#AtoZChallenge - Coven and Ceremony

Today on the #AtoZChallenge I will talk about the development of belonging to a Coven as seen in my Redcliffe novels series. Originally, my novels were only going to tell the stories of vampires and humans. I was very narrow minded, and never even entertained the notion that other supernatural creatures might appear in the narrative. My Muse, however, was far wiser. She knew that wherever you have a vampire, you invariably find werewolves, witches, and other vagrant and mysterious creatures that live hidden within the human world.

We only find out about the coven in my third novel, Love Redeems (A Redcliffe Novel), when Jessica begins her study of witchcraft in earnest. She is introduced to a local coven by her witch mentor, Crystal. Jessica feels a little awkward in the beginning, because her vague knowledge of covens is that they are very secretive, hidden, cult-like entities. This is probably because the human world, or perhaps more specifically, Western civilization, has grown up with the fear of witches after centuries of propaganda and negative conditioning.

Photo Credit Witchcraft and Witches

In truth a coven is simply a family unit. Traditionally they consist of 13 members, because this is  believed to be a magic number with special significance. Coven members with meet up on sacred dates to celebrate the festivals of the pagan calendar. These include Beltane in May, to signify the beginning of Summer, and Samhain in October, to signify the end of the year and a move into darkness as the weather changes and the days are shorter. The coven will celebrate appropriately using music, chanting, singing and symbolic food. It is basically an excuse for a party, where you can be free and safe among friends. Jessica is getting to know her new coven mates as she celebrates the harvest festival Mabon in my fourth novel Eye of the Tiger (currently a work in progress).

If you are interested in seeing other participants for the #AtoZChallenge, check them out on the official website. We have everything from book stuff, to cooking, to photography, to travel, and a whole lot more. Happy April!

Did you enjoy this article? Join my tribe today, and I will send you a fabulous FREE book to get you started… (be warned, my vampires do not sparkle, and my wolves will bite!) 

#AtoZChallenge - The Blood is the Life!

Many of you will recognise this famous quote from Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Actually, when I read it or hear it, I very often think of the hilarious spoof movie, Dracula: Dead and Loving It. I can’t help it, I like the lighter side of the supernatural world. But that is a topic for another day. Today I want to talk about Blood. The blood is what drives a vampire to do what they do. They are motivated by the need to drink blood. They do not want or desire anything else. Blood is, for a vampire, the centre of their world.

When I think about bleeding, or I see something gory in a picture or on television, I am very often repulsed by it. And yet, for some unknown reason, I have always been fascinated by vampires. I know that vampires are supposed to be bad. I certainly do not subscribe to the recent Hollywood craze for sparkling vampires (you know the movies I refer to!). My Redcliffe vampires most certainly do not sparkle. They feed, a lot. They do not always kill, but the thought is always there. Jack Mason could very easily take the life of the woman he loves. Jessica has allowed him to feed on her several times, and the last one, in my upcoming novel Eye of the Tiger (A Redcliffe Novel), almost went very horrifically wrong.

Photo credit Pinterest

Blood is a drug for a vampire. They thrive on it. They see the world more clearly when they feed. Blood and sex are very closely intertwined. It is that knife-edge between pleasure and pain, the fact that a person could so easily let it all go and indulge their deep, dark fantasies. Vampires act on this fantasy, this desire, when they feed on a human. And sometimes, if they get carried away, the human dies. That is a fact of life, and death. Blood is the link between the living and the dead. We humans seem to have a mixed response when we talk about blood. We know that we need it if we are to survive. Yet we shy away from it. We do not want to look at it, or talk about it, or deal with it. We take it forgranted. Vampires do not. They appreciate that the blood is the life…

If you are interested in seeing other participants for the #AtoZChallenge, check them out on the official website. We have everything from book stuff, to cooking, to photography, to travel, and a whole lot more. Happy April!

Did you enjoy this article? Join my tribe today, and I will send you a fabulous FREE book to get you started… (be warned, my vampires do not sparkle, and my wolves will bite!) 

#AtoZChallenge - Attracted to the Alpha Wolf

It has been over 5 years since I began to write my very first novel, Love Hurts (A Redcliffe Novel). Back then I was fixated on a love story between a human woman and a vampire man. But when I opened up my mind to Jack Mason, I discovered there was a whole lot more in his life. I met his identical twin brother, Danny Mason. Danny is a surfer. He is a police detective, partnering with his brother. They maintain law and order in the supernatural community. Danny is a werewolf. More specifically, he is Alpha wolf to the Redcliffe pack.

The Redcliffe werewolf pack are a mixed bunch. Most of the wolves are quite happily subservient to their master, living quiet lives in coastal Cornwall, pretending to be human, hunting with their pack in the dense forest high up on the cliffs of Redcliffe Bay. There are, however, a select few werewolves that are more forceful, more powerful, and potentially more dangerous to their kin, and to any humans or other creatures that get in their way. Danny Mason became alpha when he killed the previous pack leader. She was unstable, she lost control of her senses, and Danny did what he had to in order to protect his beloved pack.

Danny Mason is alpha werewolf. He is strong, he is not afraid to fight, and he expects to be obeyed at all times. This doesn’t sit well with Jessica Stone when she first meets him. She finds him arrogant, controlling, and even a little bit irritating. Their relationship takes a few sharp twists and turns during my second novel Love Kills (A Redcliffe Novel) and my third novel Love Redeems (A Redcliffe Novel). Jessica is in love with the vampire, Jack Mason. But then, she discovers her hidden abilities as a witch, and her ethereal animal familiar, the snow tiger, Suri.

Suri is a very proud animal. She is ancient, having lived in a sort of parallel world for who knows how many years. She surfaced when Jessica’s entanglement with vampires and werewolves called to her, telepathically. And now she is ready for action. Suri is strong, forceful, and she has fixed her desires on Danny Mason. She deems him worthy of her attention, but Suri is trapped within Jessica’s psyche, reliant on her witch for her voice, and her actions.  Suri likes to play games. Danny finds her exciting and attractive. His werewolf lieutenant, fellow alpha wolf Simon Bunce, does not.

Simon and Danny have a very special relationship. Simon is devoted to his master. He would die for Danny. He fights for him, and for the Redcliffe wolves, whenever the need arises. Simon definitely does not find Jessica attractive. She is his friend. But when she begins to play around with her newfound abilities and magic, it causes a rift, and their friendship is forever changed. Suri amuses herself by playing with Simon whenever she has the chance. And Simon blames Jessica for not controlling her errant tiger. It all comes together in a cacophony of conflict, as told in my upcoming novel, Eye of the Tiger (A Redcliffe Novel).

If you are interested in seeing other participants for the #AtoZChallenge, check them out on the official website. We have everything from book stuff, to cooking, to photography, to travel, and a whole lot more. Happy April!


*Werewolf image found on Pinterest; White tiger image found on Pixdaus

Countdown to the #AtoZChallenge 2015

It is that time of year again: the April A to Z Blog Challenge. Wow, that came around fast! And am totally unprepared for the event, not least because for some bizarre reason, I am working on the presumption that we are at least one week behind where we actually are. Does that make sense? So, for example, instead of me writing this  post on 27th March (or thereabouts), I believe I am writing it on the 20th (ish).

Whatever the reason, I completely missed the huge reveal party that many of my fellow A-Z bloggers joined in with on Monday. Have you heard about the April A-Z Blogging Challenge? I have been doing it for three years now (I think), and I find it great for networking and motivation. I love writing my blogs. I love interacting with my readers, and exploring other blogs about anything from writing, to photography, to lifestyle, cooking, business… the list is endless. My point is that blogging is a great way to widen your perspective, do some research, and just generally have a bit of educational fun.

And so to my theme for 2015: Last year I focused on lifestyle, specifically the theme of parenthood and what it means to have a young family. This year I want to celebrate more about me, Catherine, and my personal interests. But that automatically leads into my writing, because it is a part of me. I was recently looking through old photographs, and remembering my nights as a ghost hunter, and slowly I began to devise a theme. For as long as I can remember, I have been fascinated by the paranormal world. I would seek out ghost stories in the local library, watch X-Files on television, and write my university dissertation about vampires in popular culture.

I will use the #AtoZChallenge to write about all things paranormal, and how they manifest in my work. You will read about magic and mysticism, animal familiars, witches, vampires, werewolves, energy, and maybe a few more obscure entities that I can procure for your entertainment and interest. See you on the blog hop!

The #AtoZChallenge is Underway

The #AtoZChallenge is underway and so far I am sharing my experiences as a breastfeeding mother, the unique nature of our children, and today I have more photographs of my adorable Staffordshire Bull Terrier Cross dog...

If you would like to see more about my personal life, take a look at the #AtoZChallenge over on my sister blog, SpookyMrsGreen. Have a lovely weekend!

I’m Doing the #AtoZChallenge 2014!

I have decided to go for it once again, and participate in the April #AtoZChallenge for 2014. If you are not familiar with this blog hop, it is a very simple, and very enjoyable, way to bring more traffic to your websites. It is also a great writing exercise, and gives you a real challenge with wordplay and subject matter. I participated in the blog hop in 2013 and found it great fun, and also very useful. This year I didn’t think I would be able to participate after several chaotic incidences on the domestic front, but today I feel energized with the promise of Spring, and I am going for it!

My topic of choice for 2014 will be Lifestyle. For me this will encompass all things family oriented, since this is my current focus of activity for many reasons. I may throw in a few posts about my work-life balance, my personal spiritual journey, and my experiences as a mother of two young children and one daft dog… The point is, I plan to use the #AtoZChallenge as a way to liven up my Wordpress blog and give it a boost of energy. The blog challenge will keep my brain ticking over, give me a focus for work when I need it, and of course, remind people about my fantastic adult paranormal romance novels!

 If you are in the #AtoZChallenge this year, give me a shout and I will check out your blog during April. Maybe we can compare notes… If you are new to the challenge and want to join in, there is still time… here is the link. See you later friends!

The April A-Z Blog Hop #AtoZChallenge

One of my new year’s resolutions for 2013 was to be more active on my blog sites, and post decent quality, interesting articles on a regular basis. So far I think it is working out fairly well, but I needed a little help with inspiration for subject matter. We writers have a lot to say but it often gets jumbled up in our minds, and we sometimes need a little help to coax it out into a coherent format!

Anyway, I decided to join some blog hops. These are organised events where people sign up to write about a particular topic, for example, books and writing. A date is set, and we prepare our material. The idea is that our blogs operate as a networking tool to get our message across to a wider audience. People visit their favourite blogs, see the links for the blog hops their writers have joined, and voila, they hop along to your site and hopefully stick around for a while! 

I got very ambitious and signed up on my personal blog for the April A-Z BlogHop challenge. During the month of April I have to write a post every day (except Sundays), and each day you write about something relating to a letter of the alphabet, in ascending order. I joined the category of books, because I thought that would give me greater scope for the imagination.You can view the posts over at my Wordpress site, but I thought I would share the news here as well.

I have decided to write specifically about my Redcliffe novels. Every day I will talk about a different aspect of the novels, be it characters, location, settings, plot, or even the themes that crop up in the stories. I hope it will be exciting and interesting, and that if you haven’t yet read Love Hurts (A Redcliffe Novel), Love Kills (A RedcliffeNovel) or Love Redeems (A Redcliffe Novel), it will inspire you to try them out… Enjoy!