Writing Tips (V)

                          Be more descriptive in your writing.

We all know that descriptive words are those key words and phrases we use to describe, to display an accurate picture of a character and his actions, or to tell a story.  They help readers see, in their mind's eye, our characters acting, speaking and feeling in ways that make them believable, real.There are long lists of descriptive words that authors can use in their writing: for commentary, for characters - physical qualities, mental qualities, moral qualities or spiritual ones- both positive and negative.And don't think that only adjectives are descriptive words. Not at all. There are adverbs or gerund forms used as descriptive.It will be impossible to present them all. Instead I post today two lists with descriptive words, frequently used, and their synonyms. I found them on Pinterest. You can find more on my Pinterest account.

AUTUMN SPLEEN

The smoky autumn air
sneaks into my heart,

Veiled in thick, gray layers
of ominous rain.

Mourning for the summer,
that abandoned us,

I still look for sunshine,
but, I look in vain!


Gone is now the wealth
of brilliant flowers,

Greeting me at sunrise
with dew moistened eyes.

Only gold and rust
colored, fallen leaves

Muffle my lost footsteps
and disheartened cries!

Glowworms and grasshoppers
have already left.

Empty, desolated
are the swallows’ nests.

Spiders span the branches
with gossamer thread,

Draping the whole garden
for the winter rest.

Guest Promo (LXIV)

Today, I am pleased to welcome fellow author and cyber friend Mae Clair who has agreed to share with us a few things about her fascination with supernatural creatures and also about her  latest release.
Werewolves and Romance by Mae Clair

Thank you, Carmen, for inviting me to your blog today! I brought along my paranormal romance, WEATHERING ROCK, to share. It seemed a good fit given it’s October, and things that go-bump-in-the-night naturally creep to the forefront of our minds.

I’ve been fascinated by folklore, superstition and tales of supernatural creatures since childhood. Do thoughts of ghosts, ghouls and predatory beasts frighten me? *chuckle* They terrify me.

So why turn a werewolf into a romantic hero in my time travel novel, WEATHERING ROCK? Because there’s something compelling about a tortured soul chained to darkness and moonlight, especially when the character is noble at heart. I’ve always been attracted to heroes and heroines who harbor a dark secret, forced to carry the burden of a seemingly insurmountable curse. Maybe it goes back to childhood fairy tales where hexes and curses were as common as the heinous beasts and evil sorcerers who populated them.

The werewolf myth is ancient. The first ‘recorded’ sighting dates back to 1591 Germany, when a man named Peter Stubbe made a pact with the Devil that allowed him to shift into a savage wolf. He was eventually discovered, caught, and suffered a brutal execution, but not before killing innocent men, women, and even children, in a hideously barbaric manner.

Older still, there are some who say that when God cursed Nebuchadnezzar, the King of Babylon, and drove him from men so that he “did eat grass as oxen, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven, till his hairs were grown like eagles, and his nails like birds” that the disgraced king had become a werewolf.

Norsemen had fierce berserkers who were savage in battle and often adorned themselves with wolf or bear skins. Many cultures believe that by wearing the skin of an animal, an individual can assume its characteristics. Native Americans spoke of skin walkers who had the ability to transform into other animals at will.In Greek mythology, the Arcadian King, Lycaon, made the fatal mistake of trying to kill Zeus by having him dine on human flesh. Zeus cursed him to spend the rest of his life as a wolf.

I don’t think any of these ‘early’ werewolves would pass muster as the romantic, tortured soul, harboring a dark secret that I find so intriguing, but the myriad threads of the werewolf legend are interesting to say the least.

In WEATHERING ROCK, my lead character, Caleb DeCardian, is a werewolf who has traveled through time from 1863. My heroine, Arianna Hart, meets him when their paths cross on a fog-drenched night. In keeping with the month of October, mystery and spookiness ensue (along with a steamy dose of romance)!

 BLURB:

Drawn together across centuries, will their love be strong enough to defeat an ancient curse?

Colonel Caleb DeCardian was fighting America’s Civil War on the side of the Union when a freak shower of ball lightning transported him to the present, along with rival and former friend, Seth Reilly. Adapting to the 21st century is hard enough for the colonel, but he also has to find Seth, who cursed him to life as a werewolf. The last thing on Caleb’s mind is romance. Then fetching Arianna Hart nearly runs him down with her car. He can’t deny his attraction to the outspoken schoolteacher, but knows he should forget her.

Arianna finds Caleb bewildering, yet intriguing: courtly manners, smoldering sensuality and eyes that glow silver at night? When she sees Civil War photographs featuring a Union officer who looks exactly like Caleb, she begins to understand the man she is falling in love with harbors multiple secrets--some of which threaten the possibility of their happiness.

Finding a decent guy who'll commit is hard enough. How can she expect Caleb to forsake his own century to be with her?

Purchase WEATHERING ROCK from:

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

Kobo

iBooks

About Mae Clair:
Mae Clair opened a Pandora’s Box of characters when she was a child and never looked back. Her father, an artist who tinkered with writing, encouraged her to create make-believe worlds by spinning tales of far-off places on summer nights beneath the stars.
Mae loves creating character-driven fiction in settings that vary from contemporary to mythical. Wherever her pen takes her, she flavors her stories with mystery and romance. Married to her high school sweetheart,she lives in Pennsylvania and is passionate about cryptozoology, old photographs, a good Maine lobster tail and cats.
Discover more about Mae on her website and blog at MaeClair.net

You can find Mae Clair at the following haunts:

Website and Blog

Twitter (@MaeClair1)
Google+
Facebook Author Page
Amazon Author Page

Goodreads

Mysterious Romania (VI) Official Hush-Hush on Hallucinatory Discovery

Part One
Şurianu Mountains, (regional Şureanu), situated in the Alba county, an area interesting both to sports lovers and to paranormal fans. They belong to Romania's Parâng range in the Southern Carpathians. Nowadays it is the newest ski area in the country with beautiful slopes surrounded by wild, breathtaking scenery.

Sureanu  holds secrets

Well, I’m not going to speak about skiing but about an intriguing event, a controversial discovery, that led to many hush-hush actions. During the 90s, the Ministry of Public Works decided to conduct some research in the Orastie Mountains. A vast archaeological project. Some people say that the aim was to  establish, more accurately, the origins of the Romanians within the Carpathian system and also for a better understanding of the fortification  and living system of the people at that time. There are, in fact, two versions of what led to a great discovery and as great  a cover up of it.
Hallucinatory discovery

In fact, people say, that all begins with a simple archaeological site on the slope of the mountains. The diggings have just begun when a  young worker dislodged some boulders that started falling over him. Hearing the man’s cry the archeologist leading the research ran to him. The man was safe but the dislodged rocks revealed an entrance to an underground room.
 Cave secret
 Both men entered the cave and discovered  a ventilation area that lead to a passage. Enlarging the passage they reached another room, so tall that they could walk easily along it. Beautiful glittering came from the ceiling, the professor taking it to be crystals or flakes of Mica, a mineral. Walking ahead, the two men reached a vertical wall with an opening in it. Through the opening they heard a sound like a remote thunder. The feeling of powerful energy coming through that opening was so frightening that the professor had no courage to advance further. He decided to study the room they were in, using the lantern he had with him. The place was extremely clean. No speck of dust or  no pebbles. They advanced along another ramification of the tunnel. They were already at about three hundred meters away from the entrance and thirty meters deep. The descent was mild and they went five hundred meters deeper. They reached a kind of crossroads and followed the larger tunnel. 
 Gold patterned walls
Going closer to the wall the archaeologist studied it. To his bewilderment,  he discovered the wall was made of massive gold. The same was valid for the ceiling. He asked the young man to pinch him as he imagined he was dreaming. The tunnel went slowly to the left and they advanced some hundred meters more and saw a bluish light that seemed to flow from the ground. The further they walked the powerful the light became. The archaeologist also noticed something he’d never seen or knew existed on Terra: the run of gold had an unusual form. It is known that, esoterically,  massive gold deposits are to be found in areas where people's spirituality reached a high level. And here we have a whole mountain of gold.It was something that nobody could imagine. The archeologist remembered he had with him his old camera and took several pictures.
 Mysterious inscription
Another thing they saw there was a  kind of writing on something looking like the Egyptian papyrus. Thousands of unknown letters and signs. The writing was analyzed both in Romania and three famous universities in the world. It seems the writing said :

KR – IO; SAL-MOS, AICI ESTE VESNIC, LUMILE SE IMPREUNA. The Italic words are in the most pure Romanian language ( here is forever, the worlds come together). The translation offered by a French institute for the first part seems to be "I am Cronos”, "I am the Time". Another part of the text was older than this  I displayed here, and couldn’t be translated. As if more people belonging to different times added words to it. The bewildering inscription that was translated  is around  three thousand years.The question remains, how old was the part that couldn't be translated?
Strange planet kidnaps worker

Anyway, the professor and the boy reached a place with a large table surrounded by seven high thrones. All made of gold. Behind the larger throne, at the head of the table, they found a space with the form of an ellipse.  Throwing a glance through it, it was as if they looked to another planet through the porthole of a spaceship. Only that it was no porthole, no window. It was like looking in a  deep well. Getting to the edge of the ellipse the professor had a dizzy spell and retreated not before catching sight of an awesome view. A distant planet with formations looking like those on Terra seen from the Moon.  The planet  had a combination of blue light and shades of yellow and orange. He also noticed  a kind of funnel getting up to the place they were accompanied by increasing light.  The professor got scared and stepped back. After he recovered from the spell of dizziness he saw the digger, who had accompanied him, on the brink of the ellipse and stepping inside. The radiance decreased little by little.while the funnel went to that odd planet carrying with it the man. Then the funnel started coming back towards the professor, the brightness increasing again.
To Be Continued