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:
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:
