RED HOUSE - High Water Everywhere
Paranormal
investigator and hoodoo practitioner Roxie Mathis makes her home in Nashville.
When writing RED HOUSE, the follow-up to the character's debut book MOJO QUEEN,
I had to decide whether to acknowledge the devastating flood that roared
through the city in May 2010 or ignore it. Ignoring it seemed wrong and soon I
found myself wondering not only how would the event affect Roxie and the other
characters, how would it affect the supernatural elements of the world they
live in. Would the inherent magical energy of the land be altered by the
overwhelming and chaotic fury wrought by nature? What about those that dwelled
in the spirit plane? Might they also find themselves homeless and lost as many
of the mortal victims of the flood? What unseen dangers lurked in the
aftermath?
Here's
an excerpt of Roxie discovering some of the changes caused by the flood:
I hadn’t brought a candle with me but had something
else in mind to try. I’d been doing a lot of thinking about what appeared to be
my natural affinity for the element of fire. What else could I do with that
besides light candles?
There were many different flavors of witchcraft but
there were some common denominators among them. One of those was the four
natural elements of earth, air, fire and water. Those four elements
corresponded to the four states of matter--solid, gas, plasma, and liquid. My
desire to go beyond the party trick of lighting candles without a match led me
to research plasma. Other than bad memories of science classes in high school,
I didn’t get much out of it. An idea for a very basic experiment occurred to me
and I’d been waiting for the time to try it.
Wishing I’d brought an empty glass, I drank the rest
of the tea and tossed the ice into the grass. I laid the book aside, along with
my glasses. Drawing into a sitting position, hands resting lightly on my
thighs, I did a slow grounding. Despite having spent a great deal of time here,
I still wasn’t as familiar with this plot of land as I was with my own. Opening
myself up, I reached out to the energy around me. The earth below, the sky
above, streams and underground water sources, trees and vegetation--all of them
flowed together into a natural rhythm. Beyond that was the man-made energy of the city itself. Point
and counterpoint. Or if not that, then at least two separate rhythms that
somehow managed to work together, like an improbable mash-up of two radically
different pieces of music.
I expected all of that and had felt it before. What
shocked me was the bang and clatter of something atonal, chaotic. Hard bop on
meth, instead of cool jazz or trance blues. Concentrating on the discordant
notes, it overtook everything else until its rattle was the only thing I could
feel. A rushing wildness, dark and hungry, pulled at me. It pressed against my
chest and tugged at my limbs. Fear exploded in my gut, followed quickly by
recognition. That recognition saved me from what might have turned into a nasty
panic attack. Reaching for calm, steady earth, I pushed away the chaos and took
slow even breaths.
It was the flood. The land, the people, every source
of energy in the area had been traumatized by the flood. There hadn’t been
enough time yet for any real healing, so the menace still lurked just beneath
the surface of things. And if it was at all present, that meant it could
continue to affect things.
My breathing got a little out of sync as fear
nibbled at the edges of my thoughts. I had to distract myself or pretty soon
all I’d be able to think about was my destroyed home. Hard bop on meth was not
really a good analogy for this area. Well, the meth part worked. What other
musical analogy might work to describe the flood’s leftover energy? I struggled
to come up with something but the best I could do was “redneck Rammstein.”
Blurb:
There's high water everywhere and she's
about to drown on dry land.
Roxie Mathis lost her home and her
livelihood to a devastating flood. She's lucky to be staying with her vampire
ancestor Daniel but she wants to put the pieces of her life back together.
Trouble is, Roxie's lost her mojo. The trauma of almost drowning and losing her
home left a deep mark on her.
Blake Harvill left a mark on her too and
she's been missing him in the four months since he left town. Now he's back
with plans to stay. Roxie wants him like she's never wanted anyone else but can
she trust the sexy sorcerer with her guarded heart?
Hired to evict ghosts from the bed and
breakfast called Maple Hill, her confidence takes another hit when she
encounters a violent spirit she's crossed paths with in the past. When the
spirit traps innocent people in the house Roxie's going to have to tap
reservoirs of magic she's never touched before. Like physics, everything in
magic has an equal and opposite reaction, and Roxie can only hope her desperate
spellwork won't kill her--or conjure up something even more dangerous.
