Friday, March 13, 2020

Warrior Muse Blog Hop for BRUISED SOULS release

Friday the 13th! Pretty cool, yeah? A great day for a horror writer to have a blog tour for her Indi published Short Story collection. Shannon Lawrence at Warrior Muse is celebrating the release of her second Short Story compiliation BRUISED SOULS with a blog hop.

For this Blog Hop, Shannon requests we post one of the following, followed by her book info:
1. Your favorite urban legend
2. Your favorite old wives' tale
3. Something scary that occurred in real life and taught you an important lesson

I don't know much about old wives tales - they usually have some moral lesson involved (boring); and I've had lots of scary situations that did not result in a learned life lesson. Unless that life lesson is "I'm lucky, I survived!) But I do have a favorite urban legend.

Since childhood, anything about Sasquatch interests me - but not in a scary way. I live in Northern California, in the mountains and forests. Recently I moved to the actual foothills, outside the populated urban areas, and so my chances of seeing a Big Foot should have increased from less-than-nil to a-definite-possibility.

According to this historical article, The California version of the Bigfoot Legend has its origins in 1958, with a letter sent to Andrew Genzoli of the Humboldt Times, from several Redding CA loggers who discovered " mysteriously large footprints." The article states "Genzoli said that he’d simply thought the mysterious footprints “made a good Sunday morning story.” But it caught the interest of locals, then the National Media, and finally Hollywood. Ever seen the 1987 movie HARRY AND THE HENDERSONS?

Well, my quasi-belief in the huge, shaggy, Wild Man is not so environmentally friendly - I do like horror stories after all. I see him (them) as tricksters, vandals, and predators; but not sexual predators. Unless they have a taste for beer or whiskey, I don't see the Sasquatch race being attracted to us puny, hairless humans. Except as food. Even a bear will chase, catch, play with, and eat a human if they are hungry or angry enough. I've scientific articles that state humans are not tasty to eat. I wouldn't know as I've never been hungry enough to eat human flesh. With the Corona Virus, and the potential for pandemic death, and the end of civilization as we know it, the Zombie Apocalypse could change my menu preferences. Ya just never know, ya know?

As recently as July 2014, Zoologist Dan Brown was guest speaker at the Lake Oroville, CA, Visitor's Center, drawing a crowd of 160 locals (source), and claims to have personally witnessed, and collected evidence of a Big Foot sighting in the area. In his speech he says "I have actually spotted the animal outside of Oroville with my own eyes." In his speech he goes on to say; "You know, in 1969 on Table Mountain, 11 people saw Bigfoot," he said. "And off of Black Bart Road also. Some people on the lake had sighting, while they're on the lake, seeing it on the shore." Brown also brought with him alleged castings of the elusive animal's feet.

Well, I'm convinced. My husband is an avid watcher of the program on Discovery or AMC or some such, that deals with Mountain Monsters. The Dudes spent some time in NorCal, Redding and Siskiyou County, and it was fun to watch these guys chasing a Thing they called a Big Foot. They had infrared blips, obscure tree knocking sounds, and blury distance views of a being they considered Sasquatch. They even had an episode (though not in NorCal) of some rednecks that claim they shot, killed, and buried a Big Foot. Sadly, none of them remembered exactly where they buried the evidence of their kill; they were drunk and high on the hunt, and scared shitless they'd be arrested for murder, so nobody can pinpoint exactly where the Boys hid the body.

Big Foot, aka Sasquatch, is not to be confused by the other, older legend of The Dark Watchers known to haunt the Central/Coastal Valley along the Santa Lucia Mountain Range. Sightings of The Dark Watchers date back to "Spanish explorers making their way to the California Coast." (source) The Dark Watchers are described as:
very tall humanoid entities ranging in height from 7 feet tall all the way up to around 15 feet tall, dressed all in black and wearing flowing cloaks and wide brimmed hats, with many sightings also mentioning some sort of staves or sticks in the beings’ hands. Facial features are not typically seen, and they are almost always silent, enigmatic figures usually seen at a distance up on ridges silhouetted against the darkening twilight sky, always at around dusk or dawn, quietly looking over and surveying their domain with unknowable purpose and often vanishing in the blink of an eye, especially if one is to try and draw closer.
 I live in Oroville, under part of the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range - a few miles south of South Table Mountain. (Table Mountain, and the cascading Buttes to the south east coast line, were formed by the giant Paul Bunyan sitting down to lunch. He chopped off the top of a mountain to form his table, and his blue ox Babe formed the Sacramento Valley while snuggling out a nitch for a nap.) any local legends and tragedies abound in the local bookstores. I think if I were to write them in an anthology it could look a lot like Stephen King's fictional town of Castle Rock, Main. Someday, maybe . . when I'm not working 60 hours a week. But Big Foot is my favorite; and our plan is to set up a digital camera pointing at the downhill creek area of our property in hopes of catching our own distant, blury, mobile figure of Sasquatch to sell to the tabloids for our 15 seconds of fame.

Don't laugh; it could happen!

Thanks Shannon for giving me this opportunity to expose my favorite Urban Legend in my home town. I wish you luck in your book launch.



Title: Bruised Souls & Other Torments: Short Stories
Author: Shannon Lawrence

Amazon pre-order link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B085N7YCZ3


The Kindle e-book will be live Friday. The paperback *should* be. It will hit Smashwords and everywhere they distribute within the next week.

Blurb:

Fear resides in the soul.

A welcoming widow with a twisted appetite; a war-time evil lurking behind the face of a child; a father’s love gone horribly wrong; a deadly government solution; a new job with a demonic pay scale; a woman trapped in a mysterious house with no memory of who she is or how she got there. These are a mere glimpse of the terrors that lie in wait in this collection of horror short stories, sure to grip the psyche and torment the soul.


My website and social media links:
website: www.thewarriormuse.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thewarriormuse/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thewarriormuse
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/thewarriormuse/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thewarriormuse/
Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/profile/shannon-lawrence
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/13836289.Shannon_Lawrence
Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/Shannon-Lawrence/e/B00TDKPOAO/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_5

Wednesday, March 4, 2020

IWSG: Customs in stories


 Hey Ya'll; I'm back!!

Yep, I signed up again for the monthly Insecure Writers Support Group; hopefully this commitment is my first step in getting back into blogging and writing. Go to  IWSG sign-up linky, look at the last number on the list (176) and there I am, lol. If you are not already on the linky, do a girl a favor and sign up so I'm not last in line! Thank ya kindly.



Lets get this first Wednesday of the Month started with the optional March 4 question - Other than the obvious holiday traditions, have you ever included any personal or family traditions/customs in your stories?

My answer: Hmm, I'm really not sure. My home as a child was so strictly regular - or regulated - that I could not breathe. As I grew up, moved out, and had my own children, I slowly tossed away all those harsh family traditions. Until one day, I realized I did nothing like how I was raised.

In fact, I don't believe I did anything much the same from year to year, season to season. Maybe Christmas and Thanksgiving, and summer clothing buying. I always had an unwrapped Santa gift for each kid that only arrived on Christmas Eve (after all kids went to bed), and stockings had the most prized gifts. And unlike my childhood home at Thanksgiving, when we starved all day, cooked, and had dinner eaten and cleaned up by 3pm, I had all day snacks and treats and dinner around 5p. And every summer, there was a shopping spree for new "play clothes". I never had a separation for "play" clothes and "school" clothes - except clothes too stained or ripped to wear to school.

Because there has always been such a lack of tradition in my home, I have a tendency to not have set traditions in my stories. This has not been a purposeful oversight; I just forget to write anything typical like: going to church, having a pet (although we've always had a cat at my house), family reunions, and worst of all, not writing friends and social life.

Perhaps this is why my best stories are short stories and flash fiction. And why it is taking me 10 years or so to edit my women's fiction trilogy: I keep adding some true family life into my characters. Practice practice practice.

This was an interesting question to explore - not sure my answer was as interesting. But there it is. I'm pretty busy this week, not gonna have my computer much, so I will do most of my blog hopping this weekend. Don't forget to visit the IWSG founder Alex J Cavanaugh, and the March 4 co-hosts: Jacqui Murray, Lisa Buie-Collard, Sarah Foster, Natalie Aguirre, Shannon Lawrence.