About Helen
Helen writes award-winning fantasy romance inspired by the fairy tales
she grew up reading and the amazing historical places she’s visited in England,
Ireland, Scotland and Germany. She writes tales of adventure and romance in
fully realized worlds sprung from pure imagination and a lifelong interest in
history, culture, and literature. Warriors on horseback, women who refuse to
sit idly at home, and passion that cannot be denied or outrun—that’s what
readers will find in her books.
About BLOODSTONE
What if looking at the
face of the man you loved meant death?
Years
ago, warrior Durren Drakkonwehr was cursed by a mage. Now feared and reviled as
the Shadow Man, he keeps to himself, only going to town to trade rare
bloodstones—petrified dragon's blood—for supplies. Though he hides his face, he
can't hide his heart from the woman who haunts his dreams...
Needing
bloodstones for a jewelry commission, Mirianna and her father journey across
the dreaded Wehrland where the beast-men roam. When their party is attacked,
only the Shadow Man can save them. Strangely drawn to him, Mirianna offers
herself in return for her father's rescue.
Living
in the ruined fortress with the Shadow Man, Mirianna slowly realizes that a
flesh-and-blood man—not a fiend—hides there in hoods and darkness. But are love
and courage enough to lift the curse and restore the man?
About Writing BLOODSTONE in Helen's Words
Writing fantasy romance is a challenge, creating worlds from literally the soil upward. How do I handle that? By fusing imagination with relevant life experiences.
For instance, I’ve never lived as a cursed
warrior in a land populated by beast-men, but I have experienced a high
mountain meadow in spring, ridden horses, and learned about panning for gems
from my father’s Alaskan experience. I’ve never fended off danger with swords,
but I’ve travelled the UK, hefted swords to learn about balance, and explored
tumble-down castles.
None of that, however, made writing these
three characters from BLOODSTONE any less challenging.
#1: The Shadow Man
Mirianna and her father fell into place,
but my hero, the Shadow Man, refused to tell me his real name. I wrote a third
of the book before he reluctantly revealed it. That resistance was clue to his
character. Being an ‘into-the-mist’ writer, I had to keep writing to discover the
truth.
The Shadow Man wants to be left alone. But
beneath this stated goal is a deeper need: he’s lonely. When the opportunity
comes to relieve his loneliness with a blind boy servant, he impulsively acts
against his stated goal. Conflict ensues. His neatly ordered life, miserable as
it has been, falls apart despite repeated attempts to maintain his solitude.
What he thinks he wants and what he needs are at odds, and that’s just his
internal conflict.
Add a woman so determined to protect her
aging father she embarks on a dangerous journey, an old enemy seeking power,
and a—possibly—magical lion shadowing his every step, and my hero has more than
enough conflict. By first draft’s end, he had dug up and faced every ugly truth
preventing him from being the man he ought to be, the man he’d chosen to bury
(that real name).
Whew!
#2: The lion
I’ve never lived with a mountain lion, but
I’ve lived with cats. However, even I didn’t know when I started writing who or
what this lion would be. (Remember that seat-of-the-pants thing?) She appeared
with various characters at critical moments, and I had to let her gradually
reveal how she was connected. Additional challenge: she has no point of view,
so I couldn’t get into her head like I could my hero. (He was just stubborn;
she was downright enigmatic.) So, write a mountain lion-like cat into a fantasy
when you have no idea why she’s there, except she was in the very first scene
from which this book sprang, and you have the idea of this challenge.
#3: Gareth
I’ve worn corrective lenses since
childhood, but I’m in no way as severely visually limited as Gareth. Thinking
of sensations, sounds, and smells as his primary means of interpreting the
world forced me to expand my means of description. I also had to remember he
was 13, not an adult. Writing him was a definite challenge, but also remarkably
satisfying.
Want to try your
hand at fantasy romance? Don’t be afraid to write what you don’t know. Fuse a bit of imagination with a fragment of authentic
experience and even the seemingly impossible can become satisfying and
convincing fiction…if you’re up to the challenge.
An Excerpt
“Perhaps we can share
your fire.”
In the joy of finding her father, Mirianna had forgotten
Rees and Pumble, the two men the Master of Nolar had given her father as
escort. And even that dark being
which stood somewhere behind her and drew Rees’s stony glare. The Master of
Nolar’s man still sat his horse, and his hand hovered near his bow. Beside
Rees, Pumble stood, sweating, his fingers twitching over the hilt of his sword.
She turned slowly in her father’s arms.
“I said,” Rees repeated, “perhaps we can share your fire,
this time...Shadow.”
The Shadow Man stood at the rock ledge, his body as
motionless as a bat captured by the sun. His hand rested on the hilt of the
sword in his belt, and between his gloved fingers something glinted red. His
hood revealed only a drape of cloth where his face should be, yet she knew
underneath every inch of that which passed for face was turned on Rees, and the
air between them stretched to a brittle thinness.
“Do with it as you please,” he said at last. “The boy and
I were just about to leave.”
“Wait!” Tolbert put Mirianna aside. “I need—”
“Bloodstone?” The black hood swiveled. Her father
stiffened under the weight of the invisible regard. “There is no more
bloodstone, old man. Go home, while you still can.”
Tolbert shook his head violently. “But Ulerroth—”
“Ulerroth is a fool,” said the voice that vibrated along
Mirianna’s nerves. “And so are you, if you stay another day in the Wehrland.”
A stallion’s shrill scream punctuated his words.
The Shadow Man spun. Below the rock ledge, the tethered
horses milled, huffing. The blind boy clung to the pack mare’s halter, his face
a pasty white. “Sir, I think I smell—”
“Krad!” Rees coughed, recoiling from a wave of stench
that stole Mirianna’s breath.
“They must have followed us!” Pumble wheezed.
“Fools!” The Shadow Man’s faceless gaze raked from Rees
to Mirianna. “I should damn you all to Beggeth, but the Krad will see to that
soon enough.” He turned. “Gareth, free the horses!”
“Wait!” Tolbert said as an unearthly, high-pitched clamor
erupted from the woods below. “What about us? What do we do?”
Only the hood rotated, cocking with exaggerated
deliberation. “Why, you die, old man.”
Her father blanched. His grip on Mirianna’s arms
faltered.
She saw the Shadow Man turn, saw the muscles of his
thighs bunch as he prepared to leap down the hillside, saw, in the corner of
her eye, shapes gathering along the tree line below, horrible shapes she’d seen
only hours before rushing at her from a darkened clearing. With a shudder, she
broke from her father’s grasp.
“Please!” She reached out to the black sleeve. “Help us!”
He recoiled at her touch like one snake-bitten. The
sudden, sharp focus of his regard staggered her, but she backed no more than a
step. No matter how he terrified her, he’d helped her once. She’d been led to
him again, and not, her instincts told her, without reason.
“Please,” she repeated. “Help us. I—we’ll do anything.”
“Anything?”
His voice was a whisper that caressed flesh. Mirianna’s
stomach quivered. Her breasts tingled. Her mouth grew even drier. Without
thinking, she slid her tongue along her lips. Vaguely, she wondered what she’d
done. And why time seemed suspended, as if everyone but she and the Shadow Man
had been cast in stone and all sound arrested. All sound except the taut,
guttural repeat of his question.
“Anything?”
Purchase BLOODSTONE
Connect With Helen
email: helen.c.johannes.@gmail.com
I want to read this one next!! And "Now and Always", too! Loved "Dark Brew"--eager to read more!!!
ReplyDeleteI have such respect for fantasy writers. Your job always seems insurmountable to me. Thanks for explaining how you character build. In many ways, it's not much different than what I do for cozy mysteries. Thanks for sharing!
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