What's the story behind your latest book?
Eyes of the Owl, a Jack Bane Supernatural Mystery is the first in a series I'm writing with my partner JD Couch. This should be available in the next few weeks. It is about a young man, Jack Bane who returns home after a bad day at work to find the apparitions of three missing girls in his living room. They give him a sign on how to locate their bodies and he calls his uncle Robert Crain who is the town's sheriff.
Jack's mother was also psychic and had worked for the police, but Jack didn't know this, since both his parents had perished in a car wreck when he was four. Also, he has a twin brother, Carl, whose life has been far different than Jack's, for he has been under the influence of the town's serial killer, and raised as his apprentice. Carl is also possessed by a demon owl who controls him and he has fought to be freed from this possession for many years
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As the days pass by, other people go missing, and it is up to Jack's newly developed abilities, and the determination of Sheriff Crain and others on the Investigative team, Lt. Kyle Deerheart and his wife, Malinda Davis Deerheart, Detective Wayne Harrington, and two FBI agents, Jake Baxter and Madilyn Stover to solve the disturbing murders plaguing the town of Gilkey, NC.
Sightings include an ominous Owl-man who leaves behind owl feathers as his calling card. Among the victims are the three girls, and twin boys, thus the killer is dubbed the Sibling Killer by the local news stations. Later, a man and his son are abducted, too; the boy also one of twins.
But another killer has been operating in the area for many years, a killer whose taste runs in young women. Are the crimes related, and if so, how?
Where did you grow up, and how did this influence your writing?
I was born in South central Kentucky, but at an early age, my family moved quite a bit because my father worked as a lineman. When I was seven, we moved first to Missouri and then to Louisiana; and I love New Orleans, to this day. We later moved back to Kentucky, to several small towns, and even to Indianapolis, which I couldn't help but compare to New Orleans and how strikingly different they were. Later, we returned to Kentucky, took a jaunt into Tennessee and then back to Kentucky to stay. All of this by my seventh grade.
And it was during the summer, between the seventh and eighth grade that my reading became voracious. I read pretty much everything I could get my hands on; every genre there was came into my hands and I devoured them with more gusto than any sweets. Reading was a pleasant past-time and my favorite thing to do. I also began writing poetry and short stories about this time, for myself, not as a school project.
Being a southern girl, I feel most comfortable writing about the south, and so most of my writing is set in the south.
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