My novel Glamorous is a paranormal thriller whose main protagonist I always considered to be a stronger, younger version of myself. The person I wished I could be at her age.
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Glamorous is a bronze winner of the 2019 The Wishing Self Book Awards in Adult fiction.
“A superbly written paranormal thriller packed full of memorable characters. A BRONZE MEDAL WINNER and highly recommended.” ~The Wishing Shelf Book Awards
Here is the description from Amazon.com
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A serial killer preys on homeless girls. Only her powers can stop him.
Grace is a survivor.
Haunted by the memories of the car accident that killed her brother and brought her police career to an end, she’s determined to bring wrongdoers to justice as a PI.
Little do her clients know that the accident gave her more than nightmares; it gave her paranormal abilities she can’t explain.
When she agrees to help a friend solve a mystery involving missing homeless girls, Grace is drawn into a secret world of Paranorms and The Family that rules them. It’s a supernatural haven for potential friends and deadly evil, and this discovery alters her reality forever.
With the killer still at large, Grace must use her powers to put an end to his murder spree, even if she ends up being the one in the cross-hairs.
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The original plot of the story came to me in a dream when we were living in Atlanta.
I was sick, once again, with my yearly winter respiratory illness and was in a state of half-sleep trying to rest. I had a “dream” of a male PI who drove an old red convertible and owned a German Shepard that was his side-kick. He got caught up in a mystery around young girls being lured to a modeling agency only to be taken to another dimension/world to be used for dark purposes.
Years later, I decided to revisit this idea and it morphed into the Grace Bishop paranormal thriller novels.
I never set out to write a novel about my own child abuse, my grandfather, or the other girls and women that he had abused.
I just had a great idea, with great characters who would not let me rest until I granted them voices and wrote their stories.
I had already started the story and had created the major characters, including Grace’s enemy, the Glamour, and was outlining their major confrontation for the end of the book.
I needed to decide where their confrontation would be. I chose my grandparents’ lake house and boat dock. (The house where I was abused.)
I picked that location because it represented a frightening place for me and I felt I could bring that energy to the book.
It was only after writing the details of the climax scene that I realized what I had done.
I had recast my real-life experiences into a dark urban fantasy novel.
In tomorrow’s blog, My Abuse Story Recast as Award-Winning Dark Urban Fantasy 2, I will share the details of how Glamorous recasts my abuse story as fiction.
