Wednesday, April 27, 2016

Witch’s Cursed Cabin by Marsha A. Moore Interview


Witch’s Cursed Cabin
Coon Hollow Coven Tales
Book Two
Marsha A. Moore
Genre: Paranormal romance

Date of Publication: 4-27-16

Number of pages: 380
Word Count: 111,000

Cover Artist: Marsha A. Moore

Book Description:

Eager to be on her own away from home, twenty-year-old Aggie Anders accepts a relative’s invitation to live in Coon Hollow Coven. Although she’s a witch from a different coven, what locals say about the Hollow confuses her. How can witchcraft there live and breathe through souls of the dead?

Aggie’s new residence in this strange southern Indiana world is a deserted homestead cabin. The property’s carriage house serves as the coven’s haunted Halloween fundraiser. It’s a great opportunity for her to make new friends, especially with the coven’s sexy new High Priest Logan.

But living in the homestead also brings Aggie enemies. Outsiders aren’t welcome. A cantankerous, old neighbor tries to frighten her off by warning her that the homestead is cursed. Local witches who practice black magic attempt to use their evil to drive Aggie away and rid their coven of her unusual powers as a sun witch.
Determined to stay and fit in, Aggie discovers not only that the cabin is cursed, but she alone is destined to break the curse before moonrise on Samhain. If she fails, neither the living nor the dead will be safe.


About the Coon Hollow Coven Tales Series

The series is about a coven of witches in a fictitious southern Indiana community, south of Bloomington, the neck of the woods where I spent my favorite childhood years surrounded by the love of a big family. The books are rich with a warm Hoosier down-home feel. There are interesting interactions between coven members and locals from the nearby small town of Bentbone. If magic wasn’t enough of a difference between the two groups, the coven folk adhere to the 1930s lifestyle that existed when the coven formed.

Book One


Excerpt from Chapter One: The Homestead

A shove of my shoulder pried the rusty hinges on the heavy log cabin door loose. I flung my blond braid to my back and peered inside. Beings and critters, alive and furry as well as undead and translucent, flew, crawled, or slithered across dark recesses of the hallway, sitting room, and stairwell.

“You weren’t kidding. This place is haunted.” I shuddered and looked over my shoulder at Cerise. She looked perky as always with her dark bobbed hair and lively brown eyes beneath horn-rimmed eyeglasses. “Were those things relations or varmints?” I took a cautious step over the threshold to escape the blustery weather and unbuttoned my corduroy jacket.
“Oh, both, Aggie. Ghosts of witch kin and their talking animal familiars,” she said and moved past me to lift sheets off the sitting room furniture.

I raised a brow, curious about what talking familiars were but was too afraid to ask. She didn’t seem to think they were bad, and I needed a place to stay.

Cerise dropped the sheets in a pile and wiped her dusty hands on her skirt. “Those sorts of ghosts are in all the homes here in Coon Hollow Coven. Maybe some animal spirits, too, from the surrounding woods. This property has at least fifty acres of forest. The ghosts are harmless, part of the family. At least no neighbors have complained, that I’ve heard.”

Eyeing corners of the parlor and the length of the hall, I wondered if I could ever get used to living with ghosts of people who’d lived here before. In New Wish, Indiana, where I’d spent my entire twenty years, we only had an occasional ghost. Usually lost souls who, for some reason, hadn’t found their peace before death took them. Most times, those folks had been tormented by darkness and experimented with black magic while they’d lived. Or so Mom told me, but I always thought that was just her way of keeping me in line.

I pushed those thoughts out of my head. I wanted a place of my own more than anything else, and not in the tiny town of New Wish where everyone knew me…or thought they did. They all said I was the spitting image of my Aunt Faye, with the same light blond straight hair, deep blue eyes, dark brows, and quiet personality. Everyone thought I’d grow up to be like her with a houseful of kids, seven or more. Fact was, they didn’t know me. I wasn’t sure I even knew myself. There was so much I wanted to learn and do that wouldn’t happen if I stayed at my parents’ home.

Cerise struggled to open the stuck window. “Aggie, can you help me here? Some fresh air might tempt a few spirits outside. This place has been vacant since my mother passed in 2009. We might find just about anything in here after five years.”



About the Author:

Marsha A. Moore loves to write fantasy and paranormal romance. Much of her life feeds the creative flow she uses to weave highly imaginative tales.

The magic of art and nature spark life into her writing, as well as other pursuits of watercolor painting and drawing. She’s been a yoga enthusiast for over a decade and is a registered yoga teacher. Her practice helps weave the mystical into her writing. After a move from Toledo to Tampa in 2008, she’s happily transformed into a Floridian, in love with the outdoors where she’s always on the lookout for portals to other worlds. Marsha is crazy about cycling. She lives with her husband on a large saltwater lagoon, where taking her kayak out is a real treat. She never has enough days spent at the beach, usually scribbling away at stories with toes wiggling in the sand. Every day at the beach is magical!







Goodreads author page  http://www.goodreads.com/marshaamoore

Interview

Where are you from?
I live in Tampa, Florida and have for the past seven years. Originally, I’m a Midwesterner, having lived in Indiana and Ohio for decades. In fact, my Coon Hollow Coven series is about a coven of witches in a fictitious southern Indiana community, south of Bloomington in Brown County, the neck of the woods where I spent my favorite childhood years surrounded by the love of a big family. The books are rich with a warm Hoosier down-home feel. There are interesting interactions between coven members and locals from the nearby small town of Bentbone. If magic wasn’t enough of a difference between the two groups, the coven folk adhere to the 1930s lifestyle that existed when the coven formed. 

Tell us your latest news?
Witch's Cursed Cabin, the second book in my Coon Hollow Coven Tales series has just been released!
A note to readers: although this is book 2, the series is written to be read in any order. The series is about one community and its residents may pass in and out of various books, but each book has its own unique and special story to be told.

When and why did you begin writing?
I’ve followed a circuitous path to end up as a fiction writer. I graduated with a degree in Biology, minoring in English. I wanted to pursue Literature and Fine Art, but my parents encouraged me to study Biology, so I might eventually find a reliable job. That was fine, since I liked that subject also. I wrote essays as a fun break from my full load of Science. Yes, weird that I thought writing essays was fun…still do!

When did you first consider yourself a writer?
With the publication of my first book six years ago.

What inspired you to write your first book?
Through the years, I picked up a hobby of writing music reviews for record companies. During that time, I was inspired by some of those experiences and tinkered with fiction. Initially, I wrote fiction based on the world of rock music. Through a lucky happenstance, a man who worked for a major book publishing house read my first attempts at fiction, which were posted on a music forum. He repeatedly encouraged me to submit my creative writing to publishers. Over time, I came to believe him and did. After that, a new world opened up and it’s been a wonderful time.

Do you have a specific writing style?
My process begins with a setting I find interesting, somewhere I’d like to spend some time. In writing fantasy, world-building is everything. Then, I create the main characters, appearance and personality. From there, how they will become involved goes hand-in-hand with developing the plot. I do outline a lot, since there are many interwoven subplots in this series. Outside of the key features on the outline, I allow the in-between progress in each chapter to flow freely, which I enjoy a lot. Some of the most imaginative bits arise that way. I tend to write in extended spurts, immersing myself in the story. Perhaps because I’m writing a very involved epic tale, I need longer periods to keep the storylines straight. Or, it’s just more enjoyable for me to feel like I’m in the world for several days—like on a vacation!

How did you come up with the title?
I struggle with titles, jostling keywords around until I end up with something that sounds good and will help readers know what the book is about. I create titles during the planning stages before I write a book.

Is there a message in your novel that you want readers to grasp?
The driving theme of Witch’s Cursed Cabin is the need to belong. When the heroine, Aggie Angers, moves to Coon Hollow Coven she struggles against being labeled an outsider. Some in the coven try to scare her away because her magic is different than what witch’s use in the Hollow. Aggie’s tough and determined to stay. It’s her first home of her own away from her parents. But she learns that acceptance must be earned.

How much of the book is realistic? Are experiences based on someone you know, or events in your own life?
The series is about a coven of witches in a fictitious southern Indiana community, south of Bloomington, the neck of the woods where I spent my favorite childhood years surrounded by the love of a big family. The books are rich with a warm Hoosier down-home feel, and many characters remind me of my aunts and uncles.
While I’m not a practicing witch, the magic in Witch’s Moonstone Locket is a creative blend from my research and my imagination. In preparing to write this book, I enjoyed learning about traditional witch and wiccan lifestyles. My library grew so much that I had to clean out and rearrange my office area!

What books have most influenced your life most?
There are so many. Magical realism books like The Girl Who Chased the Moon by Sarah Addison Allen and Practical Magic and The Green Witch by Alice Hoffman are delicately woven with the most sparkling magic. Other books that captivate me are Natasha Mostert’s Season of the Witch and Erin Morgenstern’s Night Circus. In both of those, magic caused mental effects for both the giver and receiver. I enjoy the complexity of that theme and often employ it in my writing.

What book are you reading now?
I’m reading the Wicked Lovely series by Melissa Marr and Moonheart by Charles de Lint. Loving both!

Are there any new authors that have grasped your interest?
Paula Brackston is a fairly new author who I love to read. The Witch’s Daughter was amazing.

What are your current projects?
I’m writing the third book in the Coon Hollow Coven Tales series, titled Blood Ice & Oak Moon. This story is about a young woman, Esme, who returns to Coon Hollow Coven at the age of twenty-seven. When she was a child, her mother wanted to keep Esme from witchcraft and took them away. But her mother couldn’t deny the warm relationship the girl formed with her Grammy Flora, a well-respected hedge witch in the Hollow. When Grammy Flora passes away, she leaves her coven property to Esme at a time she needs to escape problems and start a new life. Esme works, best she can, as a hedge witch, who must rely on help from the hedge world of faeries to find all the healing herbs she needs. The fae are shrewd traders. When they open their world to Esme, she’s expected to face the darkness her mother ran from. But if Esme can meet those dangers, the king of the Winter Court will give her a wonderful gift that will change her life…just what she needed to find when she returned to the Hollow.

What would you like my readers to know?
I love hearing from my readers. I’m happy to talk with them in any social media or through email.



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