Authorpreneur Dashboard – Katherine Eddinger Smits
Siren Descending
Romance
When the devil abducts her lover to hell, Athenia, a Sea Witch Siren, risks everything to rescue the mage with her song. Siren Descending, a contemporary paranormal romance, reimagines the Greek myth of Orpheus. Can Athenia avoid his tragic mistake, or will she fail to rescue Thorne and lose her soul as well as her soulmate?
Book Bubbles from Siren Descending
Siren Descending (Sirens Series, #2)
Romance
When the devil abducts her lover to hell, Athenia, a Sea Witch Siren, risks everything to rescue the mage with her song. Siren Descending, a contemporary paranormal romance, reimagines the Greek myth of Orpheus. Can Athenia avoid his tragic mistake, or will she fail to rescue Thorne and lose her soul as well as her soulmate?
Book Bubbles from Siren Descending (Sirens Series, #2)
The Immersive Experience of Books
Readers enter the world of a book so completely we forget everything around us. We’re absorbed in the lives and troubles of the characters. For a while, we live with talking rabbits, bank robbers, space pirates or any of a vast array of people and life-forms, places and things we will never encounter in real-life. Our imaginations supply us with so much detail and sensory experiences that many times we prefer reading to movies or television. Writers experience this too. Our characters take over and spin the story on a different course, argue with us, and introduce new ideas. We become engrossed, lose track of the world around us, and time passes in what feels like an instant. It makes us feel like we are not the one masterminding the action, but along for the ride. Most writers I know say it’s their favorite part of the creative journey, even though it can be frustrating later, when they have to revise parts of the story because the cast refused to take direction. Here’s an excerpt from Siren Descending. A sea-witch summons a demon to take her to the underworld. As I wrote this section, I found that wonderful flow, and the creature turned out to be entirely different from what I expected.
Painting with Words
Writers use words to paint pictures readers see in their imaginations. To me, it's a kind of magic, because the picture transmits from one mind to the other across distance and time. I never get tired of immersing myself in the word pictures other authors send out into the world, and I love to create my own. Many times writers can look at places and objects and describe what they see, but I write fantasy. A lot of what I write about doesn't exist. So, I have to use my imagination to come up with the sensory details that will make the scene come alive for my readers. In this selection from Siren Descending, Athenia, a sea-witch siren, uses her song to call upon a goddess for help. The process creates an ocean vortex with unintended consequences for Athenia and all the inhabitants of the area. I had to imagine it all because I've never experienced a vortex. Thank goodness! I hope you enjoy this excerpt.
Narratives
We all have narratives which help us explain the world and our place in it. Those narratives can be shared or personal. An example of a shared narrative is the nicknames or titles we give the decades in which we live. Right now, we're living in the 2020s in the midst of a global pandemic. Things are tough. What will historians of the future call this decade? The 1920s have been dubbed the Roaring 20s. Will the 2020's be named the Ailing 20s? Maybe the Virus 20s? Or will we come back from this even better and stronger for a new and improved version of the Roaring 20s? The Roaring 2020s when we didn't let illness stop us. I'm positive we can! In addition to our public narratives, we also have personal narratives that tell us what our lives are supposed to be like. In Siren Descending, Athenia is a Sea Witch (Nerei). She believes she needs power to survive and she'll do most anything to get it. She's apprenticed to Thorne, a mage. In this excerpt, Athenia attempts to convince him to teach her something she believes will be useful. But Thorne has a different narrative and he has good reasons to be careful about what he teaches her.
