#AtoZChallenge - Do You Believe in Ghosts?

Well, do you? I most certainly do believe in Ghosts, and I have seen them on many occasions, both at home and on holiday. I was also a ghost hunter a few years’ ago, a hobby that I hope to resume when my children are older. I love the thrill of sitting in a dark, dusty room in an old, abandoned manor house or business premises, asking for Spirit to show themselves, and then the exhilaration when we get a response… But enough about me. Where do ghosts fit into the Redcliffe novels? I will tell you.

Right at the very beginning of Love Hurts (A Redcliffe Novel), our protagonist, Jessica Stone, is experiencing very strange dreams that have a feeling of being premonitions. As she meets Detective Jack Mason and begins a very passionate, and dangerous, love affair, her life spirals into chaos as the world unravels around her. Part of this includes the emergence of her mother, who died in a car accident when Jessica was five years old. Her mother first visits Jessica in her dreams, and then gathers her strength and shows herself as a ghost.

Photo Credit Flickr

Now, Jessica did not believe in ghosts before all of this happened. She was always a fairly practical woman, living in the real world. Of course, the ‘real world’ is never quite what we think. It differs for everyone depending on their life experiences and situations. Jessica’s mother was a witch, and she would have raised her daughter in the Craft if she had lived. She finds a way to communicate when Jessica’s natural magical ability is roused by her connection to the vampire and werewolf. Lillian tries to help her daughter during their brief conversations, but the ghost is weak and often fades out halfway through. Perhaps she will grow stronger as Jessica becomes more comfortable in her new life. Time will tell.

 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 - Every Witch has a Familiar

As we progress through the Redcliffe novels and learn about Jessica Stone’s hidden heritage as a witch, we begin to learn more about her new position in the world, and what it means as she fights to maintain a relationship with her vampire lover. It is a very passionate embrace with Jack one night that brings forward Jessica’s animal Familiar, Suri, an ancient and magical snow tiger.

Traditionally, animal familiars are believed to be in the spirit of the domestic black cat, but I believe this may be a very old literary invention, although I cannot be sure. Anyway, I had always believed that a witch’s familiar was a physical, living animal. I now know that is far from the truth. A familiar can also be a spirit animal, a ghost-like creature that is intelligent and powerful, and that lives in an ethereal other world accessed directly by the witch. Perhaps they take the physical form of their animal kin on occasion, and perhaps this will happen with Suri at some point, but I am still getting to know Jessica’s animal familiar, and she is an unpredictable and proud creature.

 Jessica finds it hard to believe that a being as powerful as Suri could have remained hidden and undiscovered for nearly thirty years, but perhaps she will find the answers as we continue reading about her adventures. Certainly, book 4 in the series, my current work in progress, Eye of the Tiger (A Redcliffe Novel), is all about the snow tiger and her power games with Jessica’s boyfriend and his brother. Suri is excited to be free after such a long imprisonment. She is full of energy, and she wants to cause mischief in the Redcliffe wolf pack.

 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! 

*Witch and her familiar image found on Pinterest

#AtoZChallenge - Energy and Emotion

There is a lot of talk about Energy in the weeks after Jessica Stone discovers her hidden witch heritage in Love Kills (A Redcliffe Novel) and Love Redeems (A Redcliffe Novel). In Jessica’s world, energy is a way to describe the power that she feels when her witchcraft is woken. She also finds it very closely linked to her emotions, especially the extremes of love and hatred that she feels for her vampire and her alpha werewolf.

We all feel energy, although humans are more likely to dismiss it as a natural phenomena. Most of us probably don’t think about it all. The simple force that is Nature, the cycle of growth, death and life, has become all too familiar and regular in our world. In fact, in the developed world, humans have begun to try and manipulate nature and natural energy to make it more useful, more convenient, or even to hide it away like an embarrassing secret. We appreciate that we are a part of nature, and subsequently we are the energy of the world around us, but we don’t spend a lot of time dwelling on it.

Photo Credit Pinteret 

Emotions, on the other hand, are totally relevant and prevalent in the human world. Every day we feel different emotion, whether it is happiness, sadness, hunger, fear, excitement or a million variations on those themes. Jessica Stone learns that her vampires and werewolves feel emotion to the absolute extreme, and she must find a way to live with this knowledge and manage it appropriately, if she is to continue her love affair with the vampire Jack Mason, and her entanglement with his alpha werewolf brother Danny, and the Redcliffe wolf pack.

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 Balance of Darkness and Light

“Jessica Stone used to be a normal, happy human. Now she is an angry, conflicted and confused witch.” This is on the back cover of my third novel Love Redeems (A Redcliffe Novel). During the first two novels in the series, we saw Jessica meet a man and fall in love, which ended in drama and tragedy when she discovered his supernatural secrets, and those of his identical twin brother, the local werewolf alpha. Today on the #AtoZChallenge, I will talk about the balance of Darkness and light in the Redcliffe novels.

A vampire lives in the shadows. They thrive on blood from living creatures, often killing to satisfy their insatiable thirst, and always they live with the consequences of their actions. Some vampires embrace their unique existence. Some hide away from it. Some are hunted, believed by humans to be monsters that must be destroyed at all costs. Werewolves live in thrall to the Moon and her mysterious cycles. Theirs is a world of instinct, of fierce protectiveness to their kin, and the fight to suppress their animal instincts when they live among humans.

Photo Credit Goddess Lifestyle Plan

Traditionally, humans belong to the world of light, often more active during the daytime. This happened in the very old days, when humans were just discovering the power of fire, and electricity was a long way off. We cannot see in the dark. We fear the shadows, because we do not know what monsters lurk out there, waiting to attack. Nowadays, humans can thrive at all times of day or night, and often do. There is some confusion about whether vampires can move about in daylight or not. My vampires can exist in the day, but their movements are slower and more human. They much prefer night, when their senses are sharp.  Jessica moves between the worlds, living both as a daytime human, and a night-time witch consorting with the wolves and the vampires. Her world is full of shadows; confusing, frightening, and exhilarating.

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 - 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