Kim Wells's Blog, page 8

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I miss you.

Maybe we've known each other since we were girls, huddled on a sleepover, before the complications of boys and distance sent us away. When we could whisper a secret and know that it was true because we were there for each other every day. We might have swam in the salty warm Gulf of Mexico all day, our hair messy, skin kissed with sun. Flirted with inappropriate boys, sipped sodas without guilt. I miss the ocean, the beach. But I really miss sitting on it with you.

Maybe we met later, after marriage, when jobs and life took us far from family, when the second family of that life was as close. When we laughed over glasses of wine and long nights out in a town busy with traffic, awash with brightly lit sky-scrapers, feeling glamorous. Dressed up in party clothes with sequins, knowing that you hold tightly what you most value.
© 1000words | Dreamstime.com - Miss You Written In Sand Photo.
I miss knowing everything-- what you had for lunch yesterday because I was there with you, sneaking a break in between studying, or a shift at the place we worked. We were sure of ourselves, too sure, too unheartbroken.

I miss being that sure. 

Maybe we've never actually met-- I miss you too. I might even miss you the most. Sometimes, I look at the faces of people going by in cars and I think "wait-- do I know you? Are you someone I miss too?" And the answer is yes. I miss you too. What stories would we have told each other? What dramas would we have laughed over, cried over? Do you like the color red, too? Is summer too hot but also the best, like when we were kids, because there's nothing to really do? I miss knowing that.

Maybe we spent ten years every other night meeting up, going to dinner, sharing stupid jokes about broccoli and poodles and tights. Maybe I long to cook you enchiladas, drink icy margaritas on my back patio, a patio covered in lovely green grape vines, the stars at night big and bright. I miss being there again. But mostly, I still miss you.

Maybe we live in the same town, used to go on playdates, carry diapers in purses, sneak one (okay, maybe two) chicken nuggets on the side of our mom-approved salad. Time, practices, different schedules might have made it so that we can't get together except on certain party days. But I miss knowing that certainty of a park-date, of how tired you are too. Miss smiling across the gym. Miss lunch with too many kids to count making the cashier roll her eyes at the group.

Sometimes, the weight of all the people I want to just get to know, to just chat about our day, to consider my good friend, gets so heavy that it makes me think up songs in the middle of the night, write poems, tell stories, eat too much chocolate, drink too much red wine.

I'm too sensitive, too attached. Not a good "detached" meditator on the power of letting go. I don't let go. I hold on, tightly. Maybe too tightly, maybe not.

I'm a hermit; I'm an introvert. I don't like going out to loud clubs anymore so much (although I will admit I miss the fun of anticipation of that, too, because I'm apparently insane today.) But I do miss everyone, and I long to drag everyone here, with me, to just-- share. To share fun, to share tears, to share great meals. (Maybe even share the chocolate, although, on second though, you should bring your own.)

I just-- miss you. I miss you all. Consider yourself longed for, and loved.  

The White Dragon

My friend Stefan's Apocalypse Weird book launched today! It's called Genesis, If you've already read Hoodoopocalypse, you met his main character very briefly in an Easter Egg in my novel. She's a really cool, strong hero and Stefan is a super cool guy. His launch party is going on tonight here and I will be there at least for a little while before family duties are going to possibly call me away. But launch parties are pretty fun ways to hang out on FB and chat with other authors & fans and win cool swaggy stuff. In fact, the main purpose of this blog post is to list a giveaway where you can win a few cool things from me.

There's a nice description of the plot of the novel here, on Stefan's blog, too, and it actually includes him reading a bit of the book. Seriously, it's worth a listen. There's also a fun interview with him over here at the Chimeras blog.

So go do your homework and read up, and go hang out at the launch party and win some stuff. Oh, and log in below to win one of 5 free copies of Hoodoopocalypse. Cause I'm feeling generous.



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or enter to win one of five copies of my short story, Lady in Blue

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or win a print copy of Mariposa.
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The Wall: or, Dreaming the end of things

So I have mentioned before that when I am in the middle of writing a story, I dream about the characters. A lot. Sometimes it's because I will deliberately set the goal of having a lucid dream nap to work out a character issue of some sort. I need to know what will happen in a scene, just so, and the freedom of my conscious brain being relaxed and sleepy helps turn the inner critic into something that allows for more creativity. 
But sometimes it's just my brain being weird. 
Last night, I had extensive dreams about a post-apocalyptic world. It wasn't anything like my Apocalypse novel. It was more like something kind of post WW2 meets sci-fi alien invasion. There were monsters, and an extensive language system that sounds a lot like it would have been created by text messaging. The end of the world was called the "Apoc." In the dream, my kids were teenagers, and they both were in training to be "Comp Sci" professionals. You can see how this is going.... if we were all always communicating by text messages, we might like to drop some syllables out. 
In one vivid part of the dream, brick layers were walling up the bottom floor windows of a large, © Ebolyukh | Dreamstime.com - Red Bricks Photoinstitutional building that had been a shopping mall. We all lived in this place, by the way... it was a cross between the mall and perhaps a school, and our "apartments" (they were called racks) were inside. For whatever reason, I guess the monsters couldn't get in on floors 2 and up, but bricking up the low-level entrances was an answer to keep everyone safe. 
As I write it, it sounds kind of interesting, but the thing that is being left out is that WW2 post England Blitz feeling to the whole thing, too. It felt sort of, what, retro? Like, there would have been sirens in the night and gas masks and people sleeping in the Tube tunnels. (How this meshes with the bricking up of the ground floor don't ask me... my sleeping dreaming writer self wasn't concerned with that.) 
So as I was waking up this morning, my still flexible creative-brainpart was toying with the idea of the story elements, still sort of immersed in that world, as though it were real. It wasn't scary, at that time, and there was something going on with a guy who was trying to rewire an electrical line and some farming for crops... 
It's an interesting look at how stories are born. This is nothing like my Hoodoo world-ending plans. There weren't really any main characters, and I still don't know what the aliens/monsters who we were fighting looked like. As a story, the idea could go to-- nowhere. I could just shelve it and not ever write anything about it. But as a dream, it had something interesting, that made my waking up self linger for a while, exploring the story and poking around at elements that could become something else. 
In reality, I need to go work on my work in progress and write some of that story today. Get another coffee beverage, write for a 1000 word sprint or so and then move on to other things. But that last little moment of sleeping dreaming brain still wants to linger over the image of workers bricking up the entrances, this arched doorway being turned into a barrier, and the shortened slang-like language we spoke. 
So what are you thinking about today? 

Writing about Voodoo

Why witches? Because witches sing. Can I hear this singing? It is the sound of another voice. They tried to make us believe that women did not know how to speak or write; that they were stutterers or mutes. That is because they tried to make women speak straightforwardly, logically, geometrically, in strict conformity. In reality, they croon lullabies, they howl, they gasp, they babble, they shout, they sigh. They are silent, and even their silence can be heard. Xavière Gauthier, “Porquoi Sorcières,” 199.


Today, there's a cool newspaper story about my book,  Hoodoopocalypse , and I thank Judy Christy for the amazing interview opportunity.  Reading over the interview questions made me think about the content of my story again. Voodoo/Hoodoo.

People have asked me why I changed it to Hoodoo. Most people are pretty familiar with Voodoo (or think they are... I'll get back to that in a sec.) But a lot of folks don't know what Hoodoo is. It's kind of the same thing but also not really.

Hoodoo is a Southern United States version of Voudou. Voudou (Voudon, Voodoo, Vodeaux) is a real religious practice that honestly millions of people follow. It's a religion that is a mixture of Catholicism and the religious practices of the Africans and Caribbean slaves, especially after the 1700s or so. It was a huge part of the Haitian Revolution. The link is great, but it's honestly one of the only successful revolutions against Western slavery in history, and the religion certainly helped.

There's a neat description of "Louisiana Voodoo" on wikipedia, too, and it helps to understand that the practices are this mixture of folklore, herbal magic, witchcraft, and genuine "go to church on Sunday" religion. A lot of what I referenced in the book is from this kind of practice. I'm super familiar with it so it just permeates the story....it made writing the book so neat because I literally could almost do anything. If magic is real, then you can play with every part of reality. This is a gift of amazing proportion for a fiction writer.

The depiction of Voodoo in popular culture almost always involves women dancing around in white dresses, a mean guy with a top hat and a cigar, often with a white skull-painted face. People got upset with the TV series American Horror Story because of this, actually. In spite of having a bad assed real life priestess and one of the most beautiful modern actresses playing her, they still landed on cliché and lazy research. You would think all that the religion needs is a couple of Voodoo dolls and cauldrons full of bones, too.

That is part of what I played with in Hoodoopocalypse, too, but I tried really hard to use authentic images rather than the Hollywoodized voodoo. Baron Samedi is a great bad guy, but he is not the only one out there, and he's not the only Voodoo loa, either.

Voodoo is neither black or white magic entirely. There is a blend, and just like with all human life, there are both good and bad practices. Kalfu, the bad guy in my book, is a dark-half of the Loa Papa Legba, who is a genuine good guy. Yes, there are spells and bad guys and lots of real magic in my book. That's the fictional element of the story. If you go to New Orleans, you're not likely to run into any Guédé who are going to trap you and put you to fighting in the SuperDome. Yet.

But seriously, I changed the title to Hoodoo because I was trying to focus the story more on a kind of home-grown magic practice, and not offend a bunch of folks for whom this is their authentic religious practice. I hope that I did an okay job with that. I have a whole chapter in my dissertation on Voodoo, by the way, if you're interested in it and learning more about how it as a religion actually was part of the slave/master relationship and real, true revolution.

To quote myself a little for a TL;DR moment:

Voudun is an example of a type of religious magic which, in its foundation and innate nature, resists hierarchy, empowers the poor and disenfranchised, and has preserved hope and history in several non-dominant cultures. As such, the greatest real-world magic of Voudun may be its ability to inspire great societal change. As early as 1959, Alfred Métreaux, in his foundational anthropological study Voodoo in Haiti(1959), wrote about the complex hegemonic exchange of power and fear in Vodoun’s history as he asserted about the complex relationship between those with power and those without: 

Man is never cruel and unjust with impunity: the anxiety which grows in the minds of those who abuse power often takes the form of imaginary terrors and demented obsessions. The master maltreated his slave, but feared his hatred. He treated him like a beast of burden but dreaded the occult powers which he imputed to him. And the greater the subjugation of the Black, the more he inspired fear [. . . ] it was the witchcraft of remote and mysterious Africa which troubled the sleep of the people in “the big house.” (15) 

In “troubling the sleep” of those with power, Vodoun gave its practitioners a little bit (and eventually, a lot) of power over their own situation.

Think about that a little, and then go read my book. It's pretty cool, and I'm so glad I wrote it. I hope people will give it a chance to keep them up at night.

Oh, and in my dissertation, I wrote about some amazing books by Nalo Hopkinson (Brown Girl in the Ring), Alice Hoffman ( Practical Magic ), Sean Stewart ( Mockingbird ), Chitra Divakaruni ( Mistress of Spices ), the TV show Charmed , and a whole chapter on Buffy the Vampire Slayer .

Co-writer

So recently I finally got my hubs to read Mariposa.  In all the years I spent writing the story, I had read him a few scenes here or there and also we discussed what I was doing. He had a hand in several directions the story went.

But now he's gotten inspired by the story to write. I'm in the middle of writing Orpheus & the Butterfly, the story of what happened to the guys (Tony, Demetrio, Omar, and a few others) during the events of Mariposa. I'm about halfway through the writing now and I have plans for where it's going that are pretty strong.

But Andrew hated a scene I wrote that included some boxing, and since he is a boxer, he said he would "write a little something" to help me out.

Well, a week or so later, he's still writing. And writing. And writing. Honestly, he's written way more lately than I have. I feel a little hijacked, to be perfectly honest-- it's not a bad thing, and I don't mean it to sound bitchy. But he's kind of going to end up with a co-writer credit of sorts for this story because I am actually going to work some of that stuff into my story too. And I don't know if our family can truly survive with two writers in the house.

But it's honestly all good. I do like some of the places his writing is going, and it will be cool to work it into my stuff.

But sheesh. Co-writers. Who knew!?

On the habit of overthinking

So when I was a kid, I was a messy-red-haired freckled skinny thing with a single-mom who worked nights as a bartender, who wasn't exactly the world's most empathic mom. God help her, she tried, but she was a bit on the broken side in many ways. We lived a very difficult life, and as you grow up you can say "wow, more pain for me as an author to write into the stories" but when you're a kid and the little mean girls in the school are calling you names because you catch the school bus in front of the town's gay disco (lime green, and obvious) those "write the pain" lessons don't mean much.

© Zuberka | Dreamstime.com - Save The Last PhotoSo bullying: yeah. I get it. And it gives you this habit of overthinking everything. I don't think you ever entirely get over being bullied as a kid because you are over sensitive as an adult, you examine every damn nuanced thing and wonder "Is this when it starts?" Because you're always expecting it to happen again. You learned those lessons, that it takes one second to go from hanging out and being friends to being punched in the arm every day. And adults either seem to not get it (perhaps because they were never bullied?) or not believe you that it's really painful. "Oh, really? She just stole your hair tie? That's not the end of the world, get over it." And I'm an adult now and I can see that-- it really wasn't the end of the world. But oh, it felt like it. And you're always waiting for that shoe to drop again. For the glint in the eye of the natural born bully to start up. And sometimes it does... adults can be just as vicious.

Sometimes, it makes you say the wrong thing. Trying to fit in, which you never really learned how to do, you will say something cruel yourself. Trust me that when that happens, the overthinker doesn't ever forget it. The person you might have said it to or about might have long-forgotten it ever happened but it is going to keep you up at night.

It sounds kind of ridiculous as I write it out. And you might be wondering what the point of this rant is, then.

Overthinking is what gives me the ability to write. To imagine how a character might be feeling in a situation like that, to wonder what the sound of a ghost in her very worst moments, trapped for eternity, might sound like. To visualize the joy of finding a friend, even then. To hear the sound as the wolves circle you, growling low in their throats, as a lion chuffs your scent over her powerful glands and smells you delicious.

So, on those nights when I'm explaining to my oh-too-sensitive daughter why sometimes you just have to push through that pain, and I know that one day, when she is older, she will be able to write like nobody's damn business, and yet as a child of a really ridiculous childhood I know that the pain she feels because a teacher once ate a popsicle in front of her without offering her a bite is nothing compared to my own being homeless and/or almost being killed and/or harmed in other ways as a child---- pain is pain. Overthinking it, over analyzing what that meant-- that's my superpower. And I'm gonna keep on keepin' on. Just fair warning to anyone who wants to push something rocky and pointed my way: you might end up in one of the stories, cleverly disguised but there. And you might just be having the worst day of your life, eternally, as the Author laughs and laughs. The last laugh, indeed.

Lady In Blue!

Announcing the prequel to Mariposa, Lady in Blue, available now on Kindle and KU! It's a short story, and a perfect introduction to the adventures I am planning to continue releasing this summer as the stories are ready of the Children of Mariposa series!  You'll be amazed at how far back the adventures we will follow the Lady we first meet in the lobby of the historic Menger hotel in downtown San Antonio, Texas... and it's all just the beginning!

Get Lady in Blue here: http://amzn.to/1EwtpFK  
and read the novel, Mariposa, here: http://amzn.to/1DBeb4E
and Mariposa in paperback: http://amzn.to/1MKVmx8

Mrs. Fredericks

I remember it well. Fourth grade, Mrs. Fredericks' classroom, Abbeville Louisiana. 1979.  I wrote my very first fictional story, called "Christmas in a Cave." It was about this family where the dad had lost his job, and they had no money, no house. They did, however, know of this cozy cave just behind where their house used to be, so they packed their stuff into bags and lit a campfire and lived in the cave. On Christmas eve, the dad scraped together the supplies to go and get a real Christmas tree, and some small presents. But on the way home, he ran into his old boss and it turned out they were hiring and Dad got a JOB!

This was my first taste of critical acclaim for my creative writing. Mrs. Fredericks praised it highly. In front of the whole class!  Including Carmen, my arch rival. Other kids looked at me with a jealous, admiring gleam in their eyes. Appraising my fame, wishing for their own.

I was hooked. This writing thing: it could gain you all the riches in the world!Fame! Fortune! The envy of people you go to lunch every day with! Maybe even to sit next to that boy you've had a crush on for the whole school year!

From that moment on, I've always been a writer. Some of the stories, granted, have not had the amazing power of "Christmas in a Cave" with its topical, hard-hitting social commentary on the rising plight of the homeless in the Reagan era. Themes of good vs. evil and the power of faith, family. But I've always written. And that moment of teacher advice, of acclaim, was something that truly shaped my path as a reader and writer. Teachers have a lot of power, y'all.

Today, another chapter opens on that journey from my very first taste of the power of the written word (and as silly as the above is, there is a kernel of truth in the awakening to my own skill that happened that day so long ago). My novel, Hoodoopocalypse, which dropped in a soft launch this weekend, is now available on ALL THE PLATFORMS! Kindle, Nook, Kobo, I-Tunes Books. Soon it will be out in print paperback.


It's a really neat story, and I've gotten some super amazing reviews. Last night I even had to pause our watching of The Simpsons to read one of them to my husband; it was so very exciting to have people who I'm not even related to so they don't have to pretend to like it LIKE IT!!

So yeah. I know I've been blabbing about this book for a while. But it truly is a cool story. I know books are probably like children and you're not supposed to have a favorite among them but I'll tell you a secret. Shhhh. Come in close:  "This one is my favorite so far." Sorry other books but it's true.

Hoodoopocalypse is LIVE

So when you post on Amazon, it usually takes a couple of days for the Amazon code-gnomes to get it posted and live to buy. But today, my book actually is live, and ready to buy! So if you've been waiting, go get it now! 

The Hoodoopocalypse is Coming Tuesday!

Today I launch both my cover art (which is to. die. for) and my promotional video for the book, which I hope will be book one of the Hoodoo series of the Apocalypse Weird project (follow that link down the rabbit hole for more info). I already have a fan interested in writing some fan fiction in my world, too, which, by the way, feels amazing. Someone is fan enough that I might already have FAN FICTION of MY world. (stops to un-blow mind.)

This has been a very wild ride. The collaborative project launched two weeks ago with the first five books from my friends, and I've been talking about them for months, and their books are doing great on amazon. I can't wait to join them, and the book should be ready for pre-order sometime this weekend.

It's all been a great collaborative team, and the parties in the staff lounge can get pretty wild. Our "writhing tentacles from other dimensions" cleanup bill is really huge, and housekeeping is always threatening to quit.

There is one guy we don't like to talk about in the breakroom, cause he hears us and the last time he overheard someone talking about him, they woke up in Carson City naked in a bathtub full of gummi bears, an empty bottle of cheap gin next to them, and written in lipstick on the wall next to them "Dial 477 for a good time." The therapy bills for that one are still keeping the company in the red, let me tell you.

But Doctor Midnite said I could tell you a little bit about my book. We are, after all, revealing the truths, the dark underbelly of the world that's coming soon.

And so, here without further adieu, is my book trailer:




and my cover art, which so help me will make my brain just shut down right here on this sunny sneaux day in Shreveport.


This cover art was done by Mike Corley, and he's been doing the art for the whole group of authors. I have to say I love mine the best (of course I do, why wouldn't I?) But oh wow. Everyone so far has mostly picked the "Hero pose" of their characters looking strong and ready for action. But me, I am a little contrary, and wanted to pick "bad guy pose."

This is Kalfu, the demon of Possession, and the main Big Bad of my book. He is the "evil twin" of Papa Legba, the Voodoo loa of doorways and crossing over. But Kalfu is some bad juju-- he is a bokor, or black magician, and he really gets things moving in New Orleans and Shreveport (my home town), in the Apocalyptic direction we all love to read about. And yes, that is my beloved French Quarter. And he is doing terrible things to it.

My story is a little different from the first five in that there's a lot more magic, a lot less realistic sciencey bits. My apocalypse moves into dimensions that cross between a lot of different boundaries. And I really can't wait until the rest of y'all can follow me there. Next week!

Laissez le End Times Roulez! Y'all.