Supernatural Central Short and Quick Interview
Tell me a little bit about your main character of this book.
Kol Mendona was a fascinating character to write. My first draft of the book was YA, so I had him as a 13- or 14-year-old kid, totally bewildered by the magical world outside the dismal, post-apocalyptic bunker he’d spent his whole life in. But when I decided to add more romance to the story and aged him up, I wanted to keep some of that naivete and childlike wonder, so readers could still experience this fantastical world through his eyes.
But at the same time, Kol is a serious guy. He’s survived on limited resources, and he’s watched multiple family members get sent out into the wastes to die. His father is a tyrant and brute who wasn’t so different from Kol at one point. It was tricky to balance his sense of awe with the darker, more serious sides of his personality and the plot.
Do you believe in the paranormal and if so, do you have an experience you can share?
Ooh—I’ve had so many experiences, but I’ll share some from my time staying at my grandparents’ house during the COVID-19 lockdown.
For some context, my mother’s family has claimed psychic abilities for generations. My grandmother had a vision the moment her husband was bitten by a rattlesnake. My aunt is a private investigator who can “smell death” and finds unmarked graves for the police, and my mother once had her life saved by a mysterious white dog she swears was an angel... You get the picture. I’m not joking—it’s strange.
When COVID-19 hit, I moved in with my grandparents to help out with things like ordering groceries. I stayed in their second-floor guest bedroom, the same room I’d slept in as a kid. It wasn’t a big space, most of it taken up by an antique wooden tester bed, centered on the wall to the right as you walked in. There was just enough room to walk around the bed.
I stayed up late writing, often finding myself awake all night. Almost every night, just after 3:00 a.m., I’d hear a sound like something being dragged across the carpet. At first, I put on my headphones and tried to ignore it, hoping it was just the wind or something. But after a week, I decided to listen more closely.
One night, I didn’t play any music. I just listened to the sounds around me—crickets, cicadas, and that dragging noise. As I focused, it seemed to come from the hallway, pass through the closed bedroom door, then take a left. The sound moved around the side of the bed, down to the foot, and then up the other side—until it stopped right next to me. It was weird, but I didn’t feel threatened, so I didn’t mention it to my grandparents.
The next night, I fell asleep early and had two episodes of sleep paralysis. Both times, I woke up unable to move, aware of a featureless figure sitting on the bed next to me, stroking my hair. The dragging sounds hadn’t scared me before, but the sleep paralysis definitely did. The figure sat exactly where the dragging sound had stopped, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that they were connected.
When I told my grandmother about the sleep paralysis and the dragging noise, she wasn’t surprised—but she didn’t explain much, either. She just said I should ask it not to scare me, and that if I told it to leave, it would. I figured I’d give it a try.
The next night, around 3:10 a.m., I heard the dragging again. It started in the hallway, passed through the door, and began moving around the bed. When it reached the foot of the bed, I said, “I don’t have a problem with ghosts, but could you please try not to scare me?”
The dragging stopped. Then, I heard it reverse direction. It retraced its steps and left the room through the door.
After that, I still heard the dragging most nights, but I never had sleep paralysis again. I don’t know what that entity was, or if the lockdown had just made me a little crazy, but I do know that my relatives have continued to experience strange things in that house.
What titles are you working on now that you can tell us about?
I have five books in the works—three are in the editing stage, and two are still being drafted. A couple of years ago, I wrote The Girl with the Golden Eyes, set in the same world as Wanderer of the Wastes, but it still needs some editing. I’m also editing a fantasy legal comedy with the working title The Dragon Lawyer, and at some point, I’ll get around to editing All the Dreaming Worlds, a science-fantasy novel I co-wrote.
On the drafting side, I’ve been slowly working on a book called Children of Crows, about a non-human necromancer struggling to connect with her latest creation. If Wanderer of the Wastes performs well, I’ve partially drafted a sequel titled Seeker of the Seas and hope to publish it. This book will expand the world and provide historical context on what happened to the humans in Wanderer.
I also have a trilogy in the same world but set about 2,000 years after Wanderer of the Wastes. The books are The Beast of Alon, The Mother of Demons, and The Prince of Fire. However, they were the first books I ever wrote, so for now, they’re shelved, and I’m unsure if they’ll ever see the light of day.
Excerpt 2:“So, do you work?” Kol wiped his nose, feeling sand grate against his skin.“Do princesses… need to work?”“Usually, but now I’m a freelancer.” Alessi felt at her hair, tragic and frayed.“You’re unemployed, you mean?” Kol asked.“If you must know, I am ‘available for hire’.” She threw her head back.“But money’s money, and business is business.” She had a severe look on her face. “That’s how things are in the witch kingdom.”
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