Saturday, October 31, 2015

RELEASE of Samhain: A Halloween Novelette

At the tail end of September, I somehow got it in my head to write a Halloween-themed short story to be released on Halloween. It was, of course, an ambitious plan, but the Halloween tale is now complete.

A mash-up of several of my favorite Halloween-themed movies from childhood and a few books I've read along the way, Samhain: A Halloween Novelette tells the tale of two characters - one that discovers his destiny and another that defies hers.

Available for purchase NOW.



Friday, October 2, 2015

A Short Excerpt from MYSTICISM Prologue:




She has this recurring dream, one she hasn’t told anyone about – ever. Since she was a kid, even factoring in the Lost Years that are her recently-recovered brain-washed memories, the dream had come and gone, leaving Laila to wake in a cold sweat and a feverish desperation to know what was wrong with her.

Because normal kids don’t dream the type of dreams that Laila has rolling around in her subconscious – not that it seems she has any control over her destiny at all, night-time delusions included.

But this dream isn’t like the others.

It starts the same as any other dream, she supposes, with the awareness that hey, this is a dream and an aerial view of whatever grimy spot of New York she’d claimed for her own. A self-image as she loitered on fire escapes or sulked in dark corners.

The dream would ripple, then, right as Laila grasped some form of normalcy and the scene would change, go in slow motion and backward in time until Laila knew that she wasn’t dreaming of herself.

Until the spontaneous – and ritual-induced – recovery of her memories, she’d never been sure just who the woman in her dream was, the woman with the deep bronze skin and face hidden in the deep black cloak, so shadowed that her face wasn’t visible. The only reason Laila had ever been sure of her skin tone was the fact that the woman’s hands were constantly in motion, roving over some spiral of smoke and candles and golden bowl filled with a thick, congealed molasses of what Laila innately recognized to be blood.

Normal seven year olds don’t dream about crap like that.

And they certainly don’t suppose that they are the cloaked woman in the dream, which had been Laila’s mistaken belief for at least twelve years.

She knew better now, of course.

The cloaked woman was her mother.

And she was doing a spell.

The dream is probably part of the reason that Laila had ever accepted the strange things that happened during her childhood – and why she suspected and believed in Glenn’s magical ties with such ease. She’d been dreaming of the darker side of magic for her entire life.

And there was no mistake that the dream was dark.

The woman was trying to call up the spirits of the dead.

It was different, sometimes. Small animals laid before the bowl, twitching and blooming with renewed life; other times, it was larger quarry. Once it was a blond man with cloudy seaglass eyes.

He never came back to life in the dreams. The cloaked woman would always cry over his body, sob in a way that she had never spared for the animals. Her hands would drift to her stomach – her abdomen – her womb.

Laila never understood, not as a child. It was a bizarre dream to have in the first place and she was normally so rattled that she’d even had the dream that she couldn’t – wouldn’t – spare a second thought to notice the subtle cues she should have been picking up on.

That changes as her memories are restored.

Laila understands it now.

The cloaked woman was her mother; the dead man was her father; and she was in utero as her Maman tried again and again to harness the unspeakable power of necromancy, only to succeed on the experiments and fail when it mattered.

It was tragic.

Disturbing.

And now – well. She gets why her magic has a flare for the Dark Side of the Force, why it seems to respond better to violence and revenge than healing. Why it’s so destructive.

Why a raven of all animals is her familiar.

Why she’s been marked fey.

It just sucks that blood magic is what her magic responds to. Laila doesn’t want to be evil.

But it’s not like she could have saved Adie, anyway.

Friday, September 18, 2015

Drats.

Well, I've gone and done it again. Someone *cough* is absolutely thrilled, of course, but I'm more dismayed than anything else! Another story! In the same genre! Kind of.

So, the skivvy is this: I was watching Monsters Inc., wrote like 500 words about some kid named Luke being taken to who-even-knows-where by a surprisingly cute and seriously terrifying Boogeyperson named Eira, and thought I'd be done with it.

And then I started wondering about the history of Jack-O-Lanterns for some God forsaken reason and ended up researching all kinds of things about Halloween and the like that eventually led to me making a plot about Luke and Eira that literally kept me up for three hours last night as I jotted down dialogue scripts.

And of course because I'm me, the cracky-humor vibe that was in the one-shot is suspiciously absent from the plot outline I've worked up! Guys. I'm incapable of writing something that isn't at least more than half serious! (Good thing? Bad thing? Do we care?)

What. Even.

Anyway. Here I am, doing a thing.

Wanna read it?


Saturday, September 5, 2015

Hyped On Caffeine

For those of you who know me - and for those of you who don't - I have a Lorelai Gilmore-esque addiction of coffee. I have two rules: (1) in the summer, the coffee must be cold, and (2) in the winter/fall, the coffee must be hot. That's it. That's all I need to guzzle down a brew between studying and writing.

I am a Coffee Addict. I probably need a support group.

Now that you know this (or now that this knowledge has been reaffirmed), we should all also acknowledge this truth: when I'm wired on coffee, I tend to go a bit nuts. This is doubly true if it happens to be 2 AM and I'm on cup 4 of the day.

As it stands, it's only 6 PM right now and cup 2. So. Not too wired, but still wired enough that I'm starting to get ideas.

Plotting ideas, specifically.

Between working on the continuation of The Supernormal Saga (MYSTICISM), I'm now researching elves, space travel, and obscure mythological figures. Don't worry - all the research is for different stories!

Unless, like, space-traveling elves discovering flesh-and-blood Gods happens to be your thing. In which case, let me try for 6 cups of coffee and see what I come up with!

Friday, September 4, 2015

ENCHANTMENT Publishing Update

Currently biting my nails as I wait for the potential 72-hour wait period to be over - KDP at Amazon is reviewing Enchantment and I'm getting hyped on coffee, not at all unlike Laila, the main character.

Until then, I'm off to create Facebook events and invite all my friends to the BIG DEAL THING happening in - oh, about 71 hours now.

https://www.facebook.com/elainekingsleyYAfiction?ref=hl


EDIT:

You can buy my first-ever publicized book here:

http://www.amazon.com/ENCHANTMENT-Supernormal-Saga-Book-1-ebook/dp/B014X76OKU/ref=sr_1_6?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1441417462&sr=1-6&keywords=ENCHANTMENT