Last day of Halloween fun with Fierce Dolan

Cate: It's the final day of the Halloween celebration! Fierce is here to close it off with a howl. :). Fierce, please tell us a little bit about yourself. Fierce:  Thanks for having me, Cate!  It’s great to be with you, today!  Did you know that fall is my favorite time of year?!  I love it!  I’m so glad it’s cool and dark after all of that hot, bright sunlight! 
Cate: I love fall too! What do you love most about Halloween? Fierce: To be honest, I don’t celebrate Halloween.  I’m pagan—animist to be specific--and we celebrate Samhain and The Dead Time.  My favorite part is skulking along the cool, foggy streets while the kids trick-or-treat.  Also, honoring those who have died this year over a cozy meal and crackling fire, soaking in that lively, crisp fall energy!  I come back to life, as odd as that sounds, when Nature’s color soften, and the sky goes grey.  What can I say—I love the creepy!
Cate: :) Do you have a favorite memory of a Halloween past? Fierce: All of them?  Samhain is my favorite holy day.  I have been a deathwalker since childhood, experiencing souls’ death moments, then when I was older, helping them to move on.  While interesting, that’s not something I can really converse about around the water cooler.  But for that slip of time that our culture honors the veil once a year, I get to feel like the way I have always experienced life is normal.
Cate: Wow, that's intense. Which makes this next question seem silly, lol. Have you ever had an unusual experience you couldn’t explain? Fierce:  Many, and I’ve written about them extensively in my other writing.  As I said, I had them in childhood and they scared the crap out of me.  I knew by the time I was 6-7 that I was seeing and experiencing things other people weren’t, and I knew not to talk about it.  Knowing that my experiences scared other people only reinforced that I shouldn’t talk about them, which made the whole thing harder to deal with.  Eventually I realized the spirits weren’t intending to scare me, but that they needed help.  What we perceive as a spirit being aggressive or angry is the entity communicating the story of how it died, or some understanding it needs to impart before it can move on.  Once I realized that, everything changed.  It became [mostly] peaceful, and I started to work with them in earnest.  A normal day for me includes hearing voices and seeing visitors.
Cate: What frightens you the most? Fierce:  Insanity.  Seriously, people, who aren’t and possibly can’t be in control of their wills frighten me.  Mixed with things like hatred, misogyny, homophobia and that’s a scary little problem on all of our hands.
Cate: So true. Ever gone on a ghost tour? Or ghost hunting on your own? Fierce:  I used to, because it somehow helped me to feel legit in my own experiences.  I don’t, now.  I can interact with the dead anytime, anywhere.  Wax On, Wax Off.  I don’t seek it out now, unless there is a healing need behind it.  And of course, sometimes souls in need find me, even if I’m Wax Off.  That’s always interesting.
Cate: Any favorite Halloween recipes you’d care to share? Fierce:  Hmm.  Well, I not a prescriptivist with cooking—I don’t measure ingredients, but I love butternut squash soup!  Roast one with some garlic and onion.  Purée it with a bit of broth, salt and pepper, a drizzle of honey and some cream.  Yum!  It’s the best by a warm fire on a cool night =)
Cate: Yum! Tell us about your latest release, and where readers can find it online. Fierce:  Frankly, it’s a bit dark, even for me.  Journal of a Lycanthrophile is the diary of Jesse Hollman, a young man who has a fetish for justice and a kink for werewolves.  Together, his passions spiral him into a world of pain, shadow desires, and an even more sinister, secretive sort of shapeshifter—the kind that changes without shifting.  Definitely the darkest, grittiest erotica I’ve written, somewhere along the spectrum of paranormal horror.  This ain’t your grandma’s werewolf story.
Cate: lol Love that cover too. Care to share a blurb or excerpt? Fierce: We sat there, sizing each other up. Smaller in stature, overall, than the other werewolf had been, his fangs were every bit as huge. No doubt he killed those goats on the last moon. “I’m a safe person,” I said. I swear he cocked his head and looked at me, then sprang up, kind of bounced back on his haunches. Pointing his nose straight up at the moon he let out this piercing, shrill howl. He did it several times, and this is just crazy as fuck because, yes, my ears rang like a motherfucker, but my chest hurt. My heart ached and I wanted to bawl or fucking howl too, he seemed so sad. After a few seconds he stopped howling and his eyes bore into me. He stood on all-fours and backed down my body. When he got to my feet he sniffed and dove. I thought he was going for my leg, and I reared back to kick the shit out of him. I doubt hurting him would have gained me anything, reflex just kicked in. He grabbed my jeans cuff in his teeth and licked my ankle, down to my shoe. I stared down the length of my body watching. After a minute he looked up. His dark mane blew on the breeze, a billowing fur halo, then he ran for the trees.
Cate: What inspired you to write about the theme? Fierce:  Frankly, I’m sick of the fluffy treatment of the paranormal genre, specifically of shapeshifters.  Yet, it wasn’t enough for me to de-humanize shifters.  I wanted to demonize humans, sort of a counter-balancing measure along the spectrum of nothing is inherently good, nothing is inherently bad.  This is the first book in the series.
Follow Fierce on Facebook and/or Twitter, to learn more about Journal of a Lycanthrophile.
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/fiercedolan @FierceDolan http://www.twitter.com/fiercedolan Google+  https://plus.google.com/118302380096094683854/posts Goodreads  http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5236551.Fierce_Dolan Amazon http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B007CJS3QK Fierce Dolan  http://www.fiercedolan.com Blog:  http://www.fiercedolan.com/blog  



Need a last-minute treat? Here's the kind of recipe I love - quick and easy! All you need are Keebler fudge stripe cookies, turned upside down, orange frosting topped with a Hershey's kiss to make these cute Witch Hat cookies for Halloween!

Thanks to all the authors who joined in the monthlong celebration of Halloween! I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.