Research fail ~ Fantasy Friday

As I started working on the nameless project I was planning to write, To Grandmother's House We Go suddenly popped back into my head with a new twist. The question was, could I pull it off? There was only one way to know for sure. To the internet!

I Googled until my fingers were nubs (ok, slight exageration) and a couple things became clear. 1) I spend way too much time Googling the strangest things and 2) There isn't a lot of reputable sites on gypsy magic. How can that be? Gypsy's have been a part of books and movies for so long, there has to be some sort of resource out there. The problem is that the Romani tradition (because gypsy is actually considered a slur) is an oral tradition only for the Roma. So I gathered what little I could find, read a couple books of the theme and watched some television shows and movies and filled in the rest with my own ideas. Hopefully the result will be amazing, but only time will tell. And if you know some that I don't list here, please share. I like to get as many facts as possible before I twist them to suit me.

Since I can't find information on Chuvani (Roma witches) and I can't share much about the Twisted Ones without giving too many spoilers, I'll share what I can: my cover and blurb.

Centuries ago, a covenant was made between the Chuvani and the Twisted Ones. Now in a rural community by Jubilee State Park, the old agreement will be broken.

Nadya Pietrangelo comes from a long line of gypsy witches. Now her grandmother's dementia has gotten so severe she is forced to move her into a nursing home. Nadya must travel to her grandparents' house, to pack it up and get it ready to sell before the taxes bankrupt her. But when she arrives, she discovers more than just nick knacks and furniture. Forgotten memories from a terrifying night in her childhood begin to resurface as a handsome stranger from her past reappears.

As the past she'd forgotten begins to repeat itself, Nadya must stand alone against the Twisted Ones to protect humanity and the ancient agreement that is all that stands between the world and chaos. Can she do the unthinkable and restore the balance or will the Twisted Ones enslave her as they tried to centuries ago?

Fantasy Friday

It's really sad that the focus of my writing, urban fantasy, is the most neglected of my new scheduled posts, so I will remedy that. Though it is Saturday, I intend to do a Fantasy Friday post today. And for that guest post I would like to discuss a topic a lot of people have mentioned about my writing. Today I'd like to talk about my supernatural creatures.

I do not like reading the same old books. I want new, original and creative. I don't want someone to chew Twilight, Vampire Diaries, and Interview with a Vampire and spit out some regurgitated version of a vampire book. I'm not asking an author to reinvent the wheel, but don't go cliche, and don't give me the same books I'm sick of. A little creativity never hurt anyone. And I'm not saying I won't read vampires, because that's not the case either. I just like to read something new.

Fantasy Friday

With the premeire of Secret Circle airing last night (I did not watch it, though I wanted to.) I thought the perfect topic for my first Fantasy Friday would be the topis of the changing roles of witches. Today they can be found everywhere, from televison, books and movies to your local Borders (Errr.... Maybe not anymore, but that's where they used to meet here...). My, Boomhilda, how you've changed. So how did we as a society move from mass killing in the name of religion to Samantha and the Halliwell sisters?

Witches have been around for as long as there have been men struggling to understand the world around him. In the bible (Exodus 22:18) it states "Suffer not a witch to live." And the word witch appears in seven other scriptures, all declaring witches as an evil force to be gotten rid of. And witches have played the villain countless times throughout history, both in fiction and real life. Whether the play that must not be named (*cough*Macbeth*cough*), the witch-goddess that turned Odysseus's men into pigs, or a green faced hag after her pretty, witches were believed to have struck a pact with the Devil in return for unholy powers.

So how did we make the move from die, witch die to which witch to watch? In the middle ages some "white witches" or "wise men or women" (You, one belief on the Biblical travelers is that they practiced white magic), so there have always been good witches. But the shift didn't really start in force until the 19th and 20th century, with the rise of neo-paganism, or Wicca. 

A change in thinking, a fall off in rabid religious views and a young country where people were free to practice whatever religion they chose brought the witch out of the shadows and began to paint her as the misunderstood hero. We still get evil witches, but now there's just as many if not more good witches. It has been a long and terrifying journey, but the witch is back and i don't think she's going anywhere anytime soon...

Edit:  Sorry, stupid Blogger didn't actually post this this morning...