#spookyromancenovel excerpt

[elenajohansenauthor]

Fictober18, Day 27: “Remember, you have to remember.”

OCs: Shannon, Noah, Orlando, and Ursula

Project: Untitled paranormal romance for Fictober18/NaNoWriMo, now tagged #spookyromancenovel on my blog

Potential Triggers: graveyards?

Word Count: 1,594

About: Lots of magic talk, with a dash of necromancy. You know, because.

The room was a stone box, perhaps eight feet square. There was hardly room for the four of us to stand without stepping on each other, because we were all avoiding the runic circle inscribed on the floor. At the center of the circle stood a single chair made of heavy, dark wood and fitted with thick leather straps on the arms and front legs.

No question what this room was for.

When Ursula stepped within the circle and nothing happened, I felt confident to do the same. I inspected the chair for any more markings and found nothing. When I probed it magically, all I got were some basic strengthening and anti-aging spells—though the spells themselves felt old, worn-in. The craftsmanship was solid, though, and they were no where near expended.

I tested the circle next and was surprised to find it empty of magic. I looked to Ursula. “The whole floor is a vessel?”

She nodded. “You can set any kind of field, barrier, or trap into it, then wipe it clean when you're done. I couldn't tell you precisely how Grandmother managed to set it up, but the actual working of it is fairly straightforward.”

The walls were made from the same stone as the floor, windowless, but with flat metal panels set at about eye level. “Reflectors?” I asked.

“Or amplifiers.” Ursula shrugged. “This room was designed to be as multi-purpose as possible.”

“For a prison.”

She laughed. “Usually, yes, but there have been plenty of times no one was actually strapped into the chair. Mind control is a tricky business, and it's best to proceed carefully even when the subject volunteers.”

Noah had tucked himself into a corner, leaning against the wall, to give us more space. “Who volunteers for that?”

Orlando leveled a flat look at him. “You'd be surprised.” He turned to me. “So, since you're the closest thing we have to a security expert, what's your opinion? What can you do to this space to make it vampire proof?”

I gave it some thought, running down the list of enchantments I'd performed on the shop personally, rather than gotten friends from the magical community to do. “I can put a ward of undead binding on the floor. Once you bring a vampire into it, it will activate, and they won't be able to leave the circle until it's canceled. But it won't prevent them from moving or speaking, only from escaping. So you'll still need to bind them physically as well.” I shrugged. “Pretty standard.”

Orlando smiled. “It's more than I can do.”

“What about the chair itself? Can you improve it in any way?” Ursula folded her arms and came just short of glaring at me. If I had to guess, it irked her to rely on me for this—a case of professional jealousy, perhaps.

“The spells already on it are firm, they'll hold for years yet. The most I could do would be to bless the straps and the frame, but I'm hesitant to suggest anything that might cause the vampires pain, in case that interferes with the work you'll be doing to them. The undead don't care much for Healing magic.”

Ursula looked suspicious—or maybe just irritated—but Orlando was nodding. “That could make things difficult.”

“But I could use the wall panels to make a failsafe.” Ursula took a step closer, dropping her guarded posture, so I went on. “If I charge them with sunlight. They'll look normal unless you turn them on—I can tie it to a command word—and then, if something goes wrong, like if the circle doesn't hold or the vampire gets a grip on somebody, say the word, and they'll get blasted from all four sides with sun. Fried vampire.”

“I didn't even know you could infuse sunlight into something,” Ursula murmured. “Does it only work on metal? What is the spell commonly used for?”

I launched into a brief explanation, keeping in mind that Noah had no reason to be here and was probably getting bored with this. Of course, I knew there was no way he'd leave me alone with someone he'd just met and didn't seem to trust—not that I blamed him, because Ursula without her librarian persona was a much darker, sharper woman than I'd expected. But even if shop talk made Ursula warm to me, now wasn't the time to indulge in too much.

Orlando might have felt the same way, because he smoothly broke in to our discussion just as I was about to list the components. “Are any of them prohibitively expensive? Because this isn't, strictly speaking, a job we're hiring you to do. It's to benefit all of us. But no one expects you to beggar yourself in the process.”

I shook my head. “It's all pretty common stuff. The hardest part might actually be gathering the sunshine—it's been a rainy season.”

“Can you have the room completed within the next two weeks?” Ursula asked.

I did a little mental math before nodding. “Unless the weather is truly uncooperative, yes.” I swallowed a sudden feeling of dread. “Any significance to the time limit?”

She waved a languid hand. “The full moon. My surveillance spells require it, so I can't have them ready before then. But I'd like to be ready to move on this as soon as possible, so if the room is complete by then...”

I nodded. “I can do that.” I pulled out my phone, opened the note app, and started a list of everything I'd need.

“I think we're done, then.” Orlando opened the door for us, and we filed out, with me relying on Noah to guide me while I kept putting items on the list. Instead of returning to the room we'd come into through the spirit void, Ursula led us through a maze of drab, poorly-lit hallways—the servants' section, I'd bet. Because of course the manor was big enough to have a shabby part just for them.

We came to a door near the biggest kitchen I'd ever seen. A few uniformed women were moving about it quietly, but they didn't look up from their work as we passed. Noah had pulled his hood up already, in case the house wasn't as deserted as Ursula claimed; I didn't know if she thought the staff didn't matter, or if she had obscured our presence somehow, perhaps casting a charm to make others look away, similar to my amulet. Whatever the reason, we left Orlando and Ursula behind without raising any alarms.

We found ourselves on a small concrete apron separating the house from the grounds. It wasn't elaborate enough to be called a porch, because nothing about the area seemed welcoming or leisurely. There was a small woodpile stacked against the wall, a broom leaning beside it. The only illumination was a single, weak light above the door, and by it I could only see a few feet of damp grass beyond the concrete.

Noah was going to have to get me home safely, and I had no idea how far from my apartment we were.

“That was weird,” I said softly, not ready yet to leave the small circle of light.

“This whole thing is weird, and I hate being here.” He took my hand and led me out into the dark.

I couldn't see well, with the moon only one day from new. We seemed to be passing through a formal garden, though something gnawed at the edges of my magic, something that didn't belong. “Noah, stop for a second.”

I let my eyes fall into the scrying gaze, which fortunately worked as well in total darkness as it did any other time. I didn't need light to sense magic, and something here was calling out to me. I spun in place, feeling the source nearby, but somehow not seeing it.

Not until I looked down. The ground below me pulsed with power.

I dropped to my knees, provoking a sharp sound of surprise from Noah. “What are you doing?”

As soon as I put my hands on the ground, pushing the manicured grass aside until my skin found the dirt, I heard a murmuring voice in my head. I built this place with my blood, I strengthened it with my bones. Remember, you have to remember. We will stand forever on the power of death.

“Noah?” I said weakly. “I was going to wait until we were home to ask why you recognized this manor's name and what you know about the family. But, by any chance, are they necromancers?”

“Someone I was bunking with a year or so back pointed out one of the Osbourne men to me, when we saw him skulking around the Heritage Hill Cemetery. I couldn't tell you whether it was one of Ursula's brothers, or her father or an uncle or something, but he was graverobbing. So it's a good bet.”

“What were you doing there?”

“Shannon,” he said in exasperation.

“Oh!” I was such an idiot sometimes. “Right.”

“Do I want to know why you're asking?”

“I'll explain later.”

“We should go, then.”

“Wait a second!” I scraped some of the dirt up and dumped it into a tiny plastic bag—I always had them on me for collecting specimens.

“What are you doing?”

“Grave dirt,” I said shortly.

“Well, I guess you don't need to explain, then. You done? Let's get out of here.”

[elenajohansenauthor]

Fictober, Day 26: “If you can’t see it, is it really there?”

OCs: Shannon, Noah, Orlando, and Ursula

Project: Untitled paranormal romance for Fictober18/NaNoWriMo, now tagged #spookyromancenovel on my blog

Potential Triggers: none

Word Count: 2,374

About: Four people at a fancy table, hatching a plan.

Orlando stood and drew himself up to his full height, which was greater than I'd realized. In the suit, he looked trimmer, more handsome, and more intimidating. Not at all the friendly, if slightly mysterious, tea-serving magical guru we'd known so far.

"I'll forgive you that, Noah, because you're probably badly startled by what you saw out there. Or what you didn't see."

Noah tried to approach him, but I threw out my arm. I was surprised it worked, and to strengthen my position, I stepped between the two men, as if I were the one tasked with guarding Noah, instead of the other way around.

"We're tired of being tested." I kept my voice even. "It's one thing to be prepared for the unexpected, but it's another to constantly be run through a gauntlet at another's whim."

Orlando grunted. "I wish it were only my whim that drove this." He gestured at the table. "Come. Have a seat."

He resumed his place at the head of the table. I took the chair to his left, with Noah on my left. Ursula joined us, sitting across from me with her hands folded neatly on the polished wood. She spoke first. "Welcome to Osbourne Manor."

Noah looked at her sharply, but I was mystified. Should I know that name?

"Ursula--" I began.

"You didn't tell me your librarian friend was an Osbourne," Noah muttered. Everyone at the table heard him anyway, of course.

"For one, I didn't know her last name, and also, why does it matter? Who are they?" I addressed the question as much to Ursula as to Noah; it would probably be less embarrassing if she answered, because Noah seemed particularly volatile at the moment.

"We're a very old and very rich family of accomplished witches," she said in a warm tone laced with irony. "But you don't move in our circles, Shannon, no shame in that, because they can be exceedingly boring. I don't trade on my family name to get by, and at work, only the head librarian knows about my connections." She sighed and gestured at the opulent room, decorated with a bit too much scrollwork and gold leaf for my taste, though the sheer wealth on display made a powerful statement regardless of personal taste. "I only use them when there's good reason. I'm not above deploying my resources wisely when there's true need."

"And that need is me?" Noah asked skeptically. "Shannon didn't even tell you about me, not completely."

"No, she didn't." I flushed, but she only smiled at me. "She had every reason to be vague. If my grandfather knew I'd brought a gargoyle into the house, even one that's still partly human, he'd either disown me for the audacity of it, or promote me to primary heir for my cleverness in engineering your capture."

Noah stood, planting his considerable fists on the table top, but Ursula only laughed a pretty trill of notes. "I've no intention of keeping you, dear, though you're still quite handsome, in an odd way. But you'd be worth a fortune to the right buyer on the black market. Whether as a slave, a test subject, or a magical artifact. You're in no danger from me, but you should know that won't extend to the rest of the Osbourne clan."

He didn't relax. "Do you promise?"

She laughed again. "I swear to you, Noah the half-gargoyle, that I intend no direct harm to your person or your freedom. I will not betray you to my family, and to the best of my ability I will prevent harm to you from other sources if necessary." She waved two pointed fingers on one hand in a complicated gesture, leaving a faint trail of light in the air. A sigil? I couldn't identify it, but from all that reading I'd done, I knew they were used to seal advanced promise magic spells. Ursula had known more than she'd given me. "Are you satisfied?" she asked archly.

I put my hand on his arm.

"Yes," he growled, sitting down.

I cleared my throat to bring their attention to me. "So you brought us in the back door to keep anyone else from knowing we're here?"

"Something like that," Ursula answered.

Orlando cut her a look that wiped the faint smirk off her face. I wondered how they knew each other. I wondered what their history was. "I can't make a portal into a place protected by wards I didn't cast myself," he explained. "This was the best I could do, and it had the advantage of giving you a glimpse of the spirit void."

"Is that what that was?" I shuddered belatedly at the experience. "I never would have gone in if I'd known. Please don't tell me that's how we're getting out again."

Orlando and Ursula looked at each other, communicating something without words. "No," Ursula said finally. "I'll figure something out." She stood abruptly and swept out of the room, walking as confidently as if she were wearing a ballgown instead of a simple sheath dress with a cardigan thrown over it. Her heels clicked on the tile the whole way out.

"Do we finally get to find out your plan now?" The impatience in Noah's voice warred with the annoyance for dominance.

"This is where we put one together. I have a basic one in mind, but much will depend on what resources and abilities the two of you can contribute."

"You want me because you need to capture a vampire alive, instead of killing him, and I'm probably the easiest way to do that." Noah shrugged, affecting nonchalance as he leaned back in his chair. "I mean, the two of you--three, if Osbourne's going to be a part of this--have considerable magic to throw around, so I'm not even sure you need muscle like me."

Orlando's face was grave. "It would be a simpler matter if you could fly," he stated baldly. "Despite popular myth, vampires don't have flight, not in their normal form, and they can't turn into bats. Once we have a target, all you would have to do is swoop in and pick him up."

"Nothing's ever that simple," I broke in. "And no matter what we decide, capturing the vampire isn't going to be the hard part."

"True, true," Orlando said mildly. "You guessed that I knew someone capable of mind control, and you were right. But it's a difficult, delicate process, one that can go wrong in so many ways. We may need to try this more than once."

"Some high-up muckity-muck in the Conclave is going to notice if a lot of Archive vampires go missing."

He shook his head. "You'd be surprised. They have a startlingly high fatality rate compared to vampires living elsewhere in the city."

When I digested that, my stomach twisted into a hard knot. "You already know where the Archives are."

He nodded. "I've known for some time, and if you looked at the puzzle long enough, from the right angle, I'd bet you could figure it out."

Noah bristled. "Why not just tell us?"

"Where's the fun in that? I love seeing the light in a person's eyes when they reach the answer on their own. And our little duckling here is good at that, when she stops insisting there's only one way to attack a problem."

“Whatever, fine, it's not important now.” It wasn't that I hated not being the smartest person in the room—I was perfectly aware I was far from brilliant. But having my nose rubbed in that knowledge wasn't pleasant, and Orlando doing it to me in private was one thing. In front of Noah? Not so acceptable. “Is Ursula our mind controller, or is there someone else we should know about who isn't at this meeting?”

“It's one of Ursula's younger brothers.”

“I thought her family wasn't going to know about me.” Noah's hands curled into fists again.

“They won't. He won't. The plan is for you to get the vampires and bring them here—somehow, that's something we'll need to work out. But you won't need to be present for the spells that bind them to our purpose. In fact, the fewer people there, the better.”

“What are you going to tell him?” I didn't like this plan so far.

“Ursula's got that covered, because the vampires aren't just going to be working for you. If we're going to attempt this enterprise, we're planning to extract as much knowledge as possible before we can't maintain it. You'll get what you want, I'll get what I want, and the younger Osbourne...what he wants most is the opportunity to refine his magical skills, and that's not something he can do much of on his own.”

“Wait, he needs to practice mind controlling things?” Noah's temper was working its way back up to outrage. “Can he already do it reliably?”

“Ursula would know better than I—can we table that until she returns?” Orlando sounded pained.

“Okay. But there's something you've skipped over. You jumped straight to talking about Noah wrangling the vampires here. But how are we identifying and choosing which ones?”

More sharp clicks on the tile announced Ursula's return a few seconds before she spoke. “I'll take care of that.”

I waited. “You care to explain how?”

“I don't.”

I glared at her. “I think I liked you better when you were just my librarian.”

She arched one perfectly plucked eyebrow. “Honestly, so do I. Being in this house makes me itch, and that makes me mean, like I have to be with my family. They don't respect kindness.”

Noah mumbled something, but I didn't dare ask for clarification. Ursula rolled her eyes at him.

Orlando tapped the table twice, a more dignified way to gather our attention than my throat-clearing. “Ursula will select our targets. Noah will bring them here and restrain them physically while Ursula and I bind them. Then he will leave, and Ursula's brother will work the compulsions. After that, they will leave to return to work for two nights. Then they will come back to us and divulge their secrets.”

The absence of my name in the plan was glaring. I should have been relieved that I wasn't necessary; instead I was annoyed. I didn't mind taking it out on Ursula under the guise of protecting Noah. “What safeguards do you have in place? Where will you hold the vampires during the workings? What's your plan to get Noah in and out of your manor unobserved, let alone the vampires?”

Ursula slid a small object across the table. It stopped precisely halfway between me and Noah. “A key,” she said dryly.

It didn't look like one. It was a tiny ceramic bell, glazed in with with a pearly sheen. I picked it up and it made no sound—there was no clapper inside. But I felt layer upon layer of magic embedded in it. Most of the spells were unfamiliar, but there was a strong one I recognized instantly. “A homing beacon.”

“Partly. Give it a try. Make sure it's safe.”

I turned the bell over in my palm, looking for any hint of how to activate it. Ursula smirked. “If you can't see it, is it truly there?”

I pursed my lips. “Dumb question to ask a witch,” I said sourly, and then I rang the bell.

It chimed beautifully, a clear, ringing tone with a warmth resonance. When the sound faded, I was sitting on the far side of the room. My ass hit the floor a second later, with no chair to support it. I got to my feet, resisting the urge to rub my tailbone. “I've never been teleported before, but I still know that's a good one, cleanly cast. No disorientation, no nausea, perfect positional replication. Amazing work.”

“Thank you.” If I hadn't already guessed she'd created the bell, I would have known by the pride and gratitude in her voice.

I walked to the table and handed Noah the bell. He took it gingerly, as if afraid it would ring by accident. “It won't,” I said, guessing at his thought. “Without a clapper, you have to use a clear intention to sound it. A clever way to prevent mistakes.”

He nodded and slipped the bell in his pocket. “How does this get me out, though?”

I didn't have an answer for that, so we both looked to Ursula. “It doesn't,” she said with a wicked grin. “No one's home, I'll just let you out one of the servant's entrances.”

I wasn't rich with a fancy manor, but I knew more than average about magical security. “You don't have wards against non-humans? Noah might not be fully transformed, but I doubt he's going to read as human to one of them. No alarms, no monitoring, no tracking who comes and goes?”

Ursula shook her head. “We have two werewolves on the kitchen staff—amazing cooks, with that heightened sense of smell. We dismantled that ward after we hired them, because my mother couldn't figure out how to key them to it, and we couldn't have the house shrieking at us every time they came in or out. She's made noise about modifying the spell for humans and wolves only, but she's a busy woman; she hasn't gotten around to it.”

Orlando grinned. “For six years, she 'hasn't gotten around to it.'”

Ursula made a face at him, and he laughed. It was a surprisingly odd and tender moment, and my mind leaped at conclusions. Old friends, former lovers? I would never ask, which meant a high probability I'd never know. Neither seemed like the type to gossip.

“As for the safeguards, that's where you come in.” Ursula went on, returning to the first question I'd asked, “I've been by your shop, out of curiosity.” That was news to me—I'd never seen her. “You've got it locked tighter than a maximum security prison. How about I show you where we intend to keep the vampires, and you tell me what you can do to prevent them from massacring all of us?”

[elenajohansenauthor]

Fictober18, Day 29: “At least it can’t get any worse.”

OCs: Shannon and Marlene [that’s her mom, she finally has a name!]

Project: Untitled paranormal romance for Fictober18/NaNoWriMo, now tagged #spookyromancenovel on my blog

Potential Triggers: none

Word Count: 1,304

About: Coffee date with dear old mom. [Note: remember this is a rough draft. I’ve finally got some notes-to-self in here instead of actual words or names. It was bound to happen eventually.]

On Sunday morning, I met with my mother at an upscale cafe in [Fancy Rich Part of Town]. She had a flight to catch later that day for a two-week business trip to France, because even when it's not Fashion Week in Paris, there's always still fashion business going on there. She spent the first half of our get-together telling me about what a hassle it was going to be, then interrupted herself with a sip of her iced hibiscus latte and remembered the reason why we'd met up in the first place.

Other than habit, anyway.

I sipped my cinnamon-infused black tea and watched her pull a sheaf of loose papers from her sleek, portfolio-style purse. The dress sketches!

My cousin's wedding seemed years, even light-years away at this point, but in truth it was only about six months from now. Plenty of time for my mother to create something fabulous for me, but with her insane schedule, that would only be true if we started immediately. Though getting all dressed up was the least of my concerns or desires at the moment, I gave myself a mental pep talk to get engaged with it and stay that way.

My mother was usually quick to pick up on signs of boredom or distress, and though the sunlight starting to peek through the cafe windows was calling to me, I could spare my real, regular, family life another half hour to see my mother happy before she left.

Everything was so gorgeous I hardly knew where to start, but I went through the ritual I'd developed over the years. First, lay all the options out with as little overlap as the space on the table allowed—which was hard, this time around. Look at all of them as a whole, and choose the ones that stand out to an unfocused gaze. Pick them out—usually three or four, but sometimes as many as seven if my mother did her usual dozen sketches—and start comparing them, two at a time. Which neckline do I like better? Which hem? Which color? What details?

Choose another two, and repeat.

When I was very young, and I didn't like to get dressed up or even wear dresses at all, little tomboy Shannon had tried just picking one design right away, after only looking for a minute. My mother hadn't cared for that at all. She wanted her work to be appreciated, even when she wasn't a famous designer yet. And I wouldn't realize for years that the effort she put into her designs was one of the ways she showed her love for me.

I went through my four standouts twice, narrowing it to one. But that left eight designs I'd hardly even glanced at, so it was time to consider those. I held each one up in turn next to my temporary favorite. What hadn't I liked about it? What was good, what could be incorporated to the favorite design if possible? Had I been wrong at first, was it better upon consideration?

The whole process took ten solid, silent minutes, during which my mother drank her latte and did something on her phone, probably dealing with email. But she glanced up from it often, perhaps checking in on my progress or my expression.

Finally, I handed her my choice, but this time, with a secondary sketch in hand. “I love nearly everything about this one,” I explained, indicating the first one, “except I think the dove gray might be too close to white. I'd hate for [cousin's name I forgot] to think I'm trying to upstage her. So could we do it in this color instead?” I showed her the second design, a shade of orange-pink that I would call nectarine, but who knew what it was in my mother's deep well of color vocabulary.

She held the two side by side and chewed lightly on her bottom lip as she pondered. “I'm not sure the beading would be as evident on the brighter color, if we stayed with the silver beads...” She was speaking slowly in a low voice, almost to herself. “But what if—could that work? Yes, yes.” She looked up at me. “I've been thinking of next summer's line, and I wanted to emphasize bold color contrasts. Would you mind being a guinea pig for that? I'll use this coral for the base color, and redo the bead work in, say, flame orange, or magenta. Or both! It's a wedding, so we should be both beautiful and opulent. And I can coordinate mine with yours, make the fabric the same darker color the bead work is, then do the details in gold, that'll work with either.”

I nodded along, trying to picture it. What I imagined was beautiful, but whatever my mother was picturing would be gorgeous beyond description.

It always was.

I took the sketches from her and held them at arm's length, trying to picture a synthesis of the two. The quiet bustle of the shop's morning business faded to a background chattering, and much to my surprise, a woman sitting at the corner booth, just inside my line of sight, lit up with a soft glow.

Why had that happened? I wasn't trying to sense magic...

I bit my lip on a laugh as I realized what I'd done, and what it meant. My mother, without a single drop of magic in her, had somehow managed to teach me to scry without meaning to. The process was surprisingly similar—when I'd begun to practice, I must have intuitively followed the same mental pattern.

“What's with the sudden cheer?” My mother was watching me above the edge of the papers.

“We're going to look amazing,” I told her. “We might be in danger of upstaging the bride anyway.”

She tsked at me, but she was fighting a grin. “If only [cousin] had taken me up on my offer to design her dress as well. But [aunt] insisted that [cousin] wear her old dress—she sets too much store in antiques, poor thing.” She sighed. “I would have done it, too, I know my sister thinks the offer wasn't genuine, but it was.”

“I know.”

She glanced at her phone again and seemed to deflate a little. “Ah! There's already a problem with the venue, and I'm not even there yet. Dealing with international arrangements is such a hassle. But whenever something goes wrong at the start, I tell myself, at least it can't get any worse. Though somehow it usually does anyway. I need to get going. Help me gather everything up, would you?”

It didn't take long, and after a brief kiss on my cheek, my mother was out the door to meet her car at the curb, ready to whisk her to the airport for a week of stress and glamour in beautiful France.

Travel had never been a high priority for me, but I let myself imagine, for a few minutes while I finished my drink, what it would be like to go with her, or even what it would be like to travel to far-off places on my own...

But when I tried to picture myself looking up at the Eiffel Tower, or scaling some remote mountain path to a tea house in China, in my imagination I would turn to share my joy, and Noah was there beside me, smiling right back at me. Did he long to travel? Where did he want to go, what did he want to see?

If I wanted to make that a reality, someday, I had things to do, things that didn't involve sitting in a cafe daydreaming. I tossed our garbage into a bin—in my haste, my mother had left her cup on the table—and strode out into the sunshine.

[elenajohansenauthor]

#spookyromancenovel update

I was learning. That was all my life was, learning new things and incorporating them into who I wanted to be.

[when you accidentally figure out your main character’s arc at the last possible second, rewriting the very last chapter.]

[elenajohansenauthor]

#spookyromancenovel excerpt

“A gargoyle loses many qualities of humanity during its change,” I read aloud. “Gargoyles seem to understand human speech to a limited degree, but do not speak amongst themselves nor answer when spoken to. They produce no art or knowledge; they form no societies nor utilize any form of government. While they group together, no observable hierarchy emerges; any individual might scold or harass any other, for encroachment upon their space, for disturbing their rest, for crowding their supply of food. Full combat between gargoyles is only seen when food or roosting space is scarce; otherwise they seem to tolerate reasonable proximity without any drive to self-organize. A group, if it meets a solitary gargoyle, will absorb it unless already pressed for resources, and the individual has never been observed to decline.”

“Okay,” Noah said, stretching out the word in confusion. “I know all that already. From Observations of the Other-Human Beasts, Landingham, uh, 1951? Or was it '61? Anyway, I read it twice the first year.”

Making up scientific texts for a paranormal world? Surprisingly fun. I get to sound as fussy and old-fashioned as I want.

[elenajohansenauthor]

#spookyromancenovel excerpt

While most of our neighbors were attending church, we would dress in our semi-finest and go somewhere fancy for trendy, gourmet, outrageously priced food that came in portions too small for anyone but the daintiest of ladies.

Which I wasn't, but Mother was. I towered over her hummingbird frame by five inches. Most of the time I felt comfortable with myself, but standing next to my delicately perfect mother could turn me into a gangly stork-girl. I did my best whenever we were to be seen in public together—and that was half the point of the brunches all these years, to be visible to the world as a good mother who spends quality time with her daughter—but even in the finest designer clothes, I was an impostor, a changeling.

And that particular Sunday I felt anything but beautiful and dainty, even in my favorite sky-blue dress, the one with the lilies embroidered down one shoulder and across the front. No amount of makeup could hide the signs of my crying fit from the night before, and I knew Mother had noticed.

Once our tea was poured and the nearly silent waiter had disappeared, she tsked at me. “Are you getting enough sleep?”

Almost never was not an acceptable answer. “I'm trying. I've had a rough week.”

“Oh? With what?” She sipped her tea calmly.

I hadn’t exactly forgotten what a terrible bitch my MC’s mother is, but reading it again during the rewrite process was a shock. A good one. It’s fun to write someone so arrogant and critical.

[elenajohansenauthor]

#spookyromancenovel excerpt

Hiding in the shadows until they passed me was a solid, sensible plan. But it was also going to take forever, because a motivated snail could outpace these guys.

motivated snail. i crack myself up.

[elenajohansenauthor]

#spookyromancenovel line

My breath hitched in that irritating way it did when I was trying not to cry.

Shannon, you really need to let yourself cry sometimes, but yeah, probably not in the middle of casting a containment spell around a captive vampire.

[elenajohansenauthor]

#spookyromancenovel excerpt

At some point, my determination to get this right had crossed from the realm of prepared practicality into obsessive perfectionism. I knew that. I knew I was overthinking, letting myself run through mental hedge mazes of what-ifs and paranoia.

Proud of this, because I finally managed to put into a character’s words what the inside of my own brain feels like, a lot of the time. Especially during rewriting!

[elenajohansenauthor]

#spookyromancenovel excerpt

When I returned, Noah was waiting with his arms crossed. “When I took you home, all I needed to get in was the key. Why isn't your place protected like this?”

My apartment had some basic wards, but explaining the complex tangle of things like shared walls, component costs, and power boundaries would take half the night. “My place doesn't have thousands of dollars of merchandise to steal.”

“No, but it has you.”

“I have a few things in place, but my landlord isn't cool with this level of magical energy saturating his building.”

“And your landlord here at the shop is?”

I laughed. “Actually, yes.” It was time Noah met my assistant, anyway. “It keeps Angela from bothering the rest of the tenants.”

Noah went on high alert—the change in his body language was instantaneous and unsubtle. “Angela?”

“She's the reason my rent is so cheap. Angela was murdered here seven years ago, and her spirit has stuck around. It's the only way I can afford a spot right on the Plaza, because I'm the only potential tenant she didn't scare off—this shop has been empty for most of those years.” I paused. “And I promised my wards would contain her, which they do, so she doesn't go cause mischief in the rest of the building when she's bored.”

Noah's eyes were huge, darting around from wall to ceiling to shelves and back, looking for evidence of her presence. “Your shop is haunted?”

“She's very helpful, actually. She likes me because I talk to her when the shop's empty. She only went poltergeist on the others because they ignored her. Or tried to exorcise her.”

“And you're sure you're safe with her?”

“Absolutely! She's never done anything to frighten or hurt me. Angela, would you flicker the lights for Noah, prove you're here and you're cool?”

The lights strobed for a few seconds, and Noah jumped. I laughed. “Thank you!”

Angela was not in the original draft. I invented her because I realized I never explained how a relatively broke shopkeeper who couldn’t afford to take the night classes she was interested in managed to score a prime location in the local shopping district. I’m looking forward to having more fun with her, but I have to remember to incorporate her in small ways throughout the story. #rewritingproblems

[elenajohansenauthor]

NaNo ‘18, Day 11: 2,233 words.

I’M KILLING IT

I had some downtime at work today and snuck a few words onto a scrap of paper. Over the course of my lunch break, it turned into most of a full chapter. I just finished typing all that up, plus the bit I still had left to write, and poof! My word count for the day and then some!

I can’t count on this happening all the time, but honestly, I should be writing on my lunch breaks anyway. I usually just eat then goof off on my phone...

I have decided, now that I’m done with Fictober18, that I won’t be posting any further complete chapters. I’m getting to the real meat of the plot--my beginning is definitely heavy on world-building--and I know it may disappoint some readers in the short term, but posting the climax and ending now in first draft form just doesn’t feel right. I have every intention of polishing this for publication, so I guess the Fictober excerpts are a very generous teaser?

I still don’t have a title, either, because that’s usually the last thing I figure out. So #spookyromancenovel it remains.

[elenajohansenauthor]

#spookyromancenovel line

I could manage to worry about anything, if I set my mind to it.

Why, yes, I gave my narrator some of my anxious tendencies, however did you notice?

[elenajohansenauthor]

#spookyromancenovel excerpt

I didn't need his protection at the shop, which was as close to a magical bunker as I could possibly make it, at least without a few million dollars lying around to purchase the services of magi even more skilled than the circle of friends and acquaintances I'd drawn on to set this place up.

On some level, I think Noah even knew that. He didn't have a lick of magic himself—or at least he hadn't before the curse—but I'd explained the wards to him before, over his first few visits. How impenetrable this place was, how I was completely safe inside of it, even at night. I was well-defended from everything short of nuclear detonation [or dragonfire.

The jury was still out on whether dragons were real—no one had seen one in modern times, but the legends of them were so far-reaching, scholars debated how much truth they had to them. And people went searching for them all the time, be it tourists on a lark, or researchers with active purpose. As long as one of them didn't decide to show up and attack the city, I was fine with them being real.

If gargoyles were, why not dragons?]

My advice for today: when you’re rewriting and see an opportunity to add dragons to your WIP, ADD DRAGONS. [everything between the brackets is new.]