grade school, the bus stop was a few houses down at the ‘pump house’. Everything in my neighborhood, the houses, the ‘pump house’, the street in general is surrounded by trees.

There were several occasions when I’d walk to the bus stop, only to find I’d walked right up on a moose, hidden in the dark, cleverly camouflaged with its dark brown colors to blend in with the trees and the night sky.

Let me tell you, you will probably never move as quickly as you do when your fight of flight instinct kicks in because you are faced with a half-ton kicking, stomping, goring death machine. I’m small, but I’ve scaled ten-foot chain link fences in seconds flat to escape a charging moose. I have no idea how I did it, but that’s adrenaline for you.

The yard I have now is much bigger than the one I grew in, it’s filled with trees, forest even. Lots of new growth trees popping where they were cleared to make way for the house. Very attractive to these behemoths.  

Last night, I had one of these late night visitors in my yard, just outside my bedroom window, enjoying some of those new growth trees that have popped up since last year.

Like I said, I grew up in Alaska, and prior to moving out my home in Wasilla, I’d never truly heard the sound of a moose eating. The first time I heard it, I’d just gotten home. It was late, dark. I opened the door to my truck and was confronted with what sounded like bones snapping and flesh being stripped from those very same bones. It was horrific.

As a writer, my imagination can do terrible things and it was working overtime, imaging that maybe a bear had found its way into my yard with a kill and was slowly, methodically eating it right there in the trees, in the dip of the hill below me.

I tried turning my truck back on and angling it into the trees to see what I was dealing with, even went out onto the street, but to no avail. Needless to say, I didn’t exit the vehicle on that side, but parked as close to my porch steps as possible and then crawled over the seat to the passenger side that was facing the house and hurried inside.

Later, when I heard this same sound coming from another part of the yard, this time I was able to get a good angle with my headlights and identify the culprit as not a bear, but a moose, stripping not flesh from bone, but leaves and bark from tree limbs and not bones snapping, but twigs being bitten off.

So there I am, lying in bed at 3 am, the horrific sounds of something very amiss outside carrying into my room through the opened window, my dog awake, barking, warning me that there’s an intruder on our property. Even knowing the sound, having heard it before, in my fight or flight, adrenaline burning away the fog of sleep brain, I get up to find out who or what is outside my window, armed, just in case. I flip on the back flood light (sorry neighbors), open the door and peek out.

There in the small copse of trees, head turned back to look at me in a lazy, I’m the biggest thing around so I’m not really worried about whatever is there sort of way, is an adolescent moose. He almost gives me a shrug and then goes back to munching away.

I turned on the fan to drown out the sounds that, even though I know the source, still sound like the worst kind of death to me, and I went back to bed.

Here is the evidence of his disturbing visit:

Notice the stripped branches all along the right side.

Snapped the tops right off this poor little tree.

More branches stripped clean of their leaves and some of their bark. Imagine what that must sound like at 3am.

 

 

Then he still wins

 

Pre-order now! Entertaining Angels is available November 11th.

Barnes & Noble | Amazon | Kobo | iBook | Smashwords   

Aliens in Alaska?

I’m not sure if many of you know this, but I’m a complete science fiction and paranormal lover. Favorite movie of all times is The Abyss, second would have to be Serenity. The shows I HAVE to watch are usually found on Syfy or have sci-fi components, Eureka, Stargate in all it’s carnations, Star Trek (all but favorite being TNG), Heroes, TAPS Ghost Hunters (the original not so much the International), The Walking Dead, Firefly…. I could go on for hours.

Anyway, living in Alaska you’d think I wouldn’t get a lot of sci-fi experiences. Well unless you buy into that new movie with the aliens in Nome. I haven’t seen it. I have however had a few interesting experiences myself. Once, when I worked nights I was out walking my dog at 2:30am along with my mom. We had to walk the dogs in opposite directions otherwise they’d play and not do their business. About five minutes into the walk the sky, which in the winter was completely black, lit up like it was two in the afternoon.

The light only lasted a ten seconds, maybe fifteen but it was a bit alarming. I went running back around the curve of the street and confirmed that my mom also saw it. There was nothing on the news. I don’t usually watch the news but actually did for the next week. A year later there was a small article in the Anchorage Daily News about a space mirror that Russia was considering to reflect light onto Siberia. Maybe misaimed? I’ll never know if that was it but it’s certainly a good and legit explanation.

This brings me to the point of this blog. My brother and his friends had several experiences while out walking in the summer midnight sun. There was an invisible, unexplainable creature that used to buzz them as they walked.

It’s a mystery that has bothered him for years. Recently he came out to my house to visit. Both he and my roommate were outside in my yard. I have a few acres and a swamp which draws many different animals. While outside walking the dogs they both experienced the same invisible, unexplainable creature buzzing them.

After some research they discovered that there is a bird called the Snipe. It’s tail feathers make the “drumming” noise they heard. The birds can be difficult to see but are attracted to open, wet lands such as my swamp or my parent’s marshy stream. They found a sound file on the internet that matched what they were hearing exactly. Sure enough when they went back outside and looked in the swamp, there it was, in the swamp. Though the little thing was surely sneaky and was able to vanish right in plain sight.

So, while I still love nearly anything sci-fi or supernatural and believe there are many things that cannot be explained. My own and my brother’s personal unexplainable experiences have simple explanations.

Do you have any strange or unexplainable experiences of your own?

Colder Than a Witches Tit

In Alaska sometimes we have what is called Ice Fog. What that means is that it’s colder than a witches tit, as my sister always says. (Really that amounts to anything below 14 degrees F., usually here it's far below 14 or even 0 depending on the time of year or where you live.)

You might think Ice Fog is a terrible thing and decide to remain indoors till temperatures return to above cackle worthy levels. But you’d be missing out on the most amazing phenomenon, or at least one of them.

When Ice Fog occurs the ice crystals in the air attach themselves to all the things around them, transforming normal bare brown, dead looking tree branches into natural sparkling crystal covered works of art. Everything in its path is also coated but it’s the trees that, to me make it worth standing outside to admire natures hand in temperatures that are able to transform you into a humansicle in seconds flat.

(Please excuse the blurry, less than amazing quality of the pictures. They were taken with my cell phone.)