Thin Ice, Book 2 in the Dead of Winter Series

Thin Ice, Book 2 in the Dead of Winter series is just days away from being released!  Just for fun, I thought I'd share the book summary to hold you over ;-).  I'm really excited about this novella.  Thin Ice is written from Alexa's point of view, which gives it a little darker feel.  Alexa has some demons in her past that seem to haunt her as much as what's going on in the lake, and as much as I hate drama in my real life, I love creating characters that are forced to deal with it in theirs.  So, without further ado, here's the book summary!

Nothing about Alexa’s life is simple. After Tess saw firsthand the terrors concealed in the lake, Alexa could no longer insulate her sisters from the truth.  Tess set off to Denver to find information about her past life, and Ivy’s emotions are constantly teetering on the brink of devastation.  But her sisters don’t know everything, and the secrets Alexa keeps bring a burden of guilt, a weight that could pull her into the undertow.

As events converge, Alexa realizes the only way to unravel the tangles of her life is to face the ugliness of her past and be completely honest with her sisters.  But revealing the truth could do irreparable damage, leaving Alexa where she began this life—alone.

I hope your'e as excited as I am about this next book! Stay tuned for an official release date!

Inspiration for The Dead of Winter Series

http://samael1103.deviantart.com/art/Yuki-Onna-181153373

Since the release of my book last month, I’ve had a few people ask me what the inspiration was for the Dead of Winter series.  So I thought I’d share how this series came about and how I created these mystical women who are born from the snow.  I wish I could take complete credit for creating these awesome magical beings, but like many good story ideas, I borrowed from legend. 

A few months ago, I was sitting around wondering what to write next.  I had just finished a project and was wide open to possibilities.  I knew I wanted to write something in the New Adult genre, and I knew I wanted to write something fantasy/suspense, but that’s as much as I had, which wasn’t much to go on.  So I started poking around on the Internet to research demons and legends.  That’s when I stumbled across a very intriguing spirit in Japanese folklore called the Yuki-onna, or snow woman.

The Yuki-onna of Japanese legend appears on snowy nights as a gorgeous woman with long hair, very pale skin and blue lips, and floats across the snow without leaving footprints.  Some legends say she is the spirit of a woman who perished in the snow and that many times she looks beautiful and innocent, but viciously kills the humans she comes across.  Some stories portray her as vampiric in nature, sometimes succubus-like, preying on weak-willed men.  There are also stories where the Yuki-onna is seeking revenge for her wrongful death.  There are also the occasional tales of the Yuki-onna where she is forgiving, often involving a handsome youth who wanders into the woods whom she lets go because of his beauty.

I was so intrigued with this beautiful and fierce legend that I knew immediately I had to write a story that involved elements of this story.  And the great thing about rewriting a legend, is you can take what you like, and leave the rest.  I chose to mirror the softer legends instead of the more evil an vampire-like Yuki-onna. Consistent with the Japanese snow woman, Tess, Alexa and Ivy are born naked, have extremely long hair, and leave no footprints, but I left out the creepy blue lips and instead gave them ice-blue eyes.  I loved the portion of the legend where the snow woman was soft and forgiving and vulnerable to beauty – an element that I used in the budding romance between Tess and Lance and their past interaction six years before the story begins.  And of course I let my own imaginations seep into the story, like the women having to drink from the lake to sustain their energy, and my favorite, their yearly materialization from the snow itself. 

I’ll leave you with a few pictures of the Yuki-onna.  There are so many beautiful renderings of these fascinating creatures.  Follow me on Pinterest to see more. 

"SekienYukionna" by Toriyama Sekien - scanned from ISBN 4-0440-5101-1.. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:SekienYukionna.jpg#mediaviewer/File:SekienYukionna.jpg

http://reginanegra.deviantart.com/art/yuki-onna-as-ghost-176343131

http://dreamfollower.deviantart.com/art/Yuki-Onna-363969285

Today is a big day for me! Today my novella, The Soulstice, the first book in The Dead of Winter series, went live on Amazon! It’s been a long journey to get here and oddly enough started with a Texas Hold ‘em poker tournament in Wendover about seven years ago.  

I know. Weird. What does poker have to do with writing? 

For most people, gambling is a vice, but for me it was the beginning of something really wonderful. I won about $700 in that tournament and I used the money for writing classes. I have an undergraduate degree in English, and have always loved creative writing, but had been away from school for a really long time. So, I started small with a Continuing Education class on beginning fiction writing.  

I remember how nervous I was that first class. I wondered if I would be any good, if anything I had to say was worthwhile. But that first time I put pen to paper, it was like this part of me that had been lying dormant was awakened again. I took more classes, found a writing group, and spent lots of time typing on the computer and drinking coffee. Writing was something that kept my imagination and mind active while raising my two children. And if you’ve ever been a stay-at-home parent, keeping your brain full of something other than Dora the Explorer and goldfish crackers can be a real challenge.  

And seven years later, I’ve written three novels (unpublished as of yet, but working on it) and I’ve won the Iron Pen competition for my fictional short stories at the Utah Arts Festival two years running. And today, it seems like my journey has reached an all time level of excitement. My novella is out there for the world to see. And I have to say this is about two parts exciting and one part terrifying. Any time you put your work out there for others to read and judge you make yourself vulnerable, which can be a little scary. But I keep thinking back to that first writing class, how many of my feelings today are the same as they were then. But just like then, today the joy of writing is definitely outweighing all the doubts.  

Thanks for reading my blog post, and I hope you’ll read and enjoy my novella, The Soulstice available now on Amazon for Kindle and Kindle Unlimited.