Come Meet Me at Sasquan

Going to Sasquan/WorldCon? 

Come say hello & pick up an ARC of SHIVAREE. Meet the Authors of https://sites.grenadine.co/sites/sasquan/en/items/158/Meet%20the%20Authors%20of%2047North …

Author Insights on "Pitch"

My short story "Pitch" will be coming out in the PHANTASMA STORIES anthology on September 22nd. "Pitch" is, on the surface, a simple story about a boy, "Billy Goat" Gibbons, who sets out one morning with his grandfather's rifle to kill the devil. A lot of mental percolating went into the creation of this story, though, and I thought some of you might enjoy an early look at my insights that will accompany the story in the anthology. 


Thoughts on "Pitch"


An editor once pointed out to me that my leading characters are all loners, even a certain redheaded witch whom I saw as being deeply connected to her family and her community. I’ve come to realize that the creation of any character provides an invitation to make a Freudian slip, one that will perhaps reveal more about my own psychology than I might like to make publicly known, or sometimes even privately acknowledge. When creating “Billy Goat” Gibbons, though, I made a conscious decision to dig into those habitually shunned areas of my psyche that hold the memories of what it felt like to grow up the odd boy out in the rural south. I’ve set Billy’s hometown within an easy driving distance of my own, but rather than limit what makes him an outsider to an internal difference, it’s his physical appearance that marks him as an outcast.

So why a goat? Well of course there is the obvious occult connection as a symbol for the devil, but it goes a bit deeper.

The book of Leviticus contains a curious injunction regarding taking a pair of goats, sacrificing the one and driving the other off into the wilderness “for Azazel”. The Hebrew “for Azazel” is translated in some English versions, including the King James Version, as  “as a scapegoat”, a wording that neatly sidesteps any theological issues that an acknowledgement of an earlier form of worship might lead to. This command has needled at me over the years not only as it seems to contain a fragment of a pre-Biblical practice, but as the act of creating an outcast/scapegoat is clearly echoed in the stories of Cain and Abel, Isaac and Ishmael, and to a lesser degree, Jacob and Esau.

Still, Billy Goat’s tale is a simple story, of the kind intended to be read around a campfire, or better yet, midwinter, when the days are short, and the nights as black as “Pitch”.

"Pretty Enough to Catch Her" Coming August 1st

A beautiful widow. Rich. Unhinged. A scheming ex-con convinced he’s found his ticket to the good life. The sexy and dangerous young woman who stands between them. A Southern Gothic cat-and-mouse game where the line between predator and prey is redrawn with each turn of the cards. “Pretty Enough to Catch Her”—a short story from the author of the best-selling Witching Savannah series.

COMING AUGUST 1st TO KINDLE AND KINDLE UNLIMITED

Cover Reveal SHIVAREE

As the Korean War ends, practical and well-mannered army nurse Corinne Ford returns stateside to live in the Mississippi town of Conroy with her new fiancé, Private First Class Elijah Dunne. She wonders if their love is strong enough to overshadow their differences, but upon her arrival to Elijah's backwoods stomping grounds, she understands that culture shock is the least of her worries.

After four good ol’ boys are attacked in the night while seeking to terrorize a local black family, decades of buried secrets begin to rise. From Conroy’s most powerful citizen—known as “the Judge”—to the man Corinne intends to marry, no one is innocent. Yet the deepest secret of all involves the beautiful, cruel, and dead Miss Ruby. The former belle of Conroy, and Elijah’s lost love, is neither forgotten nor truly gone. But her death is only the beginning of a slow vengeance that won’t stop until its hunger is satisfied.

PHANTASMA STORIES Coming Soon

Find my Southern Gothic Paranormal short story "Pitch" in the Phantasma anthology coming fall 2015. This compact anthology will also feature short fiction by

• Phillip K. Dick Award nominee Anne Charnock (author of A CALCULATED LIFE), 
• Poet Jason Kirk (author of REVERB: POEMS),
• Kate Maruyama (author of HARROWGATE),
• Jodi McIsaac (author of the THIN VEIL series),
• And Roberta Trahan (author of THE DREAM STEWARDS series).

Shivaree, coming November 3rd

CLICK HERE TO PRE-ORDER SHIVAREE

At the close of the Korean War, sturdy army nurse Corinne Ford turns her back on a troubled past to travel to rural Mississippi and marry her battlefield sweetheart. Corinne soon learns she was not the first woman in her fiancé's life. The once exquisite Ruby, failed actress and dabbler in dark magic, had been brought back from Hollywood to her father's house, sick, broken, changed. Her death cleared the way for many who had wished that she had never returned. Soon, Corinne is confronted with evidence that her fiancé's first love is neither forgotten nor truly gone. Backlit by the Klan's burning crosses and scored by the cacophony of shivaree, the traditional wedding night abduction of the groom, SHIVAREE looks into a world where the monsters of folklore confront the monsters of history.

Guest Post: Melissa Olson, Release Day Giveaway

Thank you so much to J.D. for being part of this multi-webpage blog blast. If you’ve already heard of me and my books, you can scroll down to go straight to the contest entry. Otherwise, please let me introduce myself. 

My name is Melissa F.Olson, and I mostly write urban fantasy novels, which are stories about the intersection of two worlds: the real one that we live in and a world that involves something supernatural: fairies, vampires, werewolves, mutant killer hedgehogs, or all of the above. My new novel Boundary Crossed is about a young woman, Lex, trying to protect her baby niece from bad guys who have discovered that the baby has serious value on the supernatural black market. Lex is determined to keep her safe, but unfortunately she dies at the end of the first chapter.

No, seriously. She dies. But then she gets better, because it turns out that there’s more to Lex than she ever knew. She needs to figure out why she’s still alive and what the bad guys want with her niece, and she’s going to need a lot of help to do it.

The book has been available all month as a Kindle First deal on Amazon, but it comes out in paperback and audiobook for the first time today. To celebrate this release, I’m giving away signed books, a $20 Amazon gift card, and some killer swag. (That’s a metaphor; the swag will not hurt you.)

For giveaway details visit my blog here. 

Thanks for reading!

Bio:

Melissa Olson was born and raised in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, and studied film and literature at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. After graduation, and a brief stint bouncing around the Hollywood studio system, Melissa landed in Madison, WI, where she eventually acquired a master's degree from UW-Milwaukee, a husband, a mortgage, a teaching gig, two kids, and two comically oversized dogs, not at all in that order. She loves Madison, but still dreams of the food in LA. Literally. There are dreams. Learn more about Melissa, her work, and her dog at www.MelissaFOlson.com.