Five Fun Facts
1. One of my favorite memories as a child was camping in the Tennessee mountains. The sharp ridges and isolated forests were beautiful and filled with hidden mysteries. Once a grizzly bear wandered into our camp, and I was terrified he was going to eat me. I also imagined that other creatures, maybe even monsters, lived in those forests. Those experiences inspired the small town of Mystic, Tennessee where I set Forbidden Passion.
In Forbidden Passion, Marlena loved camping in the woods as well. That is, until the day her family was attacked and murdered by monsters in the woods – monsters that were real demons!
2. When I was pondering where Dante would live, I knew his home had to be isolated. He virtually needed a fortress from the demons, so carving his house into the mountain seemed ideal. Then I remembered seeing a solar house built underground in the mountains, and I knew that house was perfect for Dante.
3. Although I set this book in the mountains, I wrote the first half of it while staying in a beach house on the Isle of Palms. The beach is my other favorite getaway! So while I wrote about the spooky mountains, I listened to the ocean waves lapping against the shore and watched the calming sunset flicker off the jetty. It was the best of both worlds!
4. I wanted to add another layer of conflict to the final book of this trilogy and heighten the tension and danger as Dante joined with his brothers to fight their father. During the course of the book, Georgia (my home state) experienced flooding unlike anything we’d ever seen. Stories of Katrina, the tsunami, tornadoes, and earthquakes reminded me how nature poses its own conflict and danger. Those natural disasters inspired me to use the “elements” in the story as demons!
5. I visited the dead for this story. Well, not actually visited, but around Christmas time, a group of writer friends of mine and I took a tour of a local morgue. We called it our Holly Jolly Morgue tour. Although there was nothing jolly about it. In fact, at lunch afterward, everyone admitted that they hadn’t been able to eat before going!
