Guest Blogger: Phaedra Weldon

The winner of Phaedra's book is: Daelith! Congrats, Daelith. Send me your snail mail info and I'll pass it along to Phaedra. Thanks to everyone who participated!

Walking Between the Worlds

So let’s talk about the Paranormal. Sounds easy, eh? Um . . . not so much. The Paranormal definition on my Mac’s Operating systems says, “denoting events or phenomena such as telekinesis or clairvoyance that are beyond the scope of normal scientific understanding.”

I write about ghosts, spectres, and astral walkers. How much beyond the scope of normal scientific understanding can you get? And what makes this subject so fascinating for me are the numerous testimonies of people who have felt as if they were out of body, had near death experiences, and seen ghosts!

How cool is that?

But before I get all hot and bothered about ghosts, let me express my absolute love of the Paranormal boom. I mean -- you did read that “stellar” definition above, right? How boring is that? The Paranormal is so much more -- something for everyone! It’s vampires, goblins, gargoyles, demons, ghosts, werewolves, were-cats, were-bats, trolls, ogres, ghosts, elves, witches, elementals, sorcerers, dragons -- and did I mention ghosts?

Ghost stories. Ghost legends. Ghost tours. Ghost Hunters -- yes I’m a fan. From as far back as I can remember the areas around my home town in South Georgia carried a variety of ghost legends. Mostly associated with the Civil War. From a lady in white that haunts a lone grave behind a tree on a rural road to a bridge where the screams of a dying woman can be heard only when traveling in one direction on the bridge.

I asked my grandmother once about the ghosts -- where did they come from? Did they see us the way we saw them? And would they always be there, never moving on? And her response always unnerved me.

“Honey -- the planes between the worlds are growing thinner by the day. Just as we see them on occasion, they see us. But what worries me are the things we can’t see.”

Yikes.

And thus was born a ten year old who slept with the light on and the covers pulled up that night.

What we can’t see? What did that mean? Were there things watching me and I couldn’t watch them? And how could I find them if I wanted to?

And don’t think I didn’t finally cough up the courage to ask my grandmother about just that.

“You have to go where they are,” she said. “You have to walk between the worlds.” Which I translated into something like -- if you want to understand a bee keeper and why he would purposefully stick his hand into a hive then you have to become the bee keeper.

And then I sort of thought from there that if you became like a ghost, or a spirit and immersed yourself into their existence then maybe they’d find a way to possess you and then you’d switch places and you’d be the ghost and the ghost would be you.

Yeah . . . and as Mr. Myagi said, “You too much TV.”

But from all this curiosity and fascination came the idea for an astral walking detective (though that term is a loose term for Zoë) named Zoë Martinique. Yeah I’d written the standard ghost story over the years -- unrequited love, ghost lovers, evil ghosts, loving ghosts -- and they were okay.

But taking that extra step like my grandmother threw at me -- now that was a bit harder. Because in truth -- we don’t really know what’s on that other side. Or how it’s built. Or why it really exists.

Taking the “what if” (that Oh Cool! You want to put into a proposal or book that makes an editor say, “Wow!”) and exploring the possibility -- however good, or bad it may be. I love writing about the different breakdowns of the after life, and making it like my grandmother said it was -- that the veils are thin and some things that shouldn’t cross over from the Abysmal side shouldn’t be in the living.

So take a journey with Zoë as she discovers what it’s like to walk between both worlds. No vampires. Or zombies. Elves or trolls or dwarves. Just the human condition, imagination, and fear.

Hehehehehe . . .

Any questions?

PHANTASM, the third book in the Zoë Martinique Investigation Series will be out in June of 2009. A Zoë prequel story -- spotlighting the paranomal investigation group SPRITE -- will be published in the DAW anthology Crime Spells to be released in February 2009.

Phaedra is giving away a copy of her book. Just leave a comment here, answering this question (winner will be selected Friday night and posted here):

If you were going to write about walking between the worlds, what would you come up with?

For more information about Phaedra's books, you can visit:

http://www.phaedraweldon.com/