#AtoZChallenge - The Wrath of a Jealous Werewolf

It might seem an odd choice for me to use the word Jealous for today’s #AtoZChallenge blog post. After all, jealousy is not a paranormal subject. It is, however, a very powerful, and often very destructive, emotion. It is even more dangerous when experienced by a supernatural creature, such as a vampire or a werewolf.

The Redcliffe werewolves are proud, powerful, and dangerous. The alpha wolves are the most volatile, which is how they came to be leaders of the pack. I am talking about the alpha wolf, Danny Mason, and his lieutenants, Simon Bunce and Sally Frost. Danny demonstrates the extent of his jealous power when he turns it on Jessica and Jack. The brothers descend into a vicious fight, and it is left to Jessica and her animal familiar to break it up. This is only one of many fights that occur, and not just between vampires and werewolves.

 The wrath of a jealous werewolf becomes most apparent as we progress through Love Redeems (A Redcliffe Novel) and into my current work in progress, Eye of the Tiger (A Redcliffe Novel). It turns out that the female of the species really is the deadliest. Jessica becomes further involved with Danny and his wolf pack, to the detriment of his subordinates. They do not welcome a witch among them. They believe that she is dangerous, unpredictable, and that she is leading their alpha astray with her magical wiles. Among the meek wolves, there emerge one or two that are prepared to fight for power. One is a female who fancies herself as the alpha’s mate, a position that has so far remained unfilled. And she is a force to be reckoned with…

 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! 

*Wolves image found on Pinterest

#AtoZChallenge - Use Your Imagination

One of the big lessons I learned when I embarked on my spiritual journey many years ago, was that to access the paranormal, or supernatural world, you must be able to use your Imagination. When I was a child I was always told by adults that I had a very vivid imagination. I saw lots of things that maybe other people did not see, but to me it was normal. As I grew older I tried to ignore my imagination, believing it to be childish and wrong. But then, when I seriously started practising in the spiritual world, I realised just how important my imagination was, and is, as a tool for divination and understanding.

This is a lesson that Jessica Stone must accept if she is to learn how to be an effective witch. Her magical power and strength has burst forth in a chaotic stormcloud of energy. She is confused, angry and irritable, because she does not know what to do with all of these intense feelings and emotions. It takes a while for her to accept her new position in the world, although she has to make some snap decisions in the face of scheming vampires and warring werewolves. She is unfortunate enough to be caught in a powerful love triangle, but the love is perhaps better explained as lust. All of this adds to the magic and confusion, and Jessica must learn to work with it, or the whole thing will consume her and leave her broken.

Jessica learns that she must allow her imagination to be free if she is to explore the full potential of her witchcraft. This is explained to her by her witch mentor, Crystal, who supervises some meditation sessions in which Jessica can access the world in which her animal familiar resides. Suri, the snow tiger, is an ethereal creature, and she is trapped within a magical world accessed only by Jessica. Using her imagination, Jessica can meditate on the world that she sees in her mind, and she can speak freely with Suri, to learn more about her power animal and how they can work together to manage the vampires and werewolves.

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! 

*Imagination image found on Pinterest

#AtoZChallenge - Hidden Worlds

To study the paranormal is to reveal the secrets, delights and enchantment of Hidden worlds. I am more interested in the supernatural world, that of witches, vampires and shape shifters, but I did have a fleeting interest in aliens and anomalies during the X-Files years when I was a teenager.  Hidden worlds are fascinating to me, because they conceal our deepest fears, our most dangerous fantasies, and the magic and mystery that would once have been commonplace here on Earth.

The hidden world within Redcliffe town on the south coast of Cornwall is full of adventure and danger, especially to Jessica Stone. There are two very powerful, and very proud, vampires living in the town. Both have spent time living away from Redcliffe, which perhaps explains why Jessica did not meet them when she first moved from Manchester in the north of England. And then we have the hidden world of the Redcliffe werewolf pack. The wolves’ lair is concealed beneath The Ship Inn, a public house that was reputedly a smugglers’ haunt back in the olden days.

Photo Credit Pinterest

The lair of the Redcliffe wolf pack is hidden inside a series of caves and caverns that are carved into the cliffs of Redcliffe Bay. Above these caves, you must walk up a steep incline to access Redcliffe Forest, a vast expanse of plant life and close-knit trees that are home to myriad animals, birds and insects. These animals provide fodder for the werewolf pack when they go out to hunt at night. The forest is dense enough to hide supernatural creatures from human eyes.  All this and more are hidden within our human world, just waiting to be discovered.

 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 - 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!)