Guest Post: E.J. Stevens, author of Shadow Sight & The Spirit Guide Series

by SofiaWren May 30, 2014

Hello everyone! This week continues the “Unusual Creatures” guest post series for September.

E.J. Stevens is the author of many magical beasts in Shadow Sight, in the Ivy Granger urban fantasy series. She also pens the Spirit Guide paranormal romance series, including She Smells the Dead. This series follows Yuki, a young woman haunted by strange odors that will only go away if she sets the dead to rest.

I have been looking forward to this one for quite a while! Here’s E.J:

Miss Doloro has kindly asked me to reveal a secret from the deepest, darkest depths of my mind. But, dear reader, are you prepared for the horrors we may unearth? Yes? Good. Let’s carry on.

Where do the unusual creatures found within the pages of my books come from? It is a very interesting question, one that I will try to answer without sounding too unhinged. But living day to day within fantasy worlds does come with its dangers. How do I know what is real and what is truly unusual?

My fascination with the supernatural began as a child. I was a ravenous reader and, thankfully, my family recognized a need for more challenging books. I lived within the pages of fairy tales, ghost stories, and tales of the macabre. I danced in fairy circles, listened for rattling chains, and deduced who may or may not have been buried in the back garden.

I would see unusual creatures everywhere. Sleepy fairy faces would peer from the bark of oak trees, mermaids and selkies bob upon the ocean waves, and specters lurk menacingly in the shadows.

So I started writing grand adventures for the creatures I imagined. At first these were fantastical tales of whimsy, but later I became more serious about my writing. It seemed very important to understand what motivated these unusual creatures and for that I needed to delve into the past.

Thus began my research into the folklore, myth, and legend of supernatural creatures. At first, I focused on the Celtic folklore that reminded me of the bedtime stories my Welsh mother told me as a child. But there were so many intriguing connections between these stories and tales that I had read from other countries, that I eventually cast my net to encompass tales from throughout the world.

My poetry collection, Shadows of Myth and Legend, tells the personal tale of many of these creatures. Later, after delving deeply into the psyche of despairing a loup garou, exhausted phoenix, lonely gargoyle, watchful kraken, hungry wendigo, and vengeful selkie, I created two very different fantasy worlds.

The Spirit Guide young adult series is a blend of mystery, humor, and paranormal romance. Yuki must deal with ghosts, werewolves, high school bullies, and a dung beetle spirit guide—unusual indeed. She Smells the Dead, Spirit Storm, and Legend of Witchtrot Road available now. Brush with Death, the fourth book in the Spirit Guide series, will release October 2012.

But unusual creatures finally come out to play in droves in the Ivy Granger urban fantasy series. The city of Harborsmouth is populated with a wide variety of fae and undead. Trolls, kelpies, shellycoats, brownies, trolls, vampires, demons, and pixies live alongside unsuspecting humans. Shadow Sight, the first book in the Ivy Granger series, is available now. Blood and Mistletoe, an Ivy Granger Novella, releases holidays 2012 and Ghost Sight, the second Ivy Granger novel, is scheduled to release in 2013.

My love of unusual creatures continues to grow. There is a plethora of new monsters to discover and so I continue my research and my writing. I am now, and shall always be, a student of the supernatural.

Author Bio:

E.J. Stevens writes poetry, urban fantasy, and young adult paranormal novels. She enjoys dancing along seaside cliffs, singing in graveyards, and sleeping in faerie circles. E.J. is author of the Spirit Guide and Ivy Granger series.