Stuck in the Vortex #abnomolies #placesofinspiration #whatyoucanfindintheER


This week I asked our guest, Lyndi Alexander: Where is the funniest place you got your writing inspiration.?

Lyndi: Ha! It’s not funny exactly, unless the emergency room is funny.

In 2012, my then-husband was working full-time as an IT teacher. He came home one afternoon with what he said was “the worst headache I’ve ever had.” We tried the standard OTC stuff, and no relief. Fortunately it was one of the times when we had insurance. Knowing the symptoms could mean he would have a stroke or an aneurysm, we went straight to the ER.

There, the staff did all the doctor things, checked him out, had a CAT SCAN or MRI, I forget which, and eventually determined that there was nothing major wrong—and that he had a brain…just in case any of us had been wondering.

But in between all the medical wheeling and dealing, we watched this crazy special on cable television about the Montana Vortex, the self-proclaimed “genuine quantum or gravitational anomaly that may re-define the laws of physics and nature.”

Oddly enough, this magical place was set minutes from the setting of the three previous books in the Clan Elves of the Bitterroot series, which is  a story about a clan of elves, with Game of Thrones level political battles, which lives in the forests of the Bitterroots, unseen by man….unless they want to be. So to find a place of genuine Weird right there? Of course this meant we needed another book in the series.

My girlfriend, daughter and I took a trip out there to investigate for ourselves. It was true that the place had a strange energy. Walking the paths, and the labyrinth generated unnerving sensations. Auras were perceived. Some of what we saw might have been optical illusions—but then again, it might have been real Mother Nature Earth magic.

Whichever it was, the Vortex was certainly fodder for the story, and paranormal investigator Chiara di Luna could definitely have found herself a couple of stories there, once she’d satisfied herself with the elves. It might have been a long way from a Pennsylvania ER, but a writer takes inspiration wherever it’s handed to you on a silver platter!

Title: The Elf Guardian

Series:  The Clan Elves of the Bitterroot series

Author:  Lyndi Alexander

Publisher: Dragonfly Publishing

Cover artist: Terri Branson

Pages  186

Genre/heat rating urban fantasy/

Blurb   Clan Elves of the Bitterroot (Book IV): The strong Earth energies that support the Clan Elves of the Bitterroot have gone awry for unknown reasons, and the powerful forces at work have not gone unnoticed by the outside world. When a paranormal investigator looking for a story to save her career is told a fantastic tale by the juvenile and disobedient elf prince Elliun, his young albino elf bodyguard Max must try to fix the mistake. Can Max get humans, mages, and elves working together in time to save the land before the energies spin out of control? Or is this the end of the elven world in the Bitterroot Mountains? [Urban Fantasy from Dragonfly Publishing, Inc.]

Excerpt

            The phone line went dead before she could even say ‘goodbye’.

            Not that she would say ‘goodbye.’ Anything but.

            “Hunter, wait—”

            The once-sweet name turning bitter on her tongue, the whispered words sighed through her lips, becoming sharp, cutting her.                           

            No, that was her teeth, biting down hard enough to make her bleed.

            She set the phone into the stand.

            Gone.

            Her knees gave way and she landed, hard, in her office chair, banging her elbow on the edge of the polished black-and-chrome desk. The pain reverberated up and down her arm, but did nothing to cloak the agony raging inside her.

            So close….

            The news clippings spread across the surface of the desk seemed to mock her now. Paranormal Investigator Visits Alcatraz. DeLuna Solves Local Murder with Psychic Clues. Ghosts Give Up Secrets to Ohio Paranormal Expert.  All her work, fifteen years of building a reputation as an investigator of the weird and unexplained—what would it really count for if Hunter Nowles walked away?

            And why had he left? Because that stupid exorcism had turned out to be a fake.

            Okay, and the haunting of the old mansion in the Pennsylvania amusement park had turned out to be a bust, too.

            She chewed her lip. To be honest, she’d failed to either prove or debunk the last seven investigations she’d undertaken. Lucky number seven.

            “The great Chiara DeLuna bites the big one,” she muttered, waiting for the rim shot that had to follow. It was a joke, right?

            She was the joke.

            The network seemed to think so. Davis had already sent a memo to her small sublet Midtown NYC office, warning her they wouldn’t fund her program any longer if she couldn’t produce results. And now Hunter had decided she wasn’t worth his time, either.

            Or maybe he was just afraid that her failures would taint his own growing stature in the paranormal investigation community.

            Coward.

            Their three years as lovers meant nothing at all?

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Meet Lyndi Alexander

Lyndi Alexander always dreamed of faraway worlds and interesting alien contacts. She lives as a post-modern hippie in Asheville, North Carolina, a single mother of her last child of seven, a daughter on the autism spectrum, finding that every day feels a lot like first contact with a new species.

Website https://lyndialexander.wordpress.com/love-me-kiss-me-kill-me/

Blog https://lyndialexander.wordpress.com/

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/lyndialexander13/

 Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/profile/lyndi-alexander

Goodreads https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4185290.Lyndi_Alexander

Backlist Amazon author page https://www.amazon.com/Lyndi-Alexander/e/B005GDYPU2/ref=dp_byline_cont_ebooks_1


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