I’ve lived such a dramatic life starting from birth, it seriously takes 6 books to write my life story. I’ve written two so far in my series, Memoirs of a Bigamist’s Daughter: The Bigamist, My Father and House of Sticks, which only takes me to age 11, when my father abandoned us. I’m working part-time on the 3rd book, entitled After Daddy Left, which leaves me an orphan at 16. The next book I’m writing is After Mama Died. The last 2 books in the series are My Life as a Computer Scientist and My Life as a Web Developer.
- What is the hardest thing about being an author?
I’m prolific and being frustrated that I can’t write faster to complete all the books that I have planned or already partially written.
- What is the best thing about being an author?
Creating the story and hearing the characters speak to me. I have an outline and story, but the book astonished me as the pieces come together and surprise me.
- Have you ever been starstruck by meeting one of your favorite authors? If so who was it?
I wasn’t star-struck, but I once met Tony Hillerman at an Albuquerque Restaurant. He had been my husband’s Journalism professor, and he was kind enough to give me a quote for my book Return of the Bones. Now, what I do regret is not going to one of George R.R. Martin’s book signings at Page 1 Books in Albuquerque. The store was like 15 minutes from my house, and I drove by it five days a week going to and from work. I had not read his books then. I’m now a big fan of Game of Thrones.
- What book changed your life?
The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux convinced me to become a writer. The book moved me to tears and angered me that Hollywood had turned a beautiful love story into a monstrous horror film. This was before Andrew Lloyd Weber did justice to the book.
- What were some of your of favorite books growing up?
I had such eclectic tastes from Gone with the Wind to the classics like Rebecca and Wuthering Heights. I was always in Honors English and we read all of the classics. I loved Charles Dickens.
- What books are currently in your to be read pile?
I used to read about 3 or 4 books a week but right now I don’t have a pile because I’ve got so many books I have to write. I’ve created the covers for all of them, like 35.
- Which do you prefer ebooks, print, or audiobooks?
I prefer print books for research and ebooks for entertainment. Lately, I’ve gotten into audiobooks, in so far as I’m having my older books narrated. I already had two and I’m releasing another then end of August. A narrator is currently narrating the first book in A Dysfunctional Family of Witches and then will begin The Witch with Nine Lives right after. The witches make the best audiobooks out of all of them. They’re fun to listen to.
- If you could live inside the world of a book or series which world would it be and why?
Well, the Twilight Series is interesting, but being a vampire forever in high school, and the stuff and the way they eat, yuck! I hated high school. I would like to live in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series. It would be pretty cool to hitchhike around the universe to different worlds. All you need is a towel, and you’re good to go.
The Witch with Nine Lives
A Dysfunctional Family of Witches
Book One
B. Austin
Genre: Paranormal, Urban, YA, Horror
Publisher: Spellbound Books
Date of Publication: 8/27/2020
ASIN: B08BHSJ2RW
Number of pages: 263
Word Count: 58,319
Cover Artist: B. Austin
Tagline: The Tie Between Two Powerful Sisters is Tested when Secrets, Lies and Magic is Revealed in a Dysfunctional Family of Witches.
Book Description:
Medea turns into a cat at night, due to her mother's curse. Her mother, Dima, has a shapeshifting stone. She is 130-years-old but appears to be 18, nearly the same age as her two daughters.
Nikki works as a maid, rather than in the family witchcraft business of fortune-telling, seances, and other witchery-for-hire. She was born a Marilyn-Monroe lookalike. Despite her beauty, jealousy eats away at Nikki because her mother and sister have magic. Nor is Nikki allowed near the books of spells, enchantments, and potions Dima stole from Russian monks.
Medea is tortured by a secret that can destroy the sisterly tie between her and Nikki.
Unknown to her family, Nikki, is developing a magical gift which she cannot control, a sorcery that will threaten Medea and pit two powerful sisters against each other.
The Witch with Nine Lives
A Dysfunctional Family of Witches Excerpt
PROLOGUE
Nikki held her
dead sister in her arms, a cat named Medea. It was only because of her youngest
daughter, well now her only daughter, that their mother attended this makeshift
funeral. Dima should be working. Luke Air Force Base in Glendale was open.
There was money to be made dancing with solders. Most paid good money for Dima
to gaze into a crystal ball and tell the men their futures.
Bah, this is a
waste of my time, having a funeral for Medea. Dima frowned at the dead
Abyssinian cat. The different-colored eyes were glazed over in death and the
tongue was hanging out. Dima turned her head away. She felt guilty for having
cast a spell on her oldest daughter to begin with. It was for her own good. She
may have been just a teenager, but the mafia wanted her dead.
Almost 24 hours
passed since Nikki found Medea dead in the backyard. The girl had run into the
house screaming, carrying her dead sister in her arms, the cat’s arms dangling
and the head hanging. The eyes were open and still. Nikki had been hysterical
until Dima slapped her.
Once more, Nikki
cried over her furry sister. The girl seemed to like her sister more now that
Medea was dead.
Dima yanked a
shapeshifting stone from her pocket. She ordered the stone to shapeshift into a
shovel. She then dug a small grave.
Nikki gently
placed her sister in the small, shallow grave.
The emotional
upset of seeing her eldest daughter lying dead with a pile of dirt beside the
open grave, caused Dima to transform from a sexy, 18-year-old to her true self,
a 130-year-old hag. Quick, she grabbed the shovel which then melted into her
hands and reformed as the shapeshifting stone. She clutched the stone and spun
until she was once more an 18-year-old beauty.
It was almost
midnight at the small, private Russian Molokan Cemetery located at 75th and
Maryland Avenue in Glendale, Arizona. There was a full moon, so there was
plenty of light shining on the grave.
“Why couldn’t we
have a coffin?” Nikki again asked.
“Your sister
always liked the dirt. Remember how she would dig with her claws?” Dima said.
“Yes, but that
was so she could use the bathroom outside,” Nikki pointed out.
“Well, you
really shouldn’t cry over a sister who used her tongue as toilet paper,” Dima
said. “Medea was inferior.”
Nikki glared at
her. “Medea was a cat because of you.”
“Well, if Medea
had not been an outdoor cat, but stayed indoors, she might have lived a few
years longer, if not for you,” Dima said.
Now, it was
Nikki’s turn to look guilty.
The moon moved
directly above them, signaling that it was now midnight.
Dima screeched
and pointed at the grave. Moonlight was shining on the cat, which had
transformed from a brown Abyssinian cat into a black kitten.
“Medea’s come
back to life!” Nikki clapped her hands with joy.
Dima, on the
other hand, was so shocked that she dropped Pompeii, her shapeshifting stone.
She again transformed from a young woman to an ancient one. Her boobs were
sagging past her waist. Her hair was but a few sparse white hairs. Dima lifted
her head so that she could see because her wrinkly eyelids blurred her vision,
not to mention the cataracts; oh, the cataracts, and the arthritis in her
gnarled hands. Her back was hunched over. Dima ached with more than a century
and a quarter of living, and none of it as the granddaughter of Catherine the
Great of Russia. Dima was born with signs that she would be a witch, which
freaked out her royal family, so her bastard mother threw her away.
Well, enough of
bad memories. Medea was reborn!
The kitten sat
up and stretched, arching its back. She wasn’t exactly a newborn kitten. Medea
appeared to be the size of a four-month-old kitten.
Dima stooped to
pick up the shapeshifting stone.
The kitten was
faster and jumped on the stone, sitting on the rock.
Dima jumped out
of the way because the kitten scratched at her ankles.
Dima growled low
in her throat. “I see dying hasn’t improved your bad manners, Medea. You are
still headstrong though you must weigh all of three pounds. Move, or I’ll smack
you with a newspaper.”
Seventeen cats,
some old, some young, surrounded them, hissing at Dima. Of course, the cats
attended Medea’s funeral. She was their leader.
Traitors, Dima
thought. The older cats had once been loyal to her, but that was before she
turned her daughter into a cat.
Dima took a step
back. Medea may have been reborn as a black cat, but her eyes were still the
same, one eye being amber in color and the other eye emerald-green. The two
different colors were a sign of magic. Medea was still a witch and power still
flowed in her kitty veins.
The kitten
laughed. “Come now, mother,” Medea said in a kittenish, human voice. Medea
apparently had the memories of her past life. “It won’t hurt you to stay your
own age, for an hour or so. This is my wish for my birthday.”
“You don’t get a
second birthday,” Dima snarled.
“Yes, she does,”
Nikki protested. “Medea has now been born twice.”
About the Author:
Belinda has fun creating both researched and original magic in her books. She grew up in New Mexico, a Southwestern state known as the Land of Enchantment with a long history of Native American and Spanish witchcraft. Growing up, she heard spell-binding tales about magic and real witches, magic sometimes witnessed by family members. Belinda has a friend in Albuquerque who is a modern-day witch. Belinda is a former Software Engineer / Web Applications Developer. She has a degree in Applied Mathematics. She did not have to do research when it comes to dysfunctional families. Her father was a bigamist with two wives and two sets of children.
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