The science of paranormal creatures..#paranormal, #FionaMcGier, #erotic romance

Oh, how jealous I am of writers who can write all day and night...or even everyday. I've been working on a book all summer, and it's only about 3/4 done. I'm still tutoring 3 afternoons per week and on Saturday mornings. School starts on Wednesday, and I've been asked to do a long-term sub job for a teacher who had a baby, so I'll be working at the school every day through September 8th.  I'm glad for the money, but sad that I'll have only a few stolen moments here and there to write.

My latest WIP is about werewolves. I don't usually write paranormal romances, but when I have dreams that dictate entire story arcs, I have to submit to my muse's dictates. Based on a dream years ago, I did a different, kind of scientific "take" on vampires. In my 2-book series, Prophecy of the Undead, and Mayan Prophecy Fulfilled,  I had the heroine from the first book,

Keisha, a neurobiology researcher, discover once she'd been "turned" that there are spores in the blood of vampires. These spores can withstand the cold of space, so presumably they float around in space, landing on random planets.  If there are no beings with iron-based blood, they die. If there are beings with iron-based blood, then they can infect them and produce a new life form whose entire body will be reformed to suit what the spores need.  Organs needed for digestion of food, for example, will atrophy, and only what is needed to process the blood they crave for survival, will be kept. But along with this way of being comes abilities like being able to fly, which I describe in a humorous scene in the first book, when Keisha is being taught to fly by the vampire who adores her, as well as by 2 other, much older vampires, who tease her about her clumsy first attempts.

In my werewolf book, my heroine will not be turned into a werewolf because that's not possible. I imagine it to be a genetic event, that causes a person to be born with a wolf sharing his or her body. The wolf keeps quiet until puberty, then can make itself apparent at any time. For this reason, there are special high schools that teenagers can be sent to, so that if it occurs, they are in a safe environment where others like them will teach them how to control their wolves, and how to change safely. There is no way to tell ahead of time if your child is "gifted" with a wolf. Two weres can have children who show no signs of being able to shift. Or two normal people can have children who discover, to their horror, that they have another voice living in their heads, and they regularly will have overpowering urges to undergo a very painful change, that will break and recreate their skeletal structure, as well as move their inner organs around. I don't even have a title yet, but since this was a dream once again, as the vampire books were, I'm really enjoying having the story flow out of me. I'll probably write for a few hours on Monday the 14th, and try for some time on Tuesday. Then Wednesday starts school and the voices will have to wait.

I've started collecting pictures of females who resemble my heroines, so I can have their image fixed in my head as I write. Do you do this? I've also been making notes about the surroundings, and about the familial relationships of the people who live on the huge compound that includes the school.

Can anyone suggest publishers who specialize in paranormal stories? Just wondering if there are any that I should be sure to submit to, when the book is finally done.

Find out more about my two vampire books, as well as my other romances, at my website, www.fionamcgier.com. Until next month, happy reading!