a monster or more

by Rain Trueax

In 1992, I wrote my first paranormal, Sky Daughter, where the heroine returned to her grandfather's Idaho mountain after a series of losses. Once there, she learns things about her family that she hadn't expected when she finds her grandmother's Book of shadows-- a witch's compilation of her spells, potions, and experiences. Going against the rules as this book is only to be given to witches, Maggie's grandmother had left it for her with a note inside.

For the first time, Maggie understands why her mother had kept her away from her grandmother. This is only the first of what Maggie is about to discover in a world that isn't at all what she had believed. Something bigger, something unseen is out there. What is it? She has known many emotions, but fear is new to her. As I wrote, I contemplated an important point to the plot-- was what she felt real or her imagination coming from her losses? I reached the point where I had to decide. 

To decide on a possible real monster, I researched stories from people who had come across such, unseen and seen. Their beliefs felt very real but were they? I was leery of writing about monsters for the same reason I do not watch horror movies-- don't want to draw such to my dreams and imagination. Eventually though, the story dictated what had to be.

The monster had to be real. How she would deal with it became as important to the book as the love story involving a stranger who dropped into her world on the run from something he couldn't identify. 

For years, Sky Daughter was my only paranormal romance-- although I dropped suggestions as to second sight, soulmates and reincarnation into other stories.

During that time, as I described in the previous blog, I had spiritual experiences but let the questions go. I wrote no books that delved into the other side. Then there was a real life happening. In 2013, I had a beloved cat, my little shadow. She got sick and finally after three vets and tests, I had to have the doctor come out to the farm and put her to sleep, as she was in misery. It would only get worse for her.

I've lost a lot of pets over the years, but this one hurt more than most as they'd generally come after long lives or hadn't been cats who had loved me as much as I loved them. I cried. That night, I asked for a dream-- is reincarnation true? I still wasn't sure. I had though believed this cat had come back to me before. I wanted to think she could again.

The dream came of a young couple, who had been star-crossed in many lifetimes where it never worked out. I saw their lifetime begin with high school. He was a football player. She was a cheerleader. They were not supposed to be together this time. Their spirit guides were quite disturbed that this was happening. On a train, their guides saw the couple kiss. A gold ring circled the image of their kiss, like a wedding ring. The guides gave up. They had to do something unorthodox to make this work or the tragedies would keep repeating. 

In the dream, when I saw the couple kiss with that golden ring. I'd never seen that symbol before or since. It is still vivid in my memory.

When I woke, I didn't have an answer about reincarnation or whether I'd be rejoined with my beloved cat (I haven't yet but haven't given up), but it gave me a story-- When Fates Conspire. In it, I used parts of my dream, a few images from it, words that I'd heard, but I also took a writer's liberty and used my research and personal experiences to create a novella that was a romance with a somewhat unusual happy ending. 

With it finished, I thought that would be it, but one thought led to another with more research on monsters, particularly Native American myths about monsters. It led to two more, connected novellas, with various aspects of the unseen world and the ones on this side tasked with fixing what has gone wrong. I kept the three as novellas (The Dark of the Moon and Storm in the Canyon) but joined them together in one book (adding the sex they didn't have), and it became Diablo Canyon mixing myth with science for what might be-- and, of course, three love stories.

It wasn't to be my last paranormal. Mine aren't traditional. It does complicate creating ads or finding the right place for readers to see them. More coming on the subject, as this after all Halloween's month.

With the exception of Remus and Justus (from the Diablo and the novellas) and the  horoscope from Canstock, all images are from Stencil. Imagination is a wonderful thing and so much a part of any spiritual explorations.