Someone screamed; a terrified, naked shrill cry in the distance. There were sounds of hollering, screeching, grunting, stomping. The ground rumbled under Annie as she threw several layers of animal skins to the ground.

Spencer jumped up; the coven roused themselves.

“The mead hall,” he said as they threw open the door and ran to the village center.

Chaos turned to determination as the coven traveled through the forest toward the mead hall. Annie knew the Vikings were running, screaming, panicked— but all she could hear were footsteps, and her heart pounding in her chest. Spencer had come with her; she didn’t know where he was now. She only knew the steady rhythm surrounding her as the coven followed the trail. Instinctively she went into battle mode. This was what had brought here. Her adrenaline pumped through her, her heart beat quicker, her blood boiled with rage, and she ran faster.

They were through the forest and into the clearing that surrounded the mead hall. Annie’s senses changed, grew clearer and louder. She heard terrified voices; smelled fear hanging in the air. The anxious cries of the Vikings moved through her. She listened to the growling and grunting and the rage and horror the demons brought forth. It crowded her as they broke through the wooded area.

Swords swished in the air; metal sliced through flesh. Anxious, chaotic screams greeted them as they entered the massacre.

Blood covered the earth and stuck to their shoes and clothes. Large dark patches already drenched the ground around the hall and rolled off the dead bodies that littered the ground. Annie was sick. Women and children ran from the mead hall in the direction of the coven village, away from the demons that had overtaken them.

She reached down and pulled a small boy out of the way as a demon lunged for him. She threw her first jinx at the demon, surprised by the strength of her magic. The creature flew through the air and landed on another demon. The demon on top grunted, punched the beast below it and stood up. The one on the ground rose and looked around, confused at first until it focused on a Viking running past. It reached its large hands over and plucked the Viking from mid-run and held him in the air.

Terror filled the night; panic surrounded her as she conjured a small fireball. It hovered above her palm; it grew in size and strength, and she released it toward the demon. Its lightweight clothing caught fire easily. The demon hopped around in one spot, patting down the fire, but the flames grew and inched their way upwards before consuming the demon’s skin. It screamed; pain mixed with terror. The battle stopped around them and the warriors watched, entranced by the only known means to kill the demons.

“Fire!” Annie yelled to them. “Kill them with fire!”

As if the coven awoke from a trance, fireballs lit up the night, flying through the air and consuming the demons. Fire ate away at Annie’s demon’s flesh and crackled its bones. They popped until there was nothing left but ash. The last of the monster’s scream reverberated in Annie’s ear as the wind picked up and scattered its smoking remains in the air. She lit another ball of fire above her palm and threw it in the pile of ash, burning any possible traces of the demon. The blaze flashed and died down to nothing. She ran toward another creature.

1. When you start a book do you know how it will end or do you create the ending as you go along?

I have a rough idea of what the book will be about and I have some scene ideas and a rough ending.  When I wrote The Day of First Sun, I knew that a high profile, non-magical person was going to be murdered by magic.  I wrote out a paragraph of things that I wanted to see in the story and began writing.  I didn’t look at the paragraph again until after the book was published and realized that I didn’t keep to my original thoughts at all.  I tend to work without an outline because I feel tied to the story as if I’m trying to make everything fit.  I prefer to let it flow and change.  I like the freedom and the discovery.  Sometimes I’m wildly surprised.

2. Do your book characters ever visit you in your dreams?

Yes and no.  Not as much when I’m sleeping, but I daydream about them all the time.  It’s how I work out characters and storylines.  It’s almost as if a movie is playing in my head and I can change and add to storylines.

3. What are your favorite authors as either an adult or a child?

When I was a kid, I loved Nancy Drew.  I read every one of them, but I didn’t just want to read them, I wished I had wrote them and started to write my own detective stories when I was seven.  As I grew older, I read Judy Blume and Stephen King.  Both made me feel something and from that I wanted to keep writing.  I still read Stephen King and was very inspired by his autobiography On Writing.  It was J.K. Rowling though, that reminded me of what I loved to read and that’s what inspired me to write my own fantasy novel.

4. How do you go about finishing a chapter when you can’t get it right?

I skip it…Just kidding.  No, actually I’m not.  Sometimes, I make a note in all caps reminding me I haven’t finished the chapter and other notes that I might be thinking about for the chapter and start the next one.  Sometimes you just need to move on.  The answer will eventually hit you upside the head when you least expect it.

5. Describe your reaction when you saw and held your first book?

I think I was numb when The Day of First Sun was published.  Almost as if I had only done it to satisfy a selfish desire.  It didn’t seem real.  It was when I held She Wulf in my hands for the first time that I was overcome with emotion.  This book consumed me for so long and I was so amazed by the final product and it seemed more than just a fantasy.

6. What is your biggest achievement to date?

Writing my first book.  I always wanted to and never gave myself the opportunity.  One day I decided it was time.  It changed my life, gave me confidence.  I lost the extra baby weight, changed my wardrobe, straightened my hair and gave my girls a role model, an example of taking control of one’s life and being the best person you can be.

7. What’s your favorite color?

Pink.  I’ve always been a girly girl.  As much as I’d like to be a sporty girl, I’m just not.  It’s all about the pink, purses and shoes.

8. Favorite sound?

I love the sound of rain on the roof.  Not during the sunlight hours, but early in the morning when it’s still dark out.  I snuggle under the covers.  It makes me happy.

9. If you weren’t a writer, what would you be?

An interior decorator.  I love being creative and crafty and picking paint colors and getting lost in a fabric store.  It’s almost as good as getting lost in a bookstore.

10. Worst fear?

I fear the alligators under the bed.  Since I was a kid I can’t sleep without something covering my feet incase they come and get me.  Don’t laugh, Stephen King admitted the same thing in an interview once.

Time Travel? Yes, I think so!

A guest by Sheryl Steines

If you could go anywhere, meet any person, in any period of time, where would you go, what would you do, who would you meet?  I know this is all hypothetical, but hey, I write in the pretend–in the fantasy.  So suspend your disbelief,  and come play with me for a moment.

Not such an easy question to answer, is it?  One option would be to go and meet someone long dead–perhaps Elvis circa 1959 makes your heart swoon.  Would you take the opportunity to meet a favorite entertainer, or maybe you want your trip to count for something meaningful?  But what if you made a change, saved a life, corrected a wrong, how would your alterations affect the future?  An interesting notion, don’t you think?

As I wrote She Wulf, my time travel adventure, I developed the idea of changing the past and how that might lead to the future you are trying to change.  Maybe our interference might just be a self-fulfilling prophecy.  That’s when The Terminator movie struck me as so relevant and important in how I shaped my ideas of time travel.

For those who don’t know, The Terminator is a science fiction adventure where machines take over the world.  The machines are human like cyborgs, ruled by an artificial intelligence program called Skynet, whose sole mission is to annihilate humanity.  In opposition, the resistance was created by John Connor and they are winning the war.  In an effort to prevent the resistance from being founded, the cyborgs send back one of their own, to murder John’s mother Sarah, before he’s born.  To protect her and ensure he is even conceived, he sends back one of his soldiers (his father), to protect her.  Got all that.  So finally to my point, and I realize this all imaginary and takes place on celluloid but really, had the cyborgs never sent back the terminator, John Connor never would have sent back his father and he wouldn’t have been born.  But what can you expect from a bunch of cyborgs anyway?

For me, in She Wulf, you couldn’t just decide one day to go to the past unless you found yourself there when the past was actually the present.  Huh?  Picture it this way.  It’s 2012 and you want to go to the past, let’s say to the year 1900.  You can’t go unless during the year 1900, you actually showed up.  I know, it’s all theory, but that’s how it happened when Annie Pearce finds herself falling through a time portal, back to eleventh century England.  She understands the concept of time travel, of altering the past and how it can affect the future which makes her reluctant to get involved.  But she realizes that she had already been there, in the year 1075, had already altered time and whatever she touched or changed or created, was meant to be touched, changed or created.

So still think time travel is cool?  I know sometimes we’d like a do-over, the ability to change a decision, to not have to live through pain and despair.  But sometimes, these things make us who we are.  Each experience shapes us, each tear, each laugh, adds to our self.  We gain something.  All those things that I’ve experienced, including the loss of a child, made me who I am.  Without that, could I have written She Wulf?

So time travel–can you see it?  What if it was real and I could look at it from a purely joyful perspective, without those darned consequences hanging over my head.  Maybe an afternoon with Elvis would be fun.