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Saturday, January 19 2008

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Welcome "Beneath A Christmas Moon" Guest Blogger Karen McCullough!

Submitted by Karen_McCullough on Sat, 2008-01-19 00:58.

I love paranormal stories, but I’ve never been a big fan of vampires. As far as I’m concerned the traditional vampire is, as my son so eloquently put it, a giant human-shaped mosquito. I’ve always seen vampires as monsters, murderers who steal others’ lives to extend their own.
Nonetheless, I’ve read plenty of vampire stories, with all different takes on them and ways they can be heroes. There are even some vampire books that I like, but in general I’ve never really warmed to the idea of a vampire as hero. Yet, when Eden suggested the possibility of the Beneath a Christmas Moon anthology, the first story idea that popped in my head involved—a vampire.
And I ask myself, where did that come from?
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Welcome "Beneath A Christmas Moon" Guest Blogger Eden Robins!

Submitted by EdenRobins on Sat, 2008-01-19 01:04.

Thanks for having us on Love Is an Exploding Cigar. Ariana Dupre, Karen McCullough and I will be talking about writing paranormals. Ariana and Karen joined me in creating our paranormal Christmas anthology Beneath a Christmas Moon, now available through Cerridwen Press (click the cover to buy).
My story in this collaboration is Lander's Moon. It’s the tale of Lander Paletsos, an immortal shape shifting beast and Selena Alvarez, the beautiful healer who tries to tame his wild heart. For my section of the blog, I wanted to focus on a specific aspect of writing paranormals. Creating believable characters. It’s one thing to write about a lawyer, doctor, nurse or teacher living in a big city, suburb or small town, and quite another when writing about a vampire, werewolf, or even a shape shifter in these settings. How do these very paranormal characters integrate into a very normal world with everyday mortals like you and I in a believable way?
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Welcome "Beneath A Christmas Moon" Guest Blogger Melissa Alvarez!

Submitted by MelissaAlvarezA... on Sat, 2008-01-19 00:54.

The Do's and Don'ts of Writing Paranormal
Quite often I have people ask me about the psychic fiction stories that I write and if the character’s experiences are similar to my own. Because I am a Clairvoyant Advisor and work in this field daily, my experiences definitely play a part in the experiences of my characters. I try to take it one step further than just relaying an experience or giving the character one that is similar to mine. I approach each paranormal situation by also showing how it feels when it happens. When I was learning how psychic abilities work, there were a lot of emotions that went along with each experience. I’m very skeptical by nature so some made me feel unsure of myself and my abilities, some made me question my sanity, others gave me joy and many were downright scary. As I learned about my abilities and when new ones would happen it was a challenge to understand what it was, why it was happening, how it happened and why me?
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