Western?

I’ve been working on a WW2 book for quite a while titled Rosenrot, and this is the second one I’ve worked one. I’ve given the chapters to several people and they’ve all given me their seal of approval and love of the story and have been patiently (impatiently) waiting for me to finish the next chapter, but I’ve been spinning ideas around for another story in the meanwhile. I’ve never written anything in the western category before, and I’ve always been a fan. 

The story is about a girl named Clara Montgomery who is the daughter of a black man and a native American woman. She lost her parents at a young age; her mother to sickness and her father to suicide shortly thereafter and was promptly raised by her older brother. One winter during a terrible snowstorm some men came to their cabin, she’s about eleven at this point, and ask them for much-needed supplies and perhaps a stay in the barn until the storm passes. Her brother doesn’t turn them down but pays for it. Turns out they were a wandering gang. They kill her brother, lock her in the cellar and loot the place. After a few days of waiting out the storm, they eventually release her, but not before doing something terrible to her in the meanwhile. After that, they take her to a nearby snowbank and shoot her, leaving her for dead, but she survives, crawling to a nearby mining town for help. She’s taken in by a retired lawman there and he eventually teaches her how to shoot and gives her the skills she needs to become a bounty hunter later in life. She disguises herself as a man, both because her gender isn’t exactly looked upon as being the best suited for such a job, and it gives her another identity to use to track down these members of the gang that took from her the only family she ever had.

She spends ten long years hunting them, looking for the leader and second in command, sort of speak. Meanwhile, they think she’s some crazed bounty hunter guy taking out their men and swinging her dick around in their territory like a nutcase, but she works strategically enough to avoid getting taken out herself. She does, however, nearly get assassinated, and figures out it’s high time to go after the head of the gang and cut him off for good. This is where she meets another character of mine, and the story progresses from there.

Not sure if this story sounds interesting enough to read or not; not sure if this is going to go well, but I’m willing to give it a shot and step out of my comfort zone to give it a chance and have some fun in a different element. I love trying new things. I only hope I can bring to it the feel I’m hoping to achieve; the character depth and love of storytelling I love putting into my all my books. Wish me luck.

Lying with the Devil

Lying with the Devil was written by me a while back, and it was my first time sitting down and actually putting something together that wasn’t a short story or maybe a roleplay text. I was understandably nervous as it all came together. In the end, I had panic attacks as I was nearing the end chapters. I knew how I wanted it to end, but it was all falling into place so quickly, I wasn’t sure if I could pull the trigger or not and actually finish it all. When it was finally done, I breathed a sigh of relief and stared at it in awe and wonderment and said aloud, “I think I finished a book!”

Lying with the Devil is a story about Mary Krowely, a young student and homebody with no life of her own outside of her small apartment in the middle of New York City. She doesn’t know, really, what to do with herself outside of school; she doesn’t know what to do with her life outside of study. She’s no social butterfly and has been outcasted because of it, even by her own family, and especially her brother, Kole, who quite frankly think she’s just plain odd. Walking home one evening she’s approached by a man in a car who asks her if she needs a ride home, she denies him, and does so three more times before he finally gets frustrated and pulls a gun on her. She runs, but he easily keeps up with her in his vehicle and nearly runs her over in the street before he gets out, and finally manages to wrestle her into the car, gun pointed at her head.

It’s a white-knuckle ride in the car after that, as Mary has an idea of what’s about to happen as he keeps the gun pointed at her, but now he seems strangely calm as he drives further into the city and finally into an alley. He asks her, her name, draping his hand on her thigh. Bewildered, she tells him, and equally confused and afraid, she asks him his own. He’s never had someone ask him that before. He tells her, then moves in for the kill, but something in him snaps, and instead of killing her, after watching her shake like leaf under the barrel digging into her skull, he pulls back the gun and knocks her out. Pulling a cigarette out of his jacket pocket, he lights up, smokes then turns on the radio and begins the drive back to his own apartment, though, at the moment, he can’t quite figure out why the change of heart.

Mary awakens in the next chapter in chains, and then her story of survival begins.

Over the course of the story, you meet Steven and Carl. Arguably a set of stereotypical cops. But as you read the story you learn that they’re not so typical.

Steven is a newbie on the force, with his heart full of dreams and want, and he wants desperately to find Mary. However, his want turns to obsession, and it becomes deathly evident that it’s driving him toward the brink and affecting him such ways that his future might be bleak if things don’t work out the way they’re supposed to. His compulsive disorder only worsens as the case takes twists and turns, and the killer leaves behind only scraps of evidence for them to find, as well as trails of bodies from previous victims, though he’s not sure if they’re even connected or not.

Carl is a gruff cop that has turned jaded after countless years on the force. He’s hard headed too. He smokes, he cusses, he’s nothing like the shining example that Steven seeks out as a mentor, but he’s stuck with him. However, as the story goes on. You see Carl struggling with keeping Steven’s head above water so that he doesn’t drown; so that he doesn’t wallow in the deep waters of a sunken path. In the meanwhile, he holds his own beliefs that Mary won’t be found, but if she is found, it won’t be alive. He’s seen countless cases like these and none of them ended with the happy ending that Steven is counting on. He doesn’t want to blindly lead Steven to chaos, but he feels he has no choice but to watch him stumble there on his own, and it’s slowly killing him inside.

Mary’s Stockholm syndrome has been brought up to me countless times, and I’ve been (proudly) told that I’ve captured her psychosis well enough that some would like to use the book as a point used in study for their classes on the subject. I’m really happy about that.

Stockholm syndrome, also known as terror-bonding and trauma-bonding, is a condition that causes hostages and abuse victims to develop a psychological alliance with their captor and/or abuser while in captivity and/or while being abused.  However, roughly 8% of victims show symptoms of Stockholm syndrome according to the FBI’s Hostage Barricade Database System.

It was a term coined by a criminologist and psychiatrist named Nils Bejerot in the ’70s after a famous bank robbery in Stockholm, Sweden in 1973.

Stockholm syndrome is a coping mechanism that arises from the fact that the victim’s need to survive is stronger than their want to hate their captor. Women; battered women, tend to lean more toward this psychological trait. It’s only natural to look for normality, especially when spending lots of time with the captor. Adapting yourself is the only way to survive sometimes.

Mary was no exception. During her struggles and abuse at the hands of her captor, she adapted in any way she could to survive. At times she fought back in an attempt to escape, but every time he brought her back, punished her, but he always rewarded her when she did well in his eyes. 

Slowly, over time, they developed a bond, and though she knew he could kill her at any time if he wanted, she felt a need and want to please him, and eventually, though I’d rather not spoil it for you, you’ll learn what else. The ending was tricky for me, but it shows another case of the trauma caused by the syndrome and the willingness of what one would go through when put in those types of situations. Not many were expecting it, however, it at least spawned another book and it will be going to the publisher soon enough.

So good news, everyone! Keep a lookout for Lying with the Devil: Redemption.

I hope this answers some questions for you about the book, but if you have any more, feel free to send me an email. It gives me something to write about, and I love hearing from you all.

Country Girl

I’m a southern gal, through and through. I grew up in rural Lakeland, Florida, in a trailer park. I was friends with a group of kids I daily raised hell with, and I did it mostly barefoot, while haphazardly avoiding pricker bushes and fire ant mounds. We went fishing, snake hunting, lizard and chicken chasing, and stole distilled moonshine from our youngest friend’s daddy’s shed in their backyard and took turns drinking from it. It went down hot, we nearly threw up, but out of our heads we took a much-needed nap in a large tree just outside the trailer park, so nobody would know. There were about fourteen of us. We were all poor. We all looked out for each other; we all had each other’s backs, and we all loved each other immensely as any kid would do in those situations. I miss those days.  Sometimes I look back, however, and realize how incredibly stupid we were though too. Like swimming in the river behind our trailers with the gators sunbathing on the opposite bank, while some of us kept watching on the other side. Or going snake hunting with nothing but sticks, pinning them down, laughing about it, then killing the venomous thing so we could skin it, cook it up, and have something to eat for lunch that day. Or raiding duck nests, eating the eggs raw, then commenting about how the luckiest person in the bunch got the crunchy one. 

I have an old VHS player sitting on my desk, and I regularly watch my old VHS tapes of me during my childhood days. I listen to me talk in my country accent, laughing it up with my friends, watching me hug them with my dirty clothes and skinned up knees, before running off across the lawn to do a cartwheel or two as we headed down toward the river for another day of weird adventures. I never noticed how blue the sky was then, or how green the grass was. How beautiful everything seemed. Was it just the times? Or did everything suddenly turn grey as we got older?

I’ve recently thought about packing everything up, possibly, within the next two years and moving away from Nebraska. Life here seems too dull. Life here seems grey and cold. I miss the south, immensely. I miss the heated summers, and I miss lulling myself to sleep listening to the chirps and swoons of alligator babies calling to their mama’s in the middle of the night. I miss the taste of actual sweet tea! I miss the polite ways people treated each other. I miss feeling at home.

My husband is wanting to give it go. He’s originally from northern Sweden, so I’m not sure how he’ll handle the heat. My kids were born and raised in Nebraska, so it’ll be a big change for them. I’m wanting my brother to move with us, but he has stakes planted here now, and I’m not sure he’ll budge, and losing him to distance is going to be rough on my heart and soul, so I’m not sure how I’ll fair all and all, but it’s a change I feel I desperately want to make. I feel it calling me like nothing else, and I want to go home. 

Wish me luck, I guess. Life is like a roller coaster, we just hang on for the up’s and down’s; the twists and turns and pray to whatever is in charge up there that we don’t get thrown off.