Good morning! Please welcome guest blogger Kim Richards. Though I will be away for part of the day, please feel free to leave comments for Kim and I will post them as soon as I return. Thank you!
~Kate
What usually comes first for you, characters or plot?
KR: I have to say research comes first. Often when I research a time period or do world building, the types of characters who would live there and potential plots reveal themselves. It’s almost like dominoes falling.
Where do you find inspiration for your stories?
KR: Just about everywhere. My short story, Manifestation in The Haunted Mansion Project Year Two came from several elements. During the first of the Haunted Mansion Writer’s Retreats, I learned that in the 1960’s, hippies lived on the property. Then during the second retreat, one of the men there experienced a possession. I listened to him talk the next morning. He was shaking and the depth of his belief in what happened to him was profound. I wondered if it were possible to create an evil entity simply by believing strongly enough in it’s existence. So Manifestation is about a young man, just back from Vietnam and suffering from PTSD. He tries to join a hippie commune in the mountains but what he creates threatens them all.
Do you have a favorite character or characters you feel especially close to?
KR: Yes. Cimmone in the historical ghost story novel I’m writing titled The Bridal Gift. She is married to a bastard of a husband who doesn’t love her. While my current husband is a wonderful man and “a keeper’, I have been in abusive marriages before so some of her feelings of loss and helplessness came from my own experiences.
To you what makes a great romance heroine?
KR: A strong woman who knows the difference between a bad boy of the kind to run away from fast before you lose you home, money or life; and a bad boy who just knows what he likes in a woman and insists on getting her. There’s a BIG difference. The first leads to pain and abuse while the second leads to hot sex.
If you could be any kind of shapeshifter, what kind would you be?
KR: I’d want to be a house cat. Pampered, spoiled, independent, and lovin’ on my terms. Plus seafood…there must be seafood!
The Haunted Mansion Project: Year Two
http://www.damnationbooks.com/book.php?isbn=9781615729173
eBook ISBN: 9781615729173
Print ISBN: 9781615729180
In the fall of 2012, seventeen horror writers and artists met in Northern California to spend four days together in a haunted mansion. Ten of them were survivors of the original Haunted Mansion Writers Retreat; the rest were virgins who encountered the house and its denizens for the first time. Joining them was the group of paranormal investigators who had recorded a plethora of EVPs as well as anomalous lights and ominous shadows in the mansion in 2010. This anthology collects short stories and poetry—as well as real impressions and investigative conclusions—inspired by that long weekend.
Contributors include Nichole Boscia, S.G. Browne, Christian Colvin, Alexa deMonterice, Fran Friel, Kristin Galvin, William Gilchrist, Sèphera Girón, Stacey Graham, Rain Graves, E.S. Magill, Chris Marrs, Rena Mason, Angel Leigh McCoy, Lisa Morton, Yvonne Navarro, Weston Ochse, Kim Richards, Loren Rhoads, Kay Sundstrom, Dan Weidman, and Steve Weidman.
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Thank you for being a guest, Kim!