Moonstone: Wolfmoon Book 1

Finna’s mother is dead. So why is this woman standing on her stoop claiming to be just that? Catriona arrives bearing a gift-a luminous moonstone that holds the secrets to Finna’s heritage. What heritage? Catriona insists that the two of them must journey to the castle of the Celtic moon goddess, Arianrhod.Moon goddess?The story Catriona weaves is preposterous. A parallel reality, known as the ’Otherworld’, exists next to this one. According to her, this place has no electricity, cars or any other modern conveniences. ＂The moonstone will show the way,＂ Catriona intones cryptically.Newly pregnant Finna is naturally skeptical. Where has this woman been for the past eighteen years? And why would her father lie about her mother’s death? All her instincts tell her to stay put during this critical time.

But Catriona is uncannily persuasive, convincing her despite Finna’s misgivings.What a trip through this alternate reality really means, and the secrets Catriona reveals about their family and the baby Finna carries, have Finna questioning everything she has ever known. With her life and that of her unborn child in jeopardy, Finna must find a way to survive.

Wolfmoon has been percolating since I was a young girl wandering the dappled light of the hardwood forests of East Virginia. The Blue Ridge Mountains, always in the distance, bear an uncanny resemblance to the mountains I describe in the ’Otherworld’. One place I frequented often, nicknamed Devil’s Glen, shelves of stone jut out next to a winding creek bed. Moss and lichen cover the granite boulders and the trees growing there are gnarled and misshapen due to the rock formations. These images have remained in my imagination and color my writing. The hardwood forests of my childhood have been replaced with majestic evergreens, and I try to spend as much time as I can under their spreading canopy. Inspiration comes regularly when I’m on the hilly trails of the Pacific Northwest. My college education centered on English and Art and by the time I graduated I had basically a B.A. in both. By that time I was married with two children. During my two girl’s middle grade years, I started a greeting card business and then later, when they were out of the house I began a silk painting business, continuing for twenty years. But writing was always at the back of my mind and I finally had to allow the stories onto paper. Now it is a full-time pursuit, sometimes taking up ten to twelve hours of a day.