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Books In My Belfry

~ A Writer's Life For Me

Books In My Belfry

Category Archives: Giveaway Announcement

A Very Personal Interview + Book Giveaway

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Posted by Melika Dannese Hick in Author Spotlight, Deadmarsh Fey, Fun Stuff, Giveaway Announcement, Missives, News, Updates

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13, 15, 18, 1888, 1890s, 1894, 1975, 19th century, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2008, 2013, 2014, 2018, 2019, 24601, 30th anniversary, 40, 700, 8, a book addict's bookshelves, a fragment of life, a host of ills, a keeper's tale, a less enlightened time, a lot, a warden's purpose, a wizard should know better, a wizard's forge, a woodley, a. m. justice, a. m. rycroft, a. z. anthony, aaron c. cross, aaron hodge, aaron-michael hall, ache, adam watson, adaptations, added bonus, aderyn, aderyn wood, admiration, adult, aesop, afresh, Agatha Christie, age, aidan r walsh, Air Jaws, aldrea alien, alexa grave, alexander grant, alice in wonderland, alice sabo, Aliens, all my heart, all of my heart, all we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us, alliance, allies, almost as if the weight of her years were pressing against me like a great mountain of corpses that would collapse onto me if I so much as looked at her the wrong way.” Gryffyn looked as though he w, alveric, always treated as a servant, amaze, amazed, amazing, Amazon, Amazon UK, amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com, amreading, amy mcnulty, ancient evils, and destruction—a voice crafted of darkness and the death of worlds.” Flesh and bone and hearts unknown, and everyone, and has returned bearing tales of creatures called Jagged Ones that claim to be of the Fey and can somehow conceal themselves while standing in the full light of the moon. What they want with Lockie, and I enjoyed answering these questions so much. Many, and it becomes savagely clear that these Jagged Ones and the Dark Wreaker they serve are not only after Lockie and Travers, and the Curse That Walks The Earth. And then there is the foe named Blood Wood, and we’d be none the wiser till it had us by the throat! We can’t see a foot in front of our faces, andrea domanski, anduril, andy peloquin, angel, angels, anglo-saxon, anguish, anne rice, annihilate, annihilation, Anniversary, anorffen, answer the call, antestheria, applause, aragorn, architect, are true. And if there is truth in these outlandish stories, ariadne's thread, arianrhod, arthur, arthur machen, arwen, as Laura phrased it, as were the fiends who allowed themselves to be Hosted.” “But that happened in a wilder age, ashley capes, assumption, asunder, august, Augustin Boroi, aunt betsy, australia, australian, australian shark chorus, authentic, author, Authors, autonomy, autumn, awestruck, ” Bellows shot in. “You’re not allowed in church!” The Jagged One squinted at him. “Sez who?” “Says God!” Carver tsked. “I thought you Christians welcomed everyone.” “We make exc, ” Carver muttered. “I don’t know how else to explain this, ” Incendiu snarled. “They were all children, ” Roger argued. “Do not make the mistake of thinking present society is so highly advanced that they have forgotten their baser instincts, back from the dead, baggins, bagheera, bait, barber of seville, base motives, battlecry, beach, bear, beautiful, beginning, belkin, bellows, belong, beloved, below, bent, beowulf, best friend, best wishes, betrayal, better angels, beyond, beyond the forest, biased, bide, big, big boys, bill shakes, biologist, bird and baby, birth certificate, birthday, bite, black, black cats, black winged beast, blade and rose, blank wall, blazing, blind, blog, Blog Tour, blogger, bloggers, bloglovin, blogs, blood, blood and ashes, blood suckers, blood will drown the earth. And Roger and his entire family will fulfill the prophecy of fey’s older, blood wood, blood-soaked, bloodshed, bloom, blue prometheus, blue water, blue water white death, blues brothers, boarding school, boat, bombastic, bond, book, book addict, book feature, book giveaway, book nerd, book of mormon, booknerd, books, Books In My Belfry, booksinmybelfry.com, boom, boris kos, born vampire, boromir, Bottomless, boxer, brainstorming, bram stoker, brandon, bravo, brian o'sullivan, bride, brilliant, British, broke, brother, Brother?” the beast mocked. The dragon’s voice paralyzed Roger where he stood. Hearing it sapped his strength, brothers, brothers and sisters, brothers grimm, bruce, bubbly, business, bust, but a winged nightmare attempting to break free of its underground prison? Enlisting the aid of a monster equipped with enough inborn firepower to blast his enemies into oblivion might be as suicidal , but an unholy trinity known as the Bear, but as that interview is quite extensive, but did so sideways. A clear membrane coated its eye, but I could feel her age, but Roger, but when Roger arrives, c. d. gallant-king, c. l. schneider, C. S. Lewis, cable tv, cage, caged, calling, canon, carnifex, caroling, carpet diem, carte blanche, Carver, cat, catharine glen, cathartic, catholic, cats, caverns, cctv, cede, celebration, celts, center stage, chance, changed. The grounds are unkempt, chaos, character classes, characters, Charles Dickens, charpentier, chesterton, chevrefoil, childhood, children, children of light, children of vampires, chilled, chime, china, chivalry, chocolate, chocolate chip, choppy, chris fallowes, chris fallows, chris weston, christened, christians, christina ochs, Christmas, christmas carols, christmas in august, christmas in july, christopher percy, chucked, chumming, church, cianien bloodstone, City of Lights, City of Lights by melika lux, city of lights: the trials and triumphs of ilyse charpentier, clarity, classic, classical, clicking, clues, cnn, coalition, Coffyn, collapse, comedic fantasy, Comedy, comic, comic book, community, composed, conceal, concentration, confessional, confusion, conquest, conservation, constant source of inspiration, Constantinos, constructive criticism, contemporary fantasy, contest, conventional wisdom, conversation, cooked, copies, copyright, coquette, corcitura, Corcitura feature, corpses, corruption, corruption of honor, cottage, count, count orlok, Count Rakmanovich, Count Sergei Rakmanovich, courtly love, coven queen, Cover, cozy, crackbrained, craig a price jr., craig aird, create, creative fiction, creepy, cries blood, crime and punishment, cross fire, cruelty, CS Lewis, curiosity, curse, cut, cutting his teeth, cutwater, cutwater island, d. h. dunn, d. p. prior, d. p. wolliscroft, daft, damned souls, dance hall, dance of romance, dancing in the dust, danger, dangerous, dannese, dark, dark ages, dark fantasy, dark lord, dark night of the soul, dark oak, dark of winter, dark one's mistress, dark side, dark tide, dark water, dark wreaker, darkblade assassin, darkling, darkness, dashing, daughter of atlas, David Copperfield, david gowey, david mullin, david oliver, david p macpherson, dawn of darkness, days of endless night, dead bride, dead shrimps, deadliest, Deadmarsh, Deadmarsh Fey, deadmarshes, deal, dean rencraft, death, death merchants, death of worlds, debbie taylor, deborah kerr, december, decision, dedication, deeds in which village children made sacrifice to an otherworldly beast and were never seen or heard from again, deep, deeper, defeat, demand, demon, demon-haunted, demonic, demons, demons of the deep, denial, depth, depths, derangement, desire to weave stories, desolate, destiny, destruction, details, devastatingly brilliant, devil, devilry, devils, devin madson, devour, devourer of the world, dialogue, dianne bylo, die, dignity, dimensioner's revenge, diminish, Discovery Channel, disover, disposable, distraction, ditty, diva of the paris stage, diver's suit, divine, dk girl, dnf, dogs, doldrums, don't look back, donald trump, doom, dorothy dreyer, Dostoevsky, dostoyevsky, double blinds, Dracula, draculaesque, Dragon, dragon eye, dragon fate, dragon school, dragon shade, dragona rise of the wyverns, dragons, dramatically, dramatis personae, drandeur, dread, dread grandeur, dream, dream-sagas, dreamlike, dreams, dresses, driving force, drowning, druids, dude, dunedain, dungeoneers, dungeons and dragons, dunsany, duology, dwellers, dwellers of darkness, dwellers of darkness children of light, dyrk ashton, e. j. taylor, E. T., eagle and child, earth, Eastern Europe, ebb, ecstatically, eddas, ego, Eiffel Tower, elessar, elevator, elevator pitch, elmo, elvish, email, embellishments, emblematic, emerald dodge, emma stone, emotional, emotions, encourage, end song, enemies, enemy, engand, England, englishman, enlightened, enraptured, enrich, enveloped, envoys, epic, epic fantasy, epistolary, Eric Bradburry, erlkonig, erudite, ET, eternal night, Europe, European, evangeline, everl'aria, everyone, evidence, evie, evil, Excerpt, exhausted, exhilarated, exile, experience, exploitation, exploring, extraordinary, eye of arianrhod, eyes, Facebook, faces in the mist, facilitator, fade, faeries, fair and foul, fairy cakes, fairy tales, faith, fall, fallen, fallen age, fallen empire, fallen kingdom, false bay, family, fangs and fins, fantastic, fantastical, fantasy, fantasy hive, fantasy is escapist, fantasy novels, farewell and adieu, fascinated, fast typist, fate, Fated, fated to die, father, fathomless, Faust, favorite, fearies, fearless, feast, feast in the forest, feature, featured, featured at Jean the Book Nerd’s great site, feedback, feel, feelings, female author, female vampires, female werewolves, female writers, fey, fiction, Film, filming locations, films, Fin de siècle, Find Me, finding dory, finding home, finding nemo, fire's song, fire-breather, firecracker, fireplace, firing, first love, first novel, five, flesh, flesh and blood, flickering, flickering within that gigantic orb… “Why should I not know what he’s really called?” “Tell a man your name and he will have power over you forever, flow, flowers, flying saucer, flying sharks, foe, Folies Bergère, food network, foodtv, foot, for his savagery had no end.” “I’ve seen its other side. I know what lives here, forest, forever, forever grateful, forever love, forever my love, forfeit, forged in flames, forgotten relics, forsaken kingdom, foundation, four novel, fox news, fragile nights, France, Franz Schubert, freaky, free, free reign, free will, freebie, freedom, freeing air, French, french flag, French wine, friday, friends, Friendship, frodo, frodo baggins, frustrating, fudge, full circle, fun, fundamental, Fuseli, fylgja, fyodor, gabriel michaelson, gaja j. kos, game of thrones, gamut, Gandalf, gandalf the grey, gardener, gargantuan, geist, genius, genres, george r. r. martin, german, german lieder, germanic, Germany, ghast, ghost electricity, ghosts, gift, giganitc, giveaway, gk chesterton, glamour of evil, glimpse, gloomy, glories, glorious, glory, gnomic, goal, God, godforsaken, goethe, gollum, good and evil, good gad, good vs evil, gooderads, goodread, Goodreads, Google, goose, goose is cooked, gothic, gothic novel, governess, grabs, Grand Tour, gravitas, great book, great god pan, great white, great white shark, Greece, green flashing like St. Elmo’s fire. All these colors danced not a foot in front of Roger’s face, green with envy, greenery, Gretchen am Spinnrade, grey beard, grey wolves, Greydanus, grim reaper, groaza, gryffyn, guardian spirit, guardians, guides, guillermo del toro, Guinness, gustav mahler, guv, guy fieri, gwendolyn pendraig, h p lovecraft, h. g. wells, had ever been anything to fear. Nearly each summer of his young life had been spent in that manor on the moors, hallmark, hallmark channel, halloween, hamilton, hamlet, hammer, hand-write, handily at hand, hannah sullivan, hansel and gretel, hard work, harmony, harsh, has inexplicably grown and glares at Roger as if he is trying to read the boy’s mind. Roger’s eldest cousin, hasty, hate, haunted, haunting of hill house, havelock, having wild adventures with his cousin, hazard, he finds everything, he was The Bottomless, he who fights, heart, heartache, heartbeat, heartland, heaven, heaven and earth, hell comes to hogtown, help, henry corbin, henry fuseli, henry james, here be dragons, here there be dragons, hermit, hermitlife, hero, hero forged, heroes, heroism, high barrens, high fantasy, high school, higher self, higher selves, highland, hindsight, hinterland, historical fiction, historical romance, History, hobbit, hobbit size, hobbiton, hollow, home, home is behind, hope, hopes, hopes and dreams, horrifying, horror, horror herald, horrorfest, hosted, hosting, hot, Hotmail, house, hues, huge, hugh jackman, hugo vickers, hugo weaving, hugs, human beings, Humor, Hunger Games, hungers of life and all that matters, hunter, hybrid, hybrid vampires, i am death, i am fire, i am fire i am death, I shout, I thought it would be a good idea to share them with you today in a separate post. I hope you enjoy this little glimpse into Deadmarsh Fey. Best wishes, ian gregoire, Ian McCarthy, ian mckellan, ian mckellen, iceland, iconic, idea, ignite, ill tiding, illegal, illegible, ilyse, Ilyse Charpentier, imaginal, imaginal realm, imagination, imbued, impact, impacted, imprisoned, in tune, in which a dashing Englishman woos mademoiselle Charpentier, in-depth, incendiu, incorporate, incredible hulk, indecisive, Indie, infected, infinity, infused, inkling, inklings, inner lives, inorganic, insatiable, insights, inspiration, inspirations, inspired, instill, insurmountable, integrity, intense, interjections, internet, Interview, invite, iron fey, iron reveals, irrevocably, irv, isobel, isobel vickers, Italian, Italy, itinerant writing, ivan turgenev, j. a. alexsoo, j. d. hallowell, j. e. mueller, j. elizabeth vincent, J. R. R. Tolkien, j. r. rasmussen, j. zachary pike, ja andrews, jack, Jack the Ripper, jacob sannox, jagged, jagged ones, JAWS, jawsome, jawsomeness, jc kang, jean, jean booknerd, jean valjean, jeffrey l kohanek, jeffrey russell, jennifer ellison, jeramy goble, jess watkins, jesse teller, jingle bells, jingle sharks, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, john william waterhouse, johnny cash, jon, jordan c robinson, joseph sheridan le fanu, josh erikson, jot, joy, JRR Tolkien, julian, june carter cash, jungle book, Jurassic Park, just keep swimming, justin lee anderson, k bird lincoln, k l ling, k m alexander, kascher's quartet, katniss, kayleigh nicol, keith mcardle, kevin wright, kind, Kindle, kindle giveaway, king arthur, kingshold, Kip, Kipling, kirsten m corby, Knightley, knowing thine enemy, knut hamsun, kurintor nyusi, l. l. mcneil, la la land, La Perle de Paris, la petite coquette, lad, landed, languages, laptop, latest, laura, laura m hughes, lava, lead, lead to the rath and your fate will be shown… cover Deadmarsh. The name struck terror into the hearts of all who heard it. But to Roger Knightley, leave, lee conley, legend, legendarium, legends, legends of elera voices, Leonora, Leonora Bianchetti, lepers, leroy nichols, les miserables, lesser, let off the lead, lethal, letter, liath luacra, library, lie, lieder eines fahrenden gesellen, lies, life, lifeline, light, light dawning, like the greater evil we faced later on, likeminded, lin manuel miranda, lineup, link, Links, lion the witch and the wardrobe, lips, lirazel, list, little dream, lives, Lockie, loggerheads, logistical, London, longing, longing for home, longings, lord byron, lord dunsany, lord of the rings, lords of asylum, lorri moulton, LOTR, lots of tears, Louisa May Alcott, Louvre, Love, love in one act, love of reading, Luc, luck, luminous, lunch, lux, Lux Aeterna, lynn's books, lyrics, m. s. olney, mabinogion, mabus, machen, mad skillz, maddie, made him feel as though his mind had been crushed between slabs of stone. There was chaos in it, Madelaine Bradburry, madness, magic, magic's betrayal, magician's nephew, magnificent, mahler, main character, majestic, malazan, malevolence, manipulation, Manon Larue, manor, many thanks to the fabulous (and sharktastic!) Laura M. Hughes for giving me this opportunity. I hope you will all enjoy reading about, marble, marianne ratcliffe, marilyn peake, marilyn vix, marine biologist, mark lawrence, marked, mashup, masquerading, master, master coffyn, masterclass, masterpiece, matt heppe, matt larkin, matthew thompson, maul, Maurice Charpentier, maxim, meagan hurst, meager, meaningful, meanings, meant to be, media, meg cowley, megan mackie, melancholy, melika, Melika Dannese Lux, Melika Lux, melokai, membrane, mental angels, merlin, message in a bottle, method, michael baker, michael r baker, michael sliter, middle-earth, mike morris, miles and flora, mimicked, mind, mind behind the mind, mind palace, miraculously, miranda, miranda honfleur, mirror writing, mirroring, moartea, moarteans, modern times, monikers, monocle, monty python, moon, moonlight roses and murder, moonstone, more things in heaven and earth, moria, morlocks, moroda, moss, most wonderful time of the year, mother, motherhood, motivation, mountain, Movies, mr. micawber, mr. murdstone, mug, Music, musical, my beloved, my calling, my dream, my life, my love, mystical, myth, mythology, myths, names, napkins, narnia, nature, nature of evil, nazri noor, nebulous, ned marcus, neither Deadmarsh the house, nerd, net galley, netflix, netgalley, never looked back, new, new interview, new release, New York, new zealand, news, nia rae, nicholas kotar, nicholas malebranche, night, nightmare, nightmarish, ninny, no looking back, no sparkling, nor Deadmarsh the family, norse, norse mythology, north york moors, northleach, norway, Nosferatu, not one foot! Why are you not afraid?” “Because I am the monster lurking in the shadows, notebook, notes, novel, novelist, novels, now, now dresses like a duchess and wears round her neck a strange moonstone given to her by someone known as Master Coffyn, now face-to-fey, nudged, oblivion, obsessed, ocean, odds, of darkness, off his nut, offshore, oil slick, old salt, older, ominous, on borrowed luck, on location, one i love, opaque, opera, or the world.” “There are more things in Heaven and earth…” Uncle Gryffyn muttered. “Now ain’t the time to be quotin’ old Bill Shakes, orange, orconomics, original, orion, orlok, oswald, other worlds, otherness, otherworld, out of nowhere, outlet, overwhelming, Oxford, pages, pale, palming the ace, pan, panic, panther, paper, Paperback, paranoia, paranoid, Paranormal, parc monceau, parents, Paris, Parisian, passionately, path, patrick leclerc, Paul Celan, pdf, peace, Penny Dreadful, penny dreadfuls, pepe the prawn, peppy, perfect day, performance, perilous, perilous realms, personal, perspective, perspicacious, peter jackson, peter quint, petrik leo, pews, phil parker, phil williams, philosopher, phoenix, phoenix descending, phrased, pianist, pict, piece, pilgrimage, pilgrimages, pirates of the caribbean, pistachio, pit, place of slaughter, plausible deniability, play, plethora, plots, plowed, plumbing, poet, poetic edda, poetry, pointy hat, Polidori, politics, pool, pop culture, portraits, possessed, post, powers of music, prayer, pre-raphaelites, precious, preferably, premiered, press, prime time, primetime, professor fertig, project, projects, promo, promotion, prophecy, protagonist, pseudonym, psychological, publication, publicity, publishing, puckie, puddleglum, pumpkin, pun, pure magic, questions, quick-fire, quickfire, Quint, quites, quote, quotes, r. m. mulder, rafflecopter, ragna, random, ranger, rapture, rapturous, raskolnikov, rath, raucous, ravan thrall, raymond st. elmo, readers, reading, real, real name, realm of mindweavers, realms, reaper, recent reads, red sister, reddit, reflection, reflection of yourself, regret, reign, religion, renaissance, research, respect, reveal, revenge, Review, reviews, reward, rex, richard iii, richard lucas, richard writhen, riddled with fear, ring, rivalry, riveting novels of psychological suspense, roaring fire, roasted, robert shaw, robocopter ski patrol, rocks, roger, Roger cannot fathom, Roger discovers that Coffyn has overtaken Lockie. The boy is deceitful, Roger Knightley, Roger Knightley. Evil is evil no matter the century, Roger must find a way to end the battle being waged across worlds before the night of Lockie’s eleventh birthday—two days hence. If he fails, Roger seeks to unravel the tapestry of lies woven round his family’s connection to the death-haunted world of Everl’aria—and the Dark Wreaker who calls it home. The deeper Roger delves into the , rohirrim, roiling emotions, role playing, romance, romance novels set in historic France, Romania, Romanian, romantic fantasy, ronald tibu, room, rosalyn kelly, rosina, rossini, rotsby, round pegs, rove, rudyard kipling, ruination, ruled, rural, rural england, russell cullison, Russia, russian, ryan gosling, s. a. corey, s. c. flynn, s. k. randloph, sacrifice, sacrirfice, sadness, saga, sagas, sagas germanic, sale, salt, samara, samir, samwise gamgee, sanderson, sangue de vita, Sangue di Vita, sarah k. l. wilson, saucer, sauron, sausage, sausage sandwich, savagery, savoir faire, scarper, scary, scary vampires, scene, scene stealer, scenes, schadenfreude, schubert, science-fantasy, scotland, scream, scribd, scrubland, scythe, sea, Sea World, seal, seal island, sean astin, sean cunningham, seared, searing beauty, seasonal, seasonal reads, secret doorways, secrets, seized, selection, self publishing fantasy blog off, self-published fantasy blog off, semicolon, serenaded, Sergei, Sergei Rakmanovich, series, serious, servant of rage, seven hundred years, seventeen, sez, sez who, shadow magic, shadows, sham, shaq, shaquille o'neal, shark, shark attack, shark bite, shark chorus, shark elevator pitch, Shark Week, sharkbait oo-ha-HA!, sharking, sharkland, sharkland forever, Sharks, sharktastic, sheltering, shere khan, shield of kings, shifts, shire, shirley jackson, shiver, shores of the heart, shrieking, siblings, silence, silly, silver-tongued devil, singer, singing, sinisterly, sir frank dicksee, sister, sisters, site, sixteen, skill, skillz, skye, sneaky, snippet, snuffbox, snug, social media, solace lost, soldier, solidified, son, song, songs of insurrection, songs of the wayfarer, sonya m black, soprano, sorcerer's isle, sorcerous rivalry, Sorina Boroi, sorrow, soul, soul render, soul-restoring, soul-searching, soulmate, soulmates, souls, South Africa, space time continuum, special, special meaning, specials, spfbo, spfbo2018, spill, spinning silk, spiritual, spoiler, Spooky, spring, spring-heeled jack, square holes, squirrel, st. elmo's fire, standchen, startle, states, status quo, steal of a deal, steampunk, steer the ship, Stefan, Stefan Belododia, Stefan Ratliff, stephen spielberg, stephenie meyer, steve thomas, steven erikson, steven mckinnon, steven spielberg, stole his will, stone, storm wielder, story, story arcs, story reading, storytelling, storyweaving, stratosphere, struggle, stumbling block, stunning, sub-genres, success, suffered, summer, sunday, supernatural, supernatural thriller, superstition, support, suppressing, surf, surfer, surfer dude, susan hill, Suspense, suzanne rogerson, sviddheim, swathing, sweeney todd, sweet, swimmers, swimming, sydney, Sylvi, symphony of the wind, t j muir, T-Rex, t. cook, t. l. branson, Tags#AmWriting, Tags100, taiwan, Taken, taking care of, talk, talking animals, talking cat, talking cats, tall tales, TAPS, tears, techniques, teeth, temporary derangement, ten, terrifying, terror, that's what I'm tolkien about, the apples of idunn, the bastard from fairyland, the crown of stones, the crushed peak, the darkness within, the dead sagas, the Deadmarsh heir. This year should have been no different, the end begins, the exercise of vital powers, the expanse, the family cat, the fantasy hive, The Fellowship of the Ring, the finder of the lucky devil, the first fear, the forbidden city, the game bird, the great hearts, the great restoration, the greatest showman, the hidden face, the hidden ones, the innocents, the ivy cottage, the king of elfland's daughter, the knight's order, the last whisperer, The Lord of the Rings, the lost sentinel, the manhunters song, The Marriage of Figaro, the Moarteans christened him Groaza. Others called him The Devourer of the World. And to those on Sviddheim, the more he begins to suspect that the tales of dark deeds done in the forest behind Deadmarsh, the most wonderful time of the year, the power of music, the red hourglass, the ring, the rose crown, the sangrook saga, the seeds of dissolution, the servants long gone. Kip, the silver chair, the song of the siren, the stars were right, the tainted crown, the tempest guild, the thousand scars, The Trials and Triumphs of Ilyse Charpentier, the turn of the screw, the very beginning, the white people and other weird stories, the Wolf, theatre, then drew back to reveal hues infinitely more searing than before—so vibrant it was painful for Roger to look into them. Orange pulsating like a lava flow, theophany, these vampires don't sparkle, This selection of quotes will appear in a very personal interview on Friday, thorny, thousand scar, threatening, threats of sky and sea, three decades, three tons, three tons of him, thrilled, Thriller, throat, through a glass darkly, thunder the shadows are stirring, tibu, tidings, tiger lilly, tiller, time machine, timothy c doyle, tiny tim, Tolkien, tollers, Tollers and Jack, tom-tom, tome tender, too. Joining forces with an ally whose true nature remains hidden, top 10, topics, toppled, torched, total fantasy, Toulouse Lautrec, Tour Eiffel, tradition, tragedy, trahaearn, train, trainwreck, trajectory, traumatic, travel, travers, tree stump, trials, tricksy, triggered, trilogy, tristan and isolde, triumph, triumphant, true, true bliss, true love, truest sense, truly belong, trust, truth, truth or darkness, tsked, turn of phrase, Turn of the Screw, TV, Twilight, Twitter, two tons, TY Arthur, type, typing, typist, Tyrian purple, ufo, UK, una voce poco fa, unattainable, uncle silas, unconditional, undead, under everest, under ordshaw, underbelly, unfolded, uninspiring, unique, universal, universal studios, universes, unstoppable, untangled, until the horror within his cousin lashes out, untold, unusual, up for grabs, updates, urban fantasy, uriah heep, USA, valet, vampire fiction, Vampire Hunter, vampire mythology, vampire mythos, vampires, vampiresses, vampiric, vampiric equality, vampiric transformation, vampirism, vamps, vampyre, varney, varney the vampire, varney the vampyre, Vasily Markolovick, venue, verge, verin empire, vickers, victoria, Victorian, victorian age, view of the world, villains, violinist, virgil, vitriol, vivid, vivid imagination, Vladec, Vladec Salei, vocal coach, vocation, voice, volsung saga, vortigern, Vrykolakas, Wales, wanderer, wandering, war, wards and wonders, warmth, warnings and visitations, water's surface, way of the world, we ride the storm, weak-minded, weapon, web site, website, weighing, weirdoes, welsh, welsh mythology, went by many names. When he invaded Everl’aria, Werewolf, werewolf transformation, what of the rumor that it was not an earthquake which rocked the moors surrounding Deadmarsh sixteen years ago, what’s been slumbering for so long.” A hollow pit opened up where Roger’s heart was supposed to be. “How would you know that?” “I woke it up.” He blinked in surprise and was even more st, when the kingdom falls, whiskey and dragon fire, white death, white shark, Whitechapel, who has taken over the teaching of Lockie at a school in Wales called Nethermarrow. And soon after he crosses the threshold of Deadmarsh, who might be the deadliest of them all. Racing against time, widget, wilder, Wilkie Collins, william c tracy, william ray, william shakespeare, wine, winners, winter, wip, wisdom, wish, witch, witch spelling, wizard, wolf, woman in white, womb, wonderful, wondrous, Wood, woods, work, worldview, worst enemy, worth fighting for, wraxhall, wreaker, wrenching, write what you dream, writer, writer's block, Writers, writing, writing life, writing method, writing process, YA, year, years, yellow glistening brighter than a city made of gold, yes, yet the boy knows he needs all the help he can get if there is to be any hope of defeating not only the Dark Wreaker and his servants, yo ho yo ho a writer's life for me, york, Yorkshire, Young Adult, young author, young female author, young love, Young Protagonists, young writer, your home, YouTube, ziroonderel Hi Everyone, ~Melika “This beast

Hi Everyone,

Today, I’m sharing with you the most intensely personal interview I have ever done. When I was first sent these questions, I never thought answering them would help me make peace with feelings I’d been unconsciously suppressing for many years, but I am so thankful that this was the case. I’ve learned a lot about myself over the last few days because of this, days that have been painful yet necessary for me to heal in many areas of my life and find joy again where before there was nothing but sadness and confusion. And speaking of joy…this interview has given me, truly, for the very first time, a venue to share my feelings with you all about the amazing man, my beloved soulmate, who has changed my life in so many glorious and magnificent ways since we’ve been together. I hope you enjoy not only reading about him, but also about a few important books that have touched my heart, some of my inspirations, including one legendary panther, and many other things, both serious and silly!

I’d like to take a moment to say a special thank you to Jean, of Jean The Book Nerd. You couldn’t have known how these questions would affect me when you sent them along, Jean, but I will be forever grateful that you did, and also for how kind, caring, understanding, and wonderfully generous you’ve been to me throughout this entire process. Thank you so much!!! *hugs*

Additionally, Jean is hosting a giveaway of not only Deadmarsh Fey, but also my supernatural thriller, Corcitura. You can enter for a chance to win a Kindle copy of each novel by clicking here.

And now, without any further delay, onto the interview…

  1. What was the single worst distraction that kept you from writing this book?

It wasn’t a distraction, but taking a wrong storytelling direction kept me from writing Deadmarsh Fey for an entire year. 2013 was spent working on what would become the fourth book in Dwellers of Darkness, Children of Light (the series Deadmarsh Fey launched), only I didn’t know this at the time, which was why writing this book out of sequence felt very wrong, not to mention terribly frustrating. There were things happening in this novel that I had no explanation for, and an untold history of how this world my characters found themselves imprisoned in had come to be.

When my mind cleared enough for me to be able to envision the trajectory Dwellers of Darkness, Children of Light, needed to take, I realized that these stories—begun as prequels to a fantasy series I’d started writing in 2003, a series in which some characters from Deadmarsh Fey were my main adult protagonists—had taken on lives of their own, and were now demanding to be told, and unless I gave in, I’d never be able to understand what had affected the characters in those original books so strongly when they were children, and molded them into the adults they became. And then the Dark Wreaker burst onto the scene, with a horde of devils in his wake, and changed everything.

Even though the experience I underwent in 2013 was incredibly frustrating, I do not regret the time I spent working on that fourth book. What was written in it (and the novel is fully written, though it will alter dramatically when all is said and done) laid the foundation for nearly every myth and legend—even inspiring a number of significant events in Deadmarsh Fey—that I would have never known how to interweave throughout the series if I hadn’t written that fourth book first.

  1. Has reading a book ever changed your life? Which one and why, if yes?

Yes, Crime and Punishment, when I was seventeen. I had always enjoyed reading, but it wasn’t till I lost myself in this masterpiece that it truly became a passion—and opened up avenues I never would have considered traveling down, nor had the courage to do so, till I made the acquaintance of this book. The masterful way Dostoyevsky painted with words astounded me. I was absorbed by the rich psychological portraits he was able to delineate with a few strokes of the pen, and all the force of his imagination. Since then, only this year, in fact, thanks to my beloved, I have been exposed to other writers who remind me of him, most notably Knut Hamsun and, very recently, Ivan Turgenev, both of whom have that same lyrical touch, an equal genius for capturing the essence of a human soul and sketching it into life upon the page. Though the canvasses they painted their visions upon are much smaller, their portraits are no less penetrating and brilliant. And yet, while Crime and Punishment was over 700 pages, I remember wishing it had been longer, and I missed the characters, even Raskolnikov—whom I had intense sympathy for, which just shows how adept at evoking pathos and emotion Dostoyevsky was, getting me to feel compassion for a man who had done such terrible things—when my time with them in 19th century Russia was over. Much like my experience reading David Copperfield five years before, it was as though I’d lived alongside these characters, suffered with them, endured their trials, even felt the panic of the net closing in around one character in particular… My emotions ran the gamut; I was inspired, exhausted yet exhilarated, and found myself with an insatiable longing to create that only writing could fulfill. I don’t believe in coincidences, and know it was no accident I read this book on the heels of a paradigm-shifting moment in my life—and that it proved to be the final push in the right direction I needed.

From a very young age, I’d wanted to be a marine biologist, even though I always seemed to be scribbling down stories on whatever scraps of paper—sometimes napkins and tissues, honestly—were near at hand, and began working on my first novel when I was fourteen. To me, writing has forever been and will forever be a key that unlocks hidden doorways into other worlds, and I felt I was being called to dedicate my life to exploring these universes of the imaginal realm—and making them my own. Yet it wasn’t until the winter of 2001 (a few months before reading Crime and Punishment), as I sat in a darkened theatre, enthralled and enraptured by my first glimpse of Middle-Earth, that light shone onto the path I was meant to take. I owe this illumination to Gandalf and the words of wisdom he spoke to Frodo in the caverns of Moria, when hope was at its lowest ebb:

“All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.”

In my heart, in that moment, I knew what I was being asked to decide. And so I made my  choice—never looked back.

  1. Tell us your most rewarding experience since being published.

Writing a book is an intense, often quite solitary, endeavor. While you are lost in the creation of it, and especially when the work is done, you can’t help wondering, with a mix of hope and dread, if anyone will love the book as much as you do. Yet once the story has been released into the world, it ceases to be yours alone, and you must, however wrenching it might be, let the characters—and this tale you’ve poured your being into—fend for themselves. As the poet Paul Celan once said, “a poem, as a manifestation of language and thus essentially dialogue, can be a message in a bottle, sent out in the—not always greatly hopeful—belief that somewhere and sometime it could wash up on land, on heartland perhaps. Poems in this sense, too, are under way: they are making toward something.” Should this not be what every writer, whether of poetry or novels, strives for? This concept of the “heartland” affected me deeply when my beloved shared it with me a few months ago, because Celan’s words crystalized what I’d always felt. With each book I have written, but most passionately regarding Deadmarsh Fey, my goal, my wish, has been that my characters, and these realms they populate, would resonate with readers and move them in meaningful ways, hopefully changing them for the better, and making them think differently about their inner lives and the world around them.

And that is why my most rewarding experience since being published has been how people have reacted to Deadmarsh Fey. From these reviews, it is obvious that many readers have understood the book, “gotten” it, as it were, and let themselves be seized by my story. And, what’s more, are incredibly excited to discover what happens next in this saga known as Dwellers of Darkness, Children of Light. All this fills me with joy, because it shows that my message in a bottle, for these readers, at least, has washed up on the shores of their hearts and struck a chord within their souls that I hope will reverberate for many long years to come.

  1. In your new book, DEADMARSH FEY, can you tell my Book Nerd community a little about it and why they should read your novel? 

Every novel in Dwellers of Darkness, Children of Light is told in a different voice, written from the perspective of a new protagonist through whose eyes we see the story. In Deadmarsh Fey, the eyes belong to Roger Knightley, ten years old and cousin to Havelock (Lockie), the Deadmarsh heir. Roger is a firecracker, and though but a child, is a well-read one (reared on the mystical and often blood-soaked legends from both sides of his lineage, Welsh and English), which has resulted in his having an extremely vivid imagination. Sometimes, this can be problematic, but it means that Roger hasn’t yet been poisoned against the fantastical, or robbed of his sense of wonder. Since he has no trouble accepting the inexplicable at face value, he is quicker to understand and recognize the dangers the creatures tearing out of the Otherworld and into our own pose to himself and his family than the adults—and those who supposedly have all the answers—surrounding him. He also has a wry bent to his personality, and a stubborn streak, that help and hinder him in various ways as the book progresses. And he’s obsessed with dragons. You’ll have to read the novel to discover if this proves fatal to him, and others, or not.

Regarding the heart of the story, the events in Deadmarsh Fey, though cloaked in the garb of fantasy, are truly about fighting for those you love, and all you hold dear. This is the supreme driving force behind Roger’s actions and those of his friends and allies. It’s not just about survival, or stopping the Dark Wreaker—a nebulous entity who has bedeviled the Deadmarshes for seven hundred years—and his army of Jagged Ones and blood-tied horrors, both fair and foul, from being unleashed upon this earth, but about saving the very souls of those who are most important to you, those you’d sacrifice everything for. And that is something that has appealed to me far longer than I can remember, not only in storyweaving, but in life.

Also, whether we are aware of it or not, each of us has a fundamental longing for “home.” By that, I don’t mean a dwelling, but a deep ache in the heart to find the place we truly belong. When it comes to my writing, my “home” has always been in these Otherworlds I have created—perilous realms infected by a darkness hell-bent on destruction…yet these realms are not hopelessly desolate, but seared with beauty and light, peopled by characters who heed the call to lay everything on the line for a chance(sometimes infinitesimal) to defeat the evil that threatens to annihilate everything they  love, for they have realized that their world, though fallen—and not so dissimilar to our own—is worth fighting for. When reading my books, especially Deadmarsh Fey, I hope    you lose yourself in these worlds, that you let go and journey along with the characters, grow attached to them, possibly even become them if only for a brief while—seeing in them a reflection of yourself. And if by doing so you discover what your “home” is, then    that is reward enough, for it will mean I have made the best use of the time that was          given to me.

  1. What was the most surprising thing you learned in creating your characters? 

That I had to trust them enough to let them have free reign. They knew better than I did where to take the story…because it was theirs, and they were living it. All my characters were extremely vivid in my imagination when I began writing the book (save for one or two who materialized out of nowhere mid-novel and drastically changed the course of events), but Kip, and especially Carver, presented themselves to me almost fully formed. I didn’t have to do much of anything with those two, besides let them take center stage and steal whatever scene they were in, which Kip did with dignity and gravitas that would have made the ancestral fylgja, guardian spirit of his family, proud—and Carver did with enough demonic savoir faire to make the devil himself turn green with envy.

I know many people might find it hard to believe, or even slightly crazy, that characters an author creates can became separate flesh and blood entities from his/her imagination, but at a certain point, my characters did, demanded to be let off the lead, and I had no choice but to comply. Trying to maneuver events in an inorganic way, forcing things to go in the direction I thought was best, rather than what the story and characters were calling for, would have stalled the book and turned it into something completely different, and much less cohesive—not to mention deadly dull. To a much, much lesser degree, the characters in my last novel, Corcitura, asserted themselves, too, but never had this happened with such immediacy as it did in Deadmarsh Fey, to the point where I feel that I was just the facilitator for this book. Roger and Company were the real storyweavers, and once I realized this, I passed the tiller into their hands, and let them steer the ship where they willed.    

  1. Why do you feel you had to tell this story? 

There was no way I couldn’t tell this story. Once I made the decision to write Deadmarsh Fey, once my year of confusion had come to an end and I determined the course this saga would take, I was seized. There’s no other way to describe the intensity of emotion that came over me. Not long afterward, once the characters had nudged me out of the way, the book began, essentially, writing itself. I love my first two novels, I always will, but there is something different about Deadmarsh Fey, something unique, that I didn’t experience when writing these earlier books. With this novel, I discovered what I was meant to write—fantasy, or rather, dream-sagas, as my beloved has christened them. There is a quote by J. R. R. Tolkien, who has been a defining force and inspiration not only on my writing, but also in my life, that struck me when I first heard it more than a decade ago, because I agree with him completely: “Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory.” I’ve always understood him to mean that fantasy writers craft what we do not to escape our world, but to understand it. By losing myself in my invented universes, worlds that mirror our own in strange and startling and often unsettlingly familiar ways, I feel I have found where I truly belong, finally fulfilling the gnomic wisdom Gandalf spoke to Frodo, and, unknowingly, to me, those several years ago. 

  1. What was the most magical thing that happened while creating Roger? 

This was an especially hard question for me to answer, and intensely personal. I started out with one response, which I still think is partially valid, but a few days ago, it came to me—quite suddenly, shockingly, and with no small degree of heartache—that Roger and I had a much deeper bond than I’d realized until something of a personal nature happened to me this week that brought painfully intense emotions I’d been unknowingly suppressing rushing to the surface. It wasn’t a pretty picture when this happened, but it was necessary, and cathartic, and gave me tremendous clarity about this character and what he really means to me—and revealed why I had always felt so much love, tenderness, and compassion toward Roger when I was creating him, and do till this day.

To begin with, I originally believed the most magical thing that had happened when I wrote Roger into being was that I became him in so many ways. It was a natural thing to have occurred—and I’m sure many authors feel the same way about their creations—since Roger was my main protagonist. But he always, strangely, felt more like my own flesh and blood than any other character I’d ever created before, and it wasn’t only because Deadmarsh Fey is told in third person, restricted, which means I, perforce, had to see everything through Roger’s eyes—all that was glorious and nightmarish, good and evil, one more often than not masquerading as the other and making it nearly impossible to distinguish friend from foe. Yes, I had to put myself into the shoes of this ten year old English child who was obsessed with dragons. Yes, I had to imagine what his reactions to things literally out of this world would be. And yes, most imperative of all, I had to know him better than I knew myself, and needed to do so in order to make him live and breathe on the page and be real not only to me, but to anyone who ever chose to read his story and journey by his side into the perilous realm he called home.

But it wasn’t until very recently that I realized, with the force of a punch to my heart, just why Roger had always been so dear to me. Without delving into too much detail, for over a decade, I endured a very desolate period of misdiagnoses and wrong information regarding a health issue that has a chance to be fully resolved in the coming weeks, and was told throughout these preceding years that many things I had always dreamed of, many joyous events most women, I imagine, would want to happen in their lives, would not be possible for me to experience. During this extended dark night of the soul, my books became a lifeline, an outlet into which I could pour my heart and being, and never more did I do this than with Deadmarsh Fey…because of Roger, even if the full realization of why wasn’t brought home to me till seventy two hours ago when I finally understood the reason it felt so right for me to have always thought of him as my flesh and blood, although I never phrased it like that to myself till then, nor had I been aware that any name needed to be given to the feelings unconsciously caged within my heart.

After an intense few days of soul-searching, anguish, and tears—lots of tears—I finally understand why Roger is so precious to me, and why I feel so close to him, even still. In him, I saw the son I hoped to have one day, and believed I never would be able to. Revealing this to my beloved (who was with me when the dam holding back my suppressed emotions broke), reflecting upon it, and discussing how it had affected me without my knowledge, until the events of this week triggered clarity of mind, touched him deeply and opened up a way of thinking that made immediate and incredible sense to me, and allowed me to realize that I can now let Roger go. Watching this literary child of mine mature and grow in successive books will be vital for me—and part of the healing process, I suspect—but I understand, now, that while I will always love Roger, and he will forever be in my heart, my love doesn’t have to be confined to just my literary son. One day, it can be given to the real child whose very existence  need no longer be a nebulous and unattainable dream.       

  1. If you could introduce one of your characters to any character from another book, who would it be and why? 

I considered having Roger meet Smaug, but quickly came to my senses. Tolkien’s beast isn’t exactly the nicest of souls (Need I bring up the whole “I am Fire! I am Death!” thing?), and having a dragon-mad child obsessed with conscripting a fire-breather, any fire-breather he could get his hands on, into one insane scheme after another—a child determined not to take no for an answer—would have resulted in Roger being torched into a little pile of ash in two seconds flat.

Then I contemplated initiating a meeting between Roger and Puddleglum from C. S. Lewis’s The Silver Chair (my third favorite Narnia book after The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and The Magician’s Nephew), but Roger would have gotten fed up with the marsh-wiggles’s doldrummy woe-is-me-ness after about 6.9 minutes.

In the end, I settled on Bagheera of Jungle Book fame, who just so happens to have earned a passing, and incredibly sarcastic, mention from Master Coffyn in Chapter 19 of Deadmarsh Fey. I’ve been fond of Bagheera for most of my life, ever since I first saw the animated Jungle Book when I was a very young child. He’s just so lordly and majestic, wise and, let’s be honest, awesome. Another reason for my admiration is that I love cats, especially black ones, but because I’m slightly allergic to them, I have had to express my affection for these beautiful creatures from a distance by putting them into my novels, hence the reason Kip plays such a huge and pivotal role in Deadmarsh Fey.

And that brings me to why I’d want Roger and Bagheera to meet. Kip definitely has his own distinct personality—he presented himself to me almost fully formed, as I mentioned above, after all—but while I had many inspirations for my cat, this panther was a defining influence on him. Roger and Kip share a tremendous bond—a bond initiated before the events in Deadmarsh Fey take place and solidified as the story progresses—and Roger having a chance to get acquainted with a character I consider to be Kip’s literary older brother would be a visceral reinforcement of what the boy already knows, that even though Kip is, as Roger thinks at one point, a “compact little animal,” the cat, like Bagheera, has a panther’s heart, strong and fierce and fearless, and would never back down from defending those he loves when they are threatened, be it by a Jagged One or Shere Khan, it matters not. And here’s something that didn’t occur to me until this very moment…Mowgli and Roger are the same age, and, though endearing, are each quite a handful—not to mention that there are forces at work that would love nothing more than to see both boys dead—so if Kip went along to this meeting, ye gods would he and Bagheera have loads to commiserate about!

  1. What are some of your current and future projects that you can share with us? 

My current project is the sequel to Deadmarsh Fey—set seven years later—and the second novel in Dwellers of Darkness, Children of Light. Several times in Deadmarsh Fey, I mentioned the Vickers family, particularly Isobel, the youngest daughter, who is Roger’s contemporary and good friend. Near the end of the novel, Isobel’s and her family’s link to the Deadmarshes, and the beings hunting them, is hinted at, and, to a certain extent, revealed to Roger in a shocking way. What he discovers leads directly into book two, Isobel’s story, which takes place on a desolate rock called Cutwater Island. Here there be sharks, and demons of the deep. And a creature whose memory is as fathomless as its desire for revenge.

Once the sequel to Deadmarsh Fey has been completed, I will be working on the next two novels in Dwellers of Darkness, Children of Light. All the books already have titles, but these are rather sensitive, so I’m holding them in reserve till I announce the publication of each novel. 

  1. Have you ever been really freaked out by something on the internet? If so, what?

Oh, good heavens, YES! And fairly recently, too! I blame my beloved. It was entirely his fault! Imagine me pointing an accusatory finger at him right now. To be fair, though, I went along enthusiastically when he suggested we watch scary videos on YouTube. It’s nice to shiver with the one you love, which was the motivation behind this temporary derangement of ours. We started out quite innocently enough with UFO videos, which were more strange and interesting than scary, and ridiculously tame compared to what came next…

After we’d reached marginal utility in the flying saucer department, this video suddenly—and very sinisterly, in hindsight—materialized on the suggested videos sidebar. It was called, “Top 10 Most Shocking and Unexplainable Happenings Ever to Be Caught on Camera!” or some other such bombastic, and impossible-to-resist, title. By that point, feeling a little disappointed that the UFO videos had failed to scar us for life, we were game for anything, and also kind of high on ourselves, I have to admit, for apparently having such nerves of steel. It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that our attitude toward the supernatural in that moment could be boiled down to, “Us? Us? Get scared by that? HA!” and so we (stupidly) clicked on this new devilry, to use a turn of phrase coined by Boromir (And we all remember what happened to him…).

To say we made a mistake is the understatement of the millennium. This video, this Ring-esque horrorfest masquerading as CCTV  footage, reduced us to quaking little puddling messes, what with its ghosts shrieking out of hotel rooms, its phantom orderlies flashing by in the ER, the spectral girl wearing a blood red dress appearing in the middle of an alley somewhere in Taiwan, a “possessed” woman—who let out primal shrieks every five seconds as if she were being internally roasted alive by a legion of devils—contorting and flailing about in a supermarket aisle; a brace of freaky, seven foot tall men without eyebrows, dressed all in black and bearing an uncanny resemblance to the Blues Brothers, wandering around lobbies…and the pièce de résistance of Fright Night 2018—a skin-shivering, blood-curdling, knee-knocking, absolutely TERRIFYING clip of a girl in an elevator in China, I believe—I have no intention of opening myself up to a second near hysterical fit for accuracy’s sake by rewatching this abominable video—that was so unsettling because she seemed to be gibbering at someone, frightened of someone, arguing with, hunted by, and having a very disturbing conversation with someone…only nobody was there! Gooseflesh is breaking out all over me as I type this! And then the narrator butts in and says, in a calm and totally detached voice, that this girl was discovered dead in a vat a few days later, her clothes neatly folded on the ground, and that this story was the inspiration for the film Dark Water, which, needless to say, my beloved and I have no intention of ever watching. Sleep being elusive for one interminable evening was quite enough, thanks very much. Give us June Carter and Johnny Cash songs, Monty Python sketches, and political videos for our YouTube dates any night of the week. We’ve learned our lesson, and how! *shudders*

  1. If I came to your house and looked in your attic/closet/basement, what’s the one thing that would surprise me the most?

If you looked in my attic, you’d be stunned by the overwhelming plethora of pumpkins and scarecrows and Christmas decorations that are stuffed in there. If you looked in my closet, you’d see a lot of clothes and dresses that I keep forgetting I own. I mean this; over the last few months, I’ve discovered not one, but two rather fetching dresses that I had no memory of ever buying. The tags were even still on them! If you looked in my basement, I’d be really surprised, because I don’t have one…that I know of! What’s it like? Are there Morlocks living down there? Tell me, Jean! I’m sensing the beginnings of a new novel, here…

  1. Most horrifying dream you have ever had?

A seven foot tall E.T. dressed as the Grim Reaper, emerging from my bathroom in the dead of night with murderous intent, scythe in hand. I was about five years old when I had this dream, and E.T. and I didn’t make peace until fairly recently. Now I’m quite fond of the freakish yet adorable little tree stump, but our relationship was a bit strained for several years, to say the least.

  1. Which incident in your life has totally changed the way you think today? 

Meeting my beloved has not only changed the way I think about everything—my past, my present, my future, my joys and sorrows, setbacks and triumphs—but has irrevocably changed my life, as well. Loving him, and receiving his love in return, has made me a fuller person—complete—and has led to me knowing myself better than I ever did before. I find it astonishing how in tune we are. Here’s just one of many examples I can share…we have the same crazy and unbelievably random (And I mean RANDOM! I’m thinking of one in particular right now that knocked us both flat by proving just what a couple of complete born-to-be-together weirdoes we truly are) thoughts, and blurt them out at the exact same moment! I have lost count of how often this has happened, but it’s pretty much a daily occurrence, and has been for quite some time.

Being in tune in so many ways has been a hallmark of our relationship since our earliest days. Our very first conversation had sparks shooting off between us when we both revealed a mutual love for the Eddas, everything Germanic and Saga-inspired…and I confessed to him my obsession with JAWS and sharks in general—and he didn’t flinch! He’s exposed me to so many wonderful things, some of my favorites being music—he has fantastic taste—and philosophers, the one impacting me the most to date being Henry Corbin, whose ideas matched up so perfectly with concepts I had been mulling over for thirteen years but never had a name for till my beloved shared this luminous thinker with me. Our oneness of spirit has grown deeper with each passing hour as we’ve shared our lives with each other—all the important things and the silliest ones, too, and been there for each other in the best and worst of times—and we’ve continuously discovered, more and more every day, how beautifully and miraculously our souls, and thoughts, chime in harmony. And it’s uncanny how he knows exactly what articles to send me, because no matter what they’re about (from the sagas to politics, and everything in between), I devour them and find myself forever exclaiming, “Yes! Yes, that’s what I was thinking! This is what I have always believed!” and tapping into a wellspring of inspiration that has long lain dormant, till he shares with me something he knew I’d love, knew would be the spark needed to kindle my thoughts and ignite them into being. This happened just last week, and because of what I read in the essay my beloved sent me, because the thoughts of the writer echoed in my soul and literally roused the Bear hibernating there, a story arc which I’d been struggling with for over a year found resolution, came full circle, and changed the course of one of the books in Dwellers of Darkness, Children of Light entirely.

Another thing I find absolutely wondrous is how he’s opened my mind to so many things I was very closed off to before, very biased against, in fact, and made me view the world, especially history, differently. Yet he’s also reinforced beliefs I already held, making them stronger and richer and more defined in my heart and soul. He encourages me and I him to become the people he and I were put on this earth to be, which I think is a rare and beautiful aspect of our relationship, and something we are blessed to share. And even in areas where our beliefs diverge—religion, for example, which has never been an issue for us—we still have commonality, because we both have an appreciation and respect for the Divine, and see it at work in our lives. We enrich each other—never tearing down, always building up, for we realize how precious a gift love is, and are very grateful to have found one another at long last. We’re passionate advocates of each other’s writing, too. His background is philosophy, and I am not being biased when I say he’s brilliant, and not just in this field, but in many other areas, as well. Just don’t get him going on Richard III or he’ll recite the entire Shakespearean tragedy from the beginning! My little playful ribbing aside, every time we speak, each moment we’re together, I am continually inspired in every way, and I cannot even begin to tell you how having his unconditional support and love across all areas of my life has changed it, and me, so profoundly.

I’m amazed anew every day by all of this—amazed anew each day by him—and am incredibly, eternally, grateful to have him in my life, to have been blessed with such a glorious soulmate, whom I love with all my heart. He truly is the greatest gift God could have ever given to me.

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Hi Everyone,

Yes, you read that right! The Kindle edition of my newly released dark fantasy novel, Deadmarsh Fey, is free from now until Sunday night at 11:59 PDT.  During this promotion, you can download the novel across all Amazon sites by clicking on the following links:

Amazon US

Amazon UK

cover

Flesh and bone and hearts unknown, lead to the rath and your fate will be shown…

Deadmarsh. The name struck terror into the hearts of all who heard it. But to Roger Knightley, neither Deadmarsh the house, nor Deadmarsh the family, had ever been anything to fear. Nearly each summer of his young life had been spent in that manor on the moors, having wild adventures with his cousin, Lockie, the Deadmarsh heir. This year should have been no different, but when Roger arrives, he finds everything, and everyone, changed. The grounds are unkempt, the servants long gone. Kip, the family cat, has inexplicably grown and glares at Roger as if he is trying to read the boy’s mind. Roger’s eldest cousin, Travers, always treated as a servant, now dresses like a duchess and wears round her neck a strange moonstone given to her by someone known as Master Coffyn, who has taken over the teaching of Lockie at a school in Wales called Nethermarrow.

And soon after he crosses the threshold of Deadmarsh, Roger discovers that Coffyn has overtaken Lockie. The boy is deceitful, riddled with fear, and has returned bearing tales of creatures called Jagged Ones that claim to be of the Fey and can somehow conceal themselves while standing in the full light of the moon. What they want with Lockie, Roger cannot fathom, until the horror within his cousin lashes out, and it becomes savagely clear that these Jagged Ones and the Dark Wreaker they serve are not only after Lockie and Travers, but Roger, too.

Joining forces with an ally whose true nature remains hidden, Roger seeks to unravel the tapestry of lies woven round his family’s connection to the death-haunted world of Everl’aria—and the Dark Wreaker who calls it home. The deeper Roger delves into the past, the more he begins to suspect that the tales of dark deeds done in the forest behind Deadmarsh, deeds in which village children made sacrifice to an otherworldly beast and were never seen or heard from again, are true. And if there is truth in these outlandish stories, what of the rumor that it was not an earthquake which rocked the moors surrounding Deadmarsh sixteen years ago, but a winged nightmare attempting to break free of its underground prison? Enlisting the aid of a monster equipped with enough inborn firepower to blast his enemies into oblivion might be as suicidal as Roger’s friends insist, yet the boy knows he needs all the help he can get if there is to be any hope of defeating not only the Dark Wreaker and his servants, but an unholy trinity known as the Bear, the Wolf, and the Curse That Walks The Earth.

And then there is the foe named Blood Wood, who might be the deadliest of them all.

Racing against time, Roger must find a way to end the battle being waged across worlds before the night of Lockie’s eleventh birthday—two days hence. If he fails, blood will drown the earth. And Roger and his entire family will fulfill the prophecy of fey’s older, more lethal meaning…

Fated to die.

Best wishes,

~Melika

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Get City of Lights for Free this Weekend!

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Posted by Melika Dannese Hick in Fun Stuff, Giveaway Announcement, Missives, News, Updates

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Hi Everyone!

Now through Sunday at 11:59 PM PDT, you can download the Kindle edition of City of Lights: The Trials and Triumphs of Ilyse Charpentier for free across all Amazon.com sites! This book will always be very dear to my heart, since it was my first ever completed (at the age of 18) and published novel. You can get your copy by clicking on the following links:

Amazon US

Amazon UK

City of Lights: The Trials and Triumphs of Ilyse Charpentier

 

What would you risk for the love of a stranger?

Ilyse Charpentier, a beautiful young chanteuse, is the diva of the 1894 Parisian cabaret scene by night and the unwilling obsession of her patron, Count Sergei Rakmanovich, at every other waking moment.

Though it has always been her secret desire, Ilyse’s life as “La Petite Coquette” of the Paris stage has turned out to be anything but the glamorous existence she had dreamt of as a girl. As a young woman, Ilyse has already suffered tragedy and become estranged from her beloved brother, Maurice, who blames her for allowing the Count to drive them apart.

Unhappy and alone, Ilyse forces herself to banish all thoughts of independence until the night Ian McCarthy waltzes into her life. Immediately taken with the bold, young, British expatriate, Ilyse knows it is time to choose:  will she break free and follow her heart or will she remain a slave to her patron’s jealous wrath for the rest of her life?

Best wishes,

~Melika

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Get Corcitura for Free This Weekend!

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Posted by Melika Dannese Hick in Book Spotlight, Corcitura Feature, Fun Stuff, Giveaway Announcement, Missives

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1888, 19th century, Amazon, Amazon.com, anne rice, antestheria, Augustin Boroi, best friend, betrayal, black cats, black winged beast, blogger, bloggers, book, book feature, books, Books In My Belfry, children of light, children of vampires, Constantinos, corcitura, Corcitura feature, Cover, Deadmarsh, Deadmarsh Fey, deal, devil, Dracula, draculaesque, Eastern Europe, England, Eric Bradburry, Europe, female author, female vampires, female werewolves, female writers, Folies Bergère, France, free, freebie, French, Friendship, Germany, giveaway, good and evil, good vs evil, Goodreads, gothic, gothic novel, Grand Tour, Greece, grey wolves, hammer, historical fiction, hybrid, hybrid vampires, Indie, inspiration, Jack the Ripper, Kindle, kindle giveaway, Leonora, Leonora Bianchetti, lies, life, London, lord of the rings, Love, Luc, maddie, Madelaine Bradburry, marked, melika, Melika Dannese Lux, news, novel, novels, original, Paranormal, Paris, professor fertig, promotion, Review, Romania, Romanian, Russia, scary, scary vampires, silver-tongued devil, Sorina Boroi, steal of a deal, Stefan, Stefan Belododia, Stefan Ratliff, supernatural, supernatural thriller, Suspense, terror, these vampires don't sparkle, Thriller, Tolkien, Tollers and Jack, truth, Twilight, Twitter, vampire fiction, Vampire Hunter, vampire mythology, vampire mythos, vampires, vampiresses, vampiric, vampiric equality, vampiric transformation, vampirism, vamps, varney, Vladec, Vladec Salei, Vrykolakas, Werewolf, werewolf transformation, Whitechapel, writer, writing, young writer, Zigmund, Zigmund Fertig

Hi Everyone!

Beginning tonight on Amazon.com at 12 AM PDT and running through Sunday night at 11:59 PDT, you can download the Kindle edition of Corcitura for free! Once the sale commences, just click here to get your copy. 🙂

Corcitura

Corcitura.  Some call it hybrid, others half-blood, mongrel, beast.  They are all names for the same thing:  vampire—the created progeny of the half-wolf, half-vampire, barb-tongued Grecian Vrykolakas, and the suave but equally vicious Russian Upyr.  Corcitura:  this is what happens when a man is attacked by two vampires of differing species.  He becomes an entirely new breed—ruthless, deadly, unstoppable…almost.

London, 1888:  Eric Bradburry and Stefan Ratliff, best friends since childhood, have finally succeeded in convincing their parents to send them on a Grand Tour of the Continent.  It will be the adventure of a lifetime for the two eighteen-year-old Englishmen, but almost from the moment they set foot on French soil, Eric senses a change in Stefan, a change that is intensified when they cross paths with the enigmatic Vladec Salei and his traveling companions:  Leonora Bianchetti, a woman who fascinates Eric for reasons he does not understand, and the bewitching Augustin and Sorina Boroi—siblings, opera impresarios, and wielders of an alarming power that nearly drives Eric mad.

Unable to resist the pull of their new friends, Eric and Stefan walk into a trap that has been waiting to be sprung for more than five hundred years—and Stefan is the catalyst.  Terrified by the transformation his friend is undergoing, Eric knows he must get Stefan away from Vladec Salei and Constantinos, the rabid, blood-crazed Vrykolakas, before Stefan is changed beyond recognition.  But after witnessing a horrific scene in a shadowed courtyard in Eastern Europe, Eric’s worst fears are confirmed.

Six years removed from the terror he experienced at the hands of Salei and Constantinos, Eric finally believes he has escaped his past.  But once marked, forever marked, as he painfully begins to understand.  He has kept company with vampires, and now they have returned to claim him for their own.

All the best,

~Melika

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Last Chance to Win a Copy of Corcitura Before Halloween!

25 Friday Oct 2013

Posted by Melika Dannese Hick in Book Spotlight, Corcitura Feature, Fun Stuff, Giveaway Announcement, News, Updates

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Giveaway Banner

Many thanks to the fabulous Jesse @ Pretty in Fiction for featuring Corcitura this week—and creating such a spooktacular giveaway banner! And speaking of that banner…if you click on it, you will be taken to Jesse’s site, where you can read some behind-the-scenes info about Corcitura and also enter the giveaway for your chance to bring my vampires home! In a completely literary sense, of course. You wouldn’t want them to show up in the flesh. Trust me on this one. :}

Good luck! 😀

Best wishes,

Me Sig!

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Exclusive Excerpt: Madelaine and the Vampires

20 Sunday Oct 2013

Posted by Melika Dannese Hick in Author Spotlight, Book Spotlight, Corcitura Feature, Excerpts, Fun Stuff, Giveaway Announcement, Missives, News, Updates

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1888, 1894, 2013, ashes, barbed tongue, belfry, Belododia, best friends, blog, Blog Tour, bloggers, book, books, Books In My Belfry, browish-grey wolves, brutal, Carmilla, conversation with death, corcitura, creepy, crumble, damned soul, devil, Dracula, draculaesque, drugged, Eastern Europe, England, Eric, Eric Bradburry, Erin Al-Mehairi, Excerpt, exclusive, eyes of a wolf, fall, fall reads, familiar, fathers and sons, female vampires, filmy residue, Fin de siècle, first person present tense, forest, Friendship, gaslit, glowing, gone, good hunting, Goodreads, gothic, gothic novel, Grand Tour, Greece, green, grey wolves, Greydanus, halloween, Halloween reads, hand, historical fiction, horror, husband, hybrid vampires, if you love scary vampires, Kindle, kindle copy giveaway, kindle giveaway, Le Fanu, leaves, Leonora, Leonora Bianchetti, London, Luc, maddie, Madelaine Bradburry, Madelaine Dennison, Melika Dannese Lux, my son, novels, november reads, october 2013, october reads, Oh for the hook of a book, Polidori, pov, Prague, professor fertig, rafflecopter, rafflecopter giveaway, Romania, scary vampires, spout, Stefan Ratliff, terrifying, Upyr, vampires, vamps, Venice, Vladec Salei, Vrykolakas, werewolf transformation, werewolves, wolf, wolf infestation, wolves, woman, woods, writing, Zigmund, Zigmund Fertig

*drum roll* Well, here it is! I’ve been wanting to let Maddie have her say for the longest time, and, today, she speaks! Be sure to stop by Oh, For the Hook of a Book to read this never before released exclusive excerpt and “be there” as Maddie has a conversation with death and sees something familiar in the eyes of a wolf:

http://hookofabook.wordpress.com/2013/10/20/exclusive-creepy-excerpt-of-teaster-chapter-from-melika-luxs-corcitura-a-gothic-vampire-read/

And don’t forget to enter the giveaway before you leave!

http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/share-code/OTg4YjQzMDA1MjEzZWRlNTcyNmZkNjQyMzFkYjE2OjM=/

Best wishes,

Me Sig!

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Corcitura is part of Paranormal Palooza! :D

16 Wednesday Oct 2013

Posted by Melika Dannese Hick in Author Spotlight, Book Spotlight, Corcitura Feature, Fun Stuff, Giveaway Announcement, News, Updates

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172 hours on the moon, 1888, 1894, 2013, aberrant, barbed tongue, best friends, blog, blogging, Books In My Belfry, corcitura, crime and punishment, divergent, Dracula, draculaesque, dystopian, Eastern Europe, edward robert hughes, England, Eric Bradburry, Facebook, female vampires, Fin de siècle, France, Friendship, giveaway, Goodreads, gothic, gothic novel, Grand Tour, Greece, halloween, Halloween reads, historical fiction, hybrid vampires, Indie, Indie Life, Leonora Bianchetti, London, Madelaine Bradburry, Madelaine Dennison, margaret atwood, Melika Dannese Lux, moirai, NA lit, New Adult Lit, New adult literature, novels, october, Paranormal Palooza, Paris, Prague, Romania, Ruth Silver, Stefan Ratliff, Suzanne Collins, The Handmaid's Tale, the hunger games, Twitter, Upyr, vampires, Venice, veronica roth, Vladec Salei, Vrykolakas, werewolf transformation, werewolves, write away bliss, Writeawaybliss.com, YA, ya dystopian novel, Young Adult, young adult lit, Zigmund Fertig

A big thank you to the fabulously talented Ruth Silver (author of Aberrant and Moirai) for hosting Corcitura today as part of the month long, blog-wide Paranormal Palooza event! Head on over to Ruth’s site to learn what my top 10 fave books are (plus a few extras!), read an all new interview, and enter the Corcitura giveaway for your chance to bring home a Kindle copy of the novel, just in time for Halloween! And, really, what’s more Halloweeney than vampires, I ask you? 😉

Here’s the link!

http://writeawaybliss.com/corcitura-by-melika-dannese-lux/

Please continue to spread the word! 😀

Best wishes,

Me Sig!

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Craving a fangtastic vampire read? Then enter the Corcitura giveaway!

07 Monday Oct 2013

Posted by Melika Dannese Hick in Book Spotlight, Corcitura Feature, Fun Stuff, Giveaway Announcement, News, Updates

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1888, 1894, 2013, A Little Bit of R&R, barbed tongue, best friends, blog, blood, Books In My Belfry, corcitura, craving, cries blood, Dracula, Eastern Europe, England, Eric Bradburry, feature, female vampires, Fin de siècle, France, Friendship, giveaway, Goodreads, gothic, gothic novel, Grand Tour, Greece, halloween, halloween read, historical fiction, horror, hybrid vampires, Leonora Bianchetti, London, Madelaine Bradburry, Madelaine Dennison, mayhem, Melika Dannese Lux, Mystery, New adult literature, new adult novels, novels, october, Paris, Prague, Ren, Romania, spotlight, spread the word, Stefan Ratliff, supernatural, supernatural mayhem, supernatural thriller, Upyr, Vladec Salei, Vrykolakas, werewolf transformation, werewolves, writing, Zigmund Fertig

Many thanks to the lovely Ren @ A Little Bit of R&R for spotlighting Corcitura and hosting a giveaway today! Make sure to enter within the next twenty days for your chance to bring home a Kindle copy (US only) of Corcitura—perfect reading for this time of year. Hybrid vampires, werewolves that are so much more than what they seem, supernatural mayhem and mystery…and a little boy who cries blood. Sound like a great Halloween read? Then what are you waiting for?!

Here’s the link: http://alittlebitofrnr.com/spotlight-giveaway-corcitura-by-melika-dannese-lux/

Please spread the word! 😀

Best wishes,

Me Sig!

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Melika’s Top 10 & Corcitura Giveaway at I Read Indie!

22 Monday Jul 2013

Posted by Melika Dannese Hick in Author Spotlight, Corcitura Feature, Excerpts, Fun Stuff, Giveaway Announcement, News

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1888, 1894, 2005, 2013, Agatha Christie, As Time Goes By, barbed tongue, bbc, bbc detective and mystery shows, bbc sitcom, best friends, bird and baby, bleeding love, Books In My Belfry, C. S. Lewis, caesar's palace, campion, celine dion, Charles Dickens, Charlotte Bronte, children of light, chocolate chip pumpkin spice cookies, City of Lights, classic, classic actors, classic actresses, classically trained, classics, computer, corcitura, danny kaye, David Copperfield, dwellers of darkness, eagle and child, Eastern Europe, England, epic music, Eric Bradburry, faith, fall, fantasy, fave season, fave singer, female vampires, Fin de siècle, Friendship, Gandalf, gandalf the grey, ghostly dinner party, Gladiator, God, gollum, Goodreads, grace kelly, Grand Tour, Greece, Greer Garson, gregory peck, guilty pleasure, halloween, Hanging by a moment, historical fiction, hobbit, Humphrey Bogart, hybrid vampires, I Read Indie, Ian McCarthy, Ilyse Charpentier, Indie Authors, inspector alleyn, inspector lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, jack, jack lewis, james cagney, jamie hathaway, jarlsberg cheese, JAWS, jeeves, joan hickson, Judi Dench, last of the mohicans, Lauren Bacall, Leona Lewis, Leonora Bianchetti, Lifehouse, London, long-hand, Lux Aeterna, macabre, Madelaine Bradburry, Madelaine Dennison, Master and Commander, maureen o'hara, Melika Dannese Lux, Midsomer Murders, Miss Marple, netflix, ngaio marsh, Oxford, Paris, pianist, Pic 'n Save, Prague, promentory, Robin Hood, Romania, Rosemary & Thyme, rue de rivoli, russell crowe, sea shanties, Shark Week, Sharks, singers, soprano, Stefan Ratliff, streaming, The Hobbit, the inklings, the legend of sleepy hollow, The Lord of the Rings, the turn of the screw, tollers, tommy & tuppence, Two Steps from Hell, tyrone power, uendelig, UK penguin, vampires, Venice, violinist, vivien leigh, Vladec Salei, Vrykolakas, w. h. smith english booksellers, werewolf transformation, werewolves, writing, young author, Zigmund Fertig

It’s time for some fun on this Monday morning! Today, my Top 10 is being featured on the fabulous blog, I Read Indie. Many thanks to the equally fabulous Mandy for letting me hop on over to her site and share a little bit about myself and Corcitura! It was great fun! 😀

As a bonus, I am also giving away two Kindle copies of Corcitura to US residents! Follow the link to enter in the next six days for your chance to win:

http://twimom101bookblog.blogspot.com/2013/07/a-fabulous-top-10-with-melika-dannese.html

And while you’re there, check out a rather sanguinary excerpt from Corcitura.

Cheers!

Melika

Top 10 Reposted!

1. Fav song/singer?

My favorite song is usually whatever I’m listening to while writing. Sometimes, a scene calls for absolute silence, while at others, it’s nice to have something pumping in the background to get the ideas flowing. For City of Lights: The Trials and Triumphs of Ilyse Charpentier, I listened to Lifehouse’s Hanging by A Moment. This song was a tremendous inspiration for me and became Ilyse and Ian’s anthem. For Corcitura, I listened mainly to Promentory from the Last of the Mohicans soundtrack when I was writing dramatic/conflict or chase scenes (the constant beat really helped focus my thoughts) and then Bleeding Love by Leona Lewis when I wrote a death scene for one of the vampires in the book. Given the sanguinary nature of the lyrics, I thought it was appropriate. 😉

For the dystopian/fantasy novel I began last year (and am still working on), I wrote the entire prologue while listening to Lux Aeterna (the version with LOTR-esque percussion and vocals). My gosh, that song is great background music when you’re writing about gargantuan beasts attacking in all their terrible grandeur! So fitting. For the other two chapters that I’ve written so far, I listened to the Gladiator soundtrack and other epic music compilations I discovered on YouTube.

Currently, for Uendelig (the first book in Dwellers of Darkness, Children of Light, an eight part series of loosely connected novellas in which young adults battle against creatures and fantastical beings from the otherworld that have crossed the void and ended up in our own), I haven’t been listening to anything while writing the opening chapters, but when I get to the draugr scene toward the end of the book, I know I’ll be digging into my stockpile of epic music to find something worthy for battle. 😉

Celine Dion has been my favorite singer since I was eight years old. I was lucky enough to see her in concert at Caesar’s Palace in 2005. Some singers sound terrible live, but Celine sounded amazing, even better than she does on her CDs. She was also really interactive and did quite a bit of dancing and kept up an incredible energy and excitement level throughout the whole show. It was a tremendous experience, and one that I’ll never forget!

2. Fav season?

Definitely fall. Just the feel of it. You can almost sense that it’s time to break out The Turn of the Screw for a millionth reread. Or is that just me? 😉 I love the crispness in the air, the glorious burnt orange and golden hued leaves, the carte blanche you have to read all the scary/classic Halloweeney books (think The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, etc.) you want and classify them as “seasonal reading” without making all your Goodreads friends wonder if you’ve been bitten by a vampire and somehow developed strangely macabre reading tastes. 😉 Plus, fall also means I get to bake these delicious chocolate chip pumpkin spice cookies that have become a tradition with me over the last few years.

3. Worst vacation?

I haven’t had one yet, thank goodness, although when I visited Paris in 2004, my hotel room was the size of a shoebox. There was also only ONE iron in the entire hotel, as we discovered when the concierge knocked on our door the second day we were there and asked for it back! But that’s beside the point. The important thing was, I was in Paris, and apart from the smallness of the hotel, the location was fantastic! I spent most of my time seeing the sights and wandering around the Rue de Rivoli, making daily stops at W. H. Smith English Booksellers. They were running a £2 for £5 and £3 for £10 sale, so I stocked up on all the UK Penguin editions of the Jeeves novels that weren’t available back home. I would go back to Paris just to shop there! 😉

4. Guilty pleasure?

British detective & mystery shows. I can’t get enough of them! Midsomer Murders was the show that launched me on this trajectory three and a half years ago, and I haven’t looked back since, moving on to Miss Marple (with Joan Hickson), Campion, Inspector Alleyn, Rosemary & Thyme, and, my most recent favorite (and probably most favorite of all) Inspector Lewis. As if visiting the haunts of C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien weren’t incentive enough to go to Oxford, there is now the added chance that I might bump into Robbie Lewis and Jamie Hathaway while they are on a case. 😉 Thanks to Netflix (I love you streaming!), I’m currently time-warping back to the 1920s and enjoying Tommy & Tuppence. Such fun, and Tuppy’s hats are amazing!! 😀

5. Fav book and/or author?

David Copperfield. I read this book close to sixteen years ago and can still quote passages and remember scenes vividly. All the suffering and hardships this young 19th century Englishman endured and all the mistakes he made in love and in life transcended the ages and became so relevant to me, a preteen living in the United States in the 20th century. That is truly a testament to the genius of Charles Dickens. It is also what I think makes a book a classic—its timelessness.

My favorite author is Agatha Christie. I’ve read 40 of her books and plan to spend many happy years reading the rest of them. 😀

6. One item you cannot live without?

As a writer, this would definitely be…my computer!!! I cannot even imagine writing a book, let alone a 700 page novel like Corcitura, in longhand. My admiration for Charlotte Bronte and Dickens especially (who was not known for his brevity) has skyrocketed ever since I became a writer. How did they do it?!

7. Hobby?

I’m a classically trained violinist, pianist, and soprano and have been performing since I was three. I wouldn’t call this a hobby, but for something completely frivolous and unbookish, I can probably recite the entire script of Jaws, complete with dialects and sound effects, and enhanced by the singing of various sea shanties! You wouldn’t want to watch the movie with me. I can also do a pretty mean Gollum impersonation, precious.

8. Fav movie/actor/actress?

Jaws. No question. I started watching Shark Week the year it premiered and became fascinated with Jaws around the age of five when I went to Pic ‘n Save and saw the movie poster. I didn’t see the movie in full until I was 15, but I can’t remember a moment when I wasn’t aware of Jaws. It’s been a part of my life for years.

My other favorite movie is The Fellowship of the Ring. I love the whole trilogy, but The Fellowship (and Gandalf) had a direct bearing on my decision to become a writer, so it will always hold a very special place in my heart.

Favorite actor…hmm…how about we do a modern one and one from the past? Russell Crowe for modern (I love him in every movie I’ve seen him in, but am a huge fan of his historical epics  Gladiator, Robin Hood, and Master & Commander), and Danny Kaye, who has provided me with countless hours of laughter since I was a kid. There are also many classic actors I’m a fan of, including Humphrey Bogart, Tyrone Power, James Cagney, and Gregory Peck.

Favorite actress…Judi Dench. Love her! Her movies are great, but I’m a huge fan of her BBC sitcom As Time Goes By. I can watch that show over and over again, and have. I own the complete series (plus the reunion specials) on DVD, and am actually rewatching the final few seasons for what is probably the millionth time. It’s such a great show—like visiting with old friends. 😀

I also love a bevy of classic actresses, too, such as Greer Garson, Vivien Leigh, Lauren Bacall, Maureen O’Hara, and Grace Kelly, just to name a few.

9. Fav food?

Jarlsberg cheese! Give me a handful of Jarlsberg, and I can write for hours.

10. Who would you like to meet? (dead or alive?)

Can’t I invite them all over for a ghostly dinner party and count them as one? No? Ok, then, let me think. I’ll keep it in the authorial realm and settle on C. S. Lewis. Jack! The Chronicles of Narnia have been a constant source of inspiration across all areas of my life for many years. I’ve read and reread my copies of the books to ragged shreds. One of my favorite of Jack’s quotes is “A children’s story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children’s story in the slightest.” I would love to hear him talking about his thought process when creating such magnificent stories that are relevant to both young people and adults, since that is something that I strive to do in my own writing. I would also love to have a deep conversation with him about faith, God, and, of course…The Inklings! Ideally, this chat would take place between us in the “Rabbit Room” at The Eagle and Child. Then Jack could give me a tour of Oxford, where we might just run into Professor Tolkien—and I would make Tollers read the “Riddles in the Dark” scene from the Hobbit in Gollum’s voice. As you can see, I’m determined to meet at least one other person from my phantasmal dinner party. 😉

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New Interview and Corcitura Giveaway at Shut Up and Read!

05 Friday Jul 2013

Posted by Melika Dannese Hick in Author Spotlight, Book Spotlight, Corcitura Feature, Fun Stuff, Giveaway Announcement, News

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Happy Friday, everyone! Many exciting things are happening today! Head on over to Shut Up and Read for my latest interview, in which you will learn about the characters of Corcitura, discover what 80’s fantasy movie caused me to break my ankle as a child, read a brand new excerpt from the novel, and find out the latest news about Uendelig and the other planned works in my eight part novella series, Dwellers of Darkness, Children of Light.

And don’t forget to enter within the next six days for your chance to win one of five Kindle (US only) copies of Corcitura! http://shutupandreadgroup.blogspot.com/2013/07/q-with-melika-dannese-lux.html

Read on for the interview and short excerpt! 😀

1. Tell us a little bit about your main characters.

I had always wanted to try my hand at writing a book with multiple narrators. It’s fascinating how one character can perceive something and another can think he or she is completely insane and see the same events in a whole new light. When I set out to write Corcitura, I decided the best way to tell the story would be to have a trio of narrators pick up the strands and weave them into a tale that spans the years 1888-1895 and about a half dozen locations in Europe and America. Each narrator is interconnected with the others in ways he or she only begins to understand as the story progresses and the mystery deepens.

The lion’s share of the novel is spent with Eric Bradburry, an eighteen-year-old Englishman who embarks on a grand tour of Europe with his best friend, Stefan Ratliff. To Eric, the whole trip is a chance to see the world and possibly have the greatest adventure of his young life. The fact that he and Stefan are striking out on their own for the first time only adds to his rather grand expectations. He and Stefan have been inseparable for years (13, to be exact), and Eric has always trusted Stefan with his life, so when things begin to unravel almost the minute he and Stefan meet up with a coterie of bewitching and otherworldly people in Paris, Eric essentially has to grow up overnight and make several life shattering choices to try and save not only Stefan’s, but his own life and soul as well.

Six years later in Gilded Age New York, we meet Madelaine Dennison, our second narrator. Madelaine is a strong woman who fights for what she wants and is not afraid to speak her mind, even to her father (and this was a dicey thing at best in the Victorian age!), regardless of the consequences. She would literally “go to hell and back and cut off the devil’s head” to save the ones she loves. Madelaine, as one character calls her, is “a brick” and such a vital part of the second half of Corcitura that I don’t know how certain characters would have made it through without her. Can you tell I’m a fan of Miss Dennison? 😉

And then there is Zigmund Fertig. I love all my characters, of course, but Zigmund (the third and final narrator of Corcitura) is my favorite. Don’t tell the others. 😉 The shock and horror he endured at a young age at the hands of a Vrykolakas and the resentment and confusion he carried with him for thirty-odd years endeared him to me most, especially because everything he thought he knew about his parents and what he was a part of in Greece turned out to be a far cry from what really happened. I absolutely LOVED writing his narrative and exploring those feelings/emotions/demons he struggles to overcome, and whether or not he could ever overcome them at all. This conflict was vitally important to the outcome of the stories of all the other characters because their fates were so intertwined with the choices he might make. So Zigmund Fertig will always hold a very special place in my heart.

But, of course, you want to know about the vampires, right? Along with the Upyr and the Vrykolakas who create the Corcitura, there are several female vampiric characters, but I don’t want to ruin the surprise by revealing their identities to you prematurely. If you love seeing female vampire protagonists having a major role in the outcome of a story, then you will love the two in this book. Let’s hear it for the girls! They have enough history and chutzpah to fill volumes more, which is my intended plan. Oh, and, by the way, they also happen to be werewolves, and if that duality doesn’t intrigue you, I don’t know what will!

Finally, there is Greydanus, who has a huge role to play towards the end of the novel. Keep an eye out for him because if I tell you his lineage now, the whole plot will be blown to smithereens. Suffice it to say, the last half of the book hinges on the secret birthright of the little boy who cries blood.

2. How long have you been writing, and when did you first consider yourself an author?

I’ve been writing books since I was fourteen, but I first considered myself an author when I completed a novel at the age of 18. The fact that I had actually finished something that was publishable solidified my decision to pursue this career path.

3. How has your environment/upbringing colored your writing?

The fact that my mother started reading to me when I was in the womb and my father told me wild, not-exactly-verifiable tall tales while I was still in the cradle, really engendered in me an early love for reading. I was also brought up on Classics and some really fantastic literature, which was the first step in causing the writing seeds to germinate from a young age.

Following on from this early fascination with storytelling, a big part of my childhood was spent watching and marveling over fantasy movies and TV shows (Willow, The Neverending Story, Jim Henson’s The Storyteller, and Return to Oz, to name a few). I was a sponge for these films and shows and couldn’t get enough of all their magic and wonder. And to show you how deep my love for these movies ran, at the age of three, I broke my ankle pretending to be Dorothy as she stepped across the rocks to avoid the quicksand. Yes, I was hooked from a very early age. 😉

When it came time to write my first novel, I naturally set it in the fantasy genre. This was the book I began at fourteen but abandoned for school, life, and other projects. However, in July of last year, I broke the manuscript out of the attic and began totally transforming it into a dystopian epic set in a brutal and lawless world. The entire theme and outcome of the story have changed drastically but all the exciting bits (mythical beasts, hidden identities, battles, political intrigue, and some truly horrifying and treacherous villains) are still part of the fabric of the story. With the passage of years, however, everything within the story seems to have more meaning and gravitas to me now. It is definitely not the same book I would have written as a fourteen-year-old, so I am very happy I put the novel on hold.

You should also know that Gandalf is directly responsible for my decision to become a writer. It was all that wizard’s fault! 😉 My mind was made up in the winter of 2001 as I sat in a darkened theater and heard Gandalf the Grey speak the following line to Frodo Baggins:

“All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.”

That was it, and I haven’t looked back since. 🙂

In addition to loving fantasy, I was also a big fan of monsters, vampires in particular, so it was only natural that I would start writing about them, too, one day. A project begun in 2003 was finally finished nine years later with the publication of Corcitura, a 700 page novel about vampires that vampirised me! I remember watching an interview with Elizabeth Kostova once and laughing when I heard her say it took her a decade to write The Historian. At the time, I thought that was insane. A decade to write a single book?! Inconceivable! Serves me right for scoffing at her. 😉

In my current projects, what I’ve noticed is that I’m getting away from historically based novels and going back to my fantasy roots. Not straight or high fantasy, although a few projects down the line, I am planning on beginning work again on a fantasy duology that I’ve been writing on and off since 2003. One of the books in Dwellers of Darkness, Children of Light, an eight part series of loosely connected novellas I’m writing now (the first, Uendelig, will be released in a month or two), actually serves as a prequel to my fantasy duology, set 60 years before the action of the book.

My last two novels were set in our world’s past (City of Lights: The Trials and Triumphs of Ilyse Charpentier being a YA historical romance with a dash of sibling conflict; Corcitura being a combination of many genres, but set within a historical time frame), but even though my upcoming novella series is also set in our world, each story is infused with fantasy and the supernatural, dealing with creatures from the otherworld crossing the void into and wreaking havoc on our own. I love dropping the phantasmal into everyday life and seeing how my characters react—some with horror, some with laughter, others with extreme annoyance, as is the case in one novella with a character who finds it highly inconvenient that his brother is now undead. It’s great fun! 😀

4. What is a Corcitura and where did the idea come from to turn it into a book?

I’m so glad you asked! 😉 Corcitura is the Romanian word for hybrid. It has no vampiric connotations whatsoever, but before I tell you why I chose this as the name for my new creature, how about a little backstory?

A year before I even got the idea for the Corcitura, I had seen a painting that sent my mind reeling with all the possible implications behind it. The painting was “Oh, what’s that in the hollow?” by Edward Robert Hughes.

Oh, what's that in the hollow

I took one look at that painting and screamed “VAMPIRE!” There’s something so morbidly entrancing and enigmatic about that painting. Is he dead? The sheen of his nearly translucent eyes certainly seems to suggest it. But what if he’s just resting until the moon rises? I only recently found out that he is dead! But back then, I was still in the dark, and so I did what all good storytellers do: I totally ignored the inconvenient facts behind the painting and ran roughshod with my inspiration. Those translucent eyes were never far from my mind and inspired me so much that they found life in the book’s eponymous creature.

So, why vampires, after all? Out of all the monsters of myth, vampires had always been my favorites. I had always been fascinated by how they could be suave and alluring on the outside (or when the sun wasn’t up), but with the flick of a barbed tongue, turn into slavering, fang-toothed, bloodsucking beasts. The juxtaposition fascinated me, since in original folklore almost all vampires are essentially plagues. Some just know how to mask their true nature better than others.

I knew if I was going to write about vampires, they’d better be different and intriguing, and since I have always been crazy for folklore from different parts of the world, this idea gave me an excuse to explore vampire mythology. It’s fascinating reading, freaky, but fascinating. Up until this point, I had the rudiments of a novel, but my vampire was content to stay in the background, kicking through my mind until he finally distinguished himself enough to get the story going. Until then, I had nicknamed him “Our Combo,” since he was going to be a hybrid—created after being bitten by two vampires of differing species. Realizing that I couldn’t continue with such a McDonald’s Value Meal sounding name, I took the next step in finding out what the word “hybrid” in Romanian was (since Stefan’s family has a long and torturous history deep in the soil of that country). I have Romanian ancestors, so digging deeper into the country’s myths and legends was an added bonus. When I discovered that corcitura meant hybrid, I thought about it, and since I didn’t like any of the names I’d made up in the interim, it eventually stuck.

Yet the real impetus behind the idea of having the victim be a hybrid came down to one thing: sunlight. Yes, that’s how the whole “combo” idea started—finding a way to make sure my vampire would be able to frolic around during daylight hours without being charred to ashes by the sun’s rays. For three months, I went back and forth on how a vampire could achieve this, during which time I whittled down my choices for favorite vampire candidates. Once I started seeing how different the strengths and weaknesses were, and understanding how much more indestructible the combined blood of two vampires would be (plus the human blood of the original victim), I knew I was on the right path, and settled on the Vrykolakas (from Greece) and the Upyr (from Russia) for the creators of my new vampiric species.

5. What is the best advice you have been given?

One thing I always keep in mind is a quote from St. Catherine of Siena: “Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire.” That quote, and the message behind it, has really helped me to not be swayed by unscrupulous people or other flash in the pan fads and associations in this ever changing and chaotic industry. In the same spirit, the best advice that I’ve been given has come from my parents, loved ones, and other authors whom I admire: be true to yourself and never compromise your principles in your quest to get ahead. In other words, stay grounded!

6. Do you have any hidden talents?

I’m a classically trained violinist, pianist, and soprano and have been performing since I was three. For something completely frivolous, I can probably recite the entire script of Jaws, complete with dialects and sound effects, and enhanced by the singing of various sea shanties! You wouldn’t want to watch the movie with me. I can also do a pretty mean Gollum impersonation, precious.

7. Hard/paperbacks or eBooks?

Both! I publish digitally and in paperback format, and for a while there I never thought I would be comfortable reading on the Kindle. However, I have recently become a huge devotee and seem to be reading more books than ever on a digital device! It’s so convenient and almost like discovering some lost cave of wonders with all the free Classics available on there. I think I’ve just about completed my entire Alexandre Dumas, Wilkie Collins, and Charles Dickens collections thanks to the Kindle. Not only has it saved me thousands of dollars, but my library shelves are thanking me for not weighing them down more than they already are!

While I am excited about Kindle and seem to discover new books every day, I still love the actual feel of a book in my hands and will never totally stop reading or buying physical books. I have too many of them in my library, plus, I also have a colossal collection of bookmarks that would stage a revolt if I ever abandoned them. 😉

8. What book are you reading now?

Sad Cypress by Agatha Christie. I can always count on her to really get my mind puzzling over all those red herrings. Her books are so much fun! 😀

I love to chat with readers and other writers. Please feel free to connect with me on any or all of the following sites:

My web site: https://booksinmybelfry.com/ There are five more excerpts from Corcitura, plus a selection of quotes from each of the three main narrators, available on my web site. I also have a whole host of fun things relating to the book and my other novel and upcoming projects/releases posted there, so be sure to check them out if you’re curious! 😀

My Twitter: https://twitter.com/BooksInMyBelfry

My Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/950456.Melika_Dannese_Lux

My Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/booksinmybelfry/boards/

Short Excerpt

Taken from Corcitura, Chapter 8, A Tavern in Venice

        “A toast to you, my brother,” he said, lifting his glass. “May your eyes be opened on this night, and may you see as you have never seen before. Knowledge is a very powerful thing. Drink and be free.”
       Red light shot through the glass, red light reflected from the candle guttering in its holder above my head. My eyes darted up toward the ceiling. First impressions are tricky things, and mine had been wrong—horribly wrong. There were no angels in these panels. What had I been thinking before? Demons cavorted in a pit of rocks and shattered skulls. Fire licked their hellish bodies as they danced through one torture scene after another. In the center panel, a huge, black-winged beast devoured something that was still kicking as it was being forced down the devil’s gullet.
       How could it still be kicking? Or, more importantly, how could I see it kicking?
       The figures in the panel were moving.
       Their movements were slow, tortured, dreamlike, but real—undeniably real. I watched, entranced, unable to turn away, as one poor soul after another was raked across hot coals or had its ashen flesh stripped by one of the devil’s overseers.
       I put my hand to my mouth, but still my eyes remained riveted to the ceiling. The other panels did nothing to cure my nausea. Eleven horned beasts—looking like crosses between satyrs and devils—formed a circle around a giant creature, half dragon, half man, that held a severed head aloft in its clawed hands. Blood dripped from the stump, falling into the waiting mouths of some of the beasts, as the others caught the liquid in black chalices.
       The fresco was blatantly hellish, but its living replica was even worse.
       I had lied to myself from the very beginning, deceived myself into believing that I was being fanciful and overly imaginative. Surely such monstrosities only existed in nightmares? Yet I had lived through a nightmare these past months, and that was no dream at all.
       I was still fighting against the awful truth, not wanting to give in, searching my mind for a logical explanation—but there was none. And the most horrible realization of all was that I had known, somewhere deep inside, ever since the day I first set eyes on that silver-tongued devil in Paris.
       Plague carrier.
       Living death.
       Drainer of life.
       The phrasing did not matter. No euphemism could strike fear into the hearts of men the way that single word could.
       Vampire.
       And for me, the uninitiated, that single word meant death.

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