Hot Halloween Heroes Giveaway Hop!

I've had major issues with blogger the past few days. If you're here for the paranormal blog hop. I had to cancel my participation because I couldn't access the blogger dashboard in time. If you're here for this hop, notice I've moved it here from my other blog. I had an old Grouch Day post up! I apologize for any confusion. So...without further ado...

Welcome to the Hot Halloween Heroes Giveaway Hop! Find the other participants by clicking on the picture.
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There are 127 authors participating so you have 126 chances to win something! I'm offering reader's choice of shape-shifters ~ The Witchy Wolf and the Wendigo (book 1 in the saga) or a copy of my newest Enchanted Skye. I'll introduce both.
~Be sure to leave a comment with your email to win~


It's said that most legends are rooted in truth. One such legend was the spark behind The Witchy Wolf and the Wendigo.

Several years ago while enjoying a much-touted artist's tour not far from our home, my husband and I stumbled upon an author selling her book at an artist's studio. I talked to her a while and ended up buying a copy. It wasn't the sort I'd normally read, not with its campy cover and B-movie topic of the Wisconsin wolfman, but I thought it would be fun to read passages to my husband while he drove us from studio to studio.

Apparently eyewitnesses had recently claimed to have seen a wolf walking like a man. The locations mentioned were minutes from our home, and according to this book, many of these sightings were from reputable witnesses. Beyond that modern urban legend, sightings of this creature had taken place for decades and well into the past. We learned the author was actually a newspaper reporter who covered the story. One eyewitness account in particular captured my fancy...

More than 70 years ago, a night watchman at a local convent saw something that chilled him to his marrow: a wolfman kneeling atop an ancient Native American burial mound. That correlation caught my attention. Wisconsin was once filled with burial and effigy mounds. Returning home unscathed, the night watchman told his family about his frightening experience, but swore them to secrecy for fear he'd get fired if people thought he'd been drinking on the job. Fast-forward to the late 1980s when his son read about the modern encounters in the newspaper and contacted the reporter. He passed on his father's experience and included a sketch of what his father had seen.

My imagination was on fire! Native legends in the Great Lakes Region mention magical wolf or dog guardians who watch over the burials of warriors. I learned the early French explorers in the area mentioned the Loup Garou (wolf man) in their journals. Interesting that legends of grave guardians around the world often take the form of wolves or dogs. The ancient Egyptians had jackal-headed Anubis (Lord of the Dead) and in modern times we have Greyfriars Bobby.

So I now had a story simmering in my imagination. I needed more information! My husband and I took the Great Mound Tour across Wisconsin to Effigy Mounds National Monument park in Harpers Ferry, Iowa. We drove from site to site and I saw these effigies and burials for myself, or what was left of them. Imagine my surprise when I discovered there are 3,000-year-old effigy mounds in the form of standing men with pointy upright ears like a wolf.

As a writer with a healthy imagination, there was nothing to do but write a story around these details. Written in two parts, my tale concerns Ashkewheteasu ~ an immortal Native American shaman of the Middle Woodland period of the Great Lakes Mound Builders (Hopewell culture). Awash with grief at the death of his wife, he makes a plea to the Great Mystery to be allowed to watch over her burial mound for all time. And for that, he's given the solitary life of a shape-shifting guardian. 

 I found this fun clip on youtube. 

This reporter's book lit the fire for mine.

And here's my version of this curious urban legend:

My next shape-shifter is about a family of Selkie living on Scotland's Isle of Skye. This too is rooted in factual information.

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When you've finished with all this fun hop has to offer, you can start at my author friend J.D. Faver's blog and follow the list she has posted there for the Snarkology Paranormal Hop. I'm no longer involved, but there are still great posts and prizes to be had. http://livingwiththemuse.blogspot.com/

You'll LOVE Reading Rose!

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