Guest Blogger: Cathy Clamp

The winner of Cathy's giveaway is: Ruth Schaller! Major congrats, Ruth. Send me your snail mail contact info and I'll pass it along to Cathy. Thanks so much to everyone who participated! Stay tuned . . .

THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE . . . OR IS IT?

Hi, all!

I’m Cathy Clamp, and I write paranormal romances with my co-author C.T. Adams. We presently have two series with Tor Books -- the first is Tales of the Sazi, about shapeshifters who live in our current world, hidden in plain sight. The second is a trilogy about a whole different kind of vampires called The Thrall. The final book of the trilogy, Touch of Darkness, hit the shelves this month, so feel free to take a look if you’re interested. We also have a brand new stand-alone world coming soon . . . with a brand new pen name. It’ll be released in February, 2009. It’s called Magic’s Design and you’ll see the author as “Cat Adams.” This is a combination of Cathy Clamp and C.T. Adams! What’s nice is that the new books will be shelved right next to the old ones, in case you have a collection on your keeper shelf. (And if you don’t, why not?! Hee!) It’s available for pre-order now on Amazon and should be available for ordering in your local book stores in a month or two. You can visit us on the web at: http://www.ciecatrunpubs.com

Or, visit our Amazon Profile, at:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/profile/A3L3AGDPVW68Z5/102-4524817-4263303

But this isn’t just a promo post. Today I was asked to talk about “anything paranormal.” Of course, that’s a pretty broad subject, but an interesting thought struck me recently and I figured I’d share it with you all. Lately I’ve been enjoying a series on the History Channel called MonsterQuest. Now, for those who have never seen the show, it takes all the typical legends and tries to either prove or disprove their existence using every possible bit of science and brainpower at our collective command. What sort of legends? Well, there’s werewolves and vampires, of course. Then Bigfoot, Nessie, mermaids, chupacabras, the New Jersey Devil, krakens, telekinetics, pyrokinetics, giant hogs, bats, raptors, etc. You get the idea. Anything people “swear” they’ve seen, or encountered or been attacked by, but physical proof of which has never seen the light of day or camera or video. It’s Globe and National Inquirer meets Mythbusters.

What I find interesting is how many well-respected, top-notch scientists are interested enough in the possible existence of paranormal creatures to spend time and money investigating them (often on their own dime!) even though they consistently come up empty. Every week. They come up empty. Either that means we’re not good or smart enough to find them, or they aren’t there. What struck me is that it doesn’t matter! We want to believe, so we do. We can’t find proof so we create proof through other means. Paranormal fiction takes up the space between “belief” and “proof.” We authors can MAKE proof just by putting words on the page, and the belief people already have in the possibility goes along for the ride.

People keep believing and keep searching. Since we’re discovering new stuff every day that’s “not supposed to exist,” hope stays alive. From fish to mammals and new varieties of human ancestors, we’re just starting to figure out this planet of ours.

For a writer, new facts and research are really exciting, because every bit of new evidence we find, or new methods to search are things we can incorporate into books. I spend time every month reading Archaeology magazine for ideas for our books. This month’s issue yielded a fascinating article on the Hurrian tribe of ancient Mesopotamia (“Who Were The Hurrians?” Andrew Lawler, Archaeology, July/August 2008). One of my characters was a former Akkadian prince (who’s obviously lived a really long time!) and lo and behold, but come to discover that Akkad and Urkesh had a long-standing cooperative society and people from both cities worked and lived among each other. Cool! And, one of the items found in a dig mentioned a woman named Tuli, who was a cook to the Akkadian queen. Poof! Instant new character. Why couldn’t a prince of the realm have known the cook to his mother? Of course he could have. Why couldn’t they have fallen in love but been forbidden to fraternize in that past time?

Another thing I find interesting is how many pieces of mail we get with “corrections” about our facts, and they aren’t average readers. They’re professors and grad students in the subject. This is also cool to us, because it says that we’re this close to getting even experts on a given subject to buy in to our realities. “Unbelievable” has moved to “plausible, but...” and will eventually become “possible.” Awesome!

How about all of you? What do you think? Is the truth out there, or is it all in books?

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Cathy will give away a copy of her book. Just answer her question here and a winner will be selected on Tuesday evening.