On World Building…

Welcome to guest author Calisa Rhose–we’ll be exchanging posts in the next week!

Hi Alana! It’s wonderful to be with you today. It’s been a hugely busy month for me beginning the week before Christmas when my debut book HOME released. I had no idea what went into a blog tour, the time and brain cells it requires! It’s nice to be able to just ‘talk’ today. I’m quite good at that!

When I began HOME I knew I wanted a small town setting in which to ground my characters. Living in small towns around Oklahoma gives me a lot of experience and knowledge of how towns with less than 5000 population operates. The closenessof neighbors- everyone is neighbors or related- the get togethers either daily or weekly are common. Everywhere you go, you see someone you know by name or face, or both. Of course, when there’s tragedy a small town will often pull together and I love that aspect. On the flip side though, it doesn’t take much more time than it takes to shave a bunny’s cotton tail for gossip to spread in a small town. You gave in to a boy on a date last night? Everyone knows about it by noon—and you’re not even out of bed yet! Wildfire express.

So I knew that was what I needed for HOME; that small town gossipy feel to destroy Sam Callahan’s life as he’d always known it. My problem as that, though I knew about small town life, I knew little of world building. The same issue comes up regularly when I work on my paranormal series. The small village doesn’t exist in Colorado so I made it up and all it has to offer. How do I make it a town my characters have lived in for generations and get it from inside my writer’s head and onto paper for a reader?  Sure, I imagine what my town looks like…in my head. But I want my readers to see that same town as they read my book and they can’t get inside my head!

So I have to put it out there in words. I thought I had failed in one of my paranormal books until a
friend/editor read the first few chapters. She had little background on the series and I stuck her in book two first. Imagine my excitement when she came back with “Is this a real town you’ve been to?” Nope, and yep. The town was based on Durango, Colorado by geographical design. I’ve been
there and loved how mountains cuddle that sleepy little souvenir town. But the town of my making wasn’t a western-like tourist attraction like Durango is. It’s a real life Cherokee Indian village of modern times since my paranormal is a contemporary. I would spend hours closing my eyes and envisioning Colusa, Colorado.

If you look on a map of Colorado there’s a little town called Hope in the far north eastern corner. That’s about where my village is. I needed mountains and an area of close proximity to where
wolves would not be a curiosity, but a regular sight. Then I wove the down by description into the story.

But there’s more to world building I wasn’t aware of until I began my own. In paranormals you have the structure of a kind of people to build, the infrastructure that makes my wolves special over any other shapeshifter. It’s where they came from, how they got where they are today and
how they can change in the future. What allows this? In my books there’s an ancient Indian curse that traps my wolves on their mountain. But there’s  aspects of the curse that enables them other options. It’s a whole world inside a world that I’m creating.

For HOME it was a lot easier. I thought about what it might have been like living back in the 60’s, surfed the web for towns from that era and put those together to create the mind set and slow pace of the time and set my characters in that mixing bowl and let it flow. Settings and worlds of a
contemporary are much simpler than paranormals in that we live in the contemporary and it’s easier to let our minds fill in blanks with things familiar to us. With paranormals we have to give our mind permission to stretch and explore what-ifs and then accept that it could happen. For me- that’s easy.
What about you? Are you easily pulled in to a paranormal world? Do you give your mind permission to accept the unacceptable? Or do you feel more comfortable in the here and now where everything is familiar to you?

BLURB:

What could a gypsy and a Vietnam veteran have in common?

Silvertown’s outcast, Poppy Tippen, has loved football hero Sam “The Force” Callahan forever. But he never seemed to know she was alive. Now he’s home from the war and she suddenly finds
herself comforting him from the demons of “that damn war.” Is his attention merely an escape from the haunting nightmares? Or does she hold the interest of the only man she’s ever truly loved?

Sam Callahan’s only solace from the war nightmares wrecking his life comes in the unlikely form of a gypsy girl with stigmas of her own. He’s known Poppy his entire life, but there’s something different about her now. Something special he desperately wants to hold on to. Can he convince her she’s the only thing he needs to put the past behind him?

EXCERPT [2]-

Over the next week he actively avoided his mother as he raked and watered the lawn. He’d found out the gardener had left when his mother stopped paying him, not that Sam blamed the guy. So, he would try to do what he could to fix the old place up again. Somehow, like himself, he doubted the place he’d called home would ever fully recover the ravages of wartime. It gave him something useful to getthrough the days before he creeped out at night.

“Sammie, we need to talk.”

He dropped his head and counted briefly before facing his mother. “Good morning, Ma.”

“Have you talked to that woman?”

No nonsense, that was Ma. He dragged in a heavy breath to stifle a groan. “What woman
would that be?”

“Don’t play games with me, Sam. You know full well I’m talking about that gypsy woman who owns the doll store. Did you tell her you want the doll back?” His mother threw hands to hips. He waited five ticks. Yep, there it was. Her left foot began flapping like a fish out of water to make known her full ire at him. He almost grinned.

As he stared at her tapping foot, Sam realized he’d actually missed that trait in his mother while he’d been gone. But she wasn’t interested in reflections of days past. “No. I’m not going to get the doll. It’s better off gone if it causes you so much distress. Just forget it and let it be, Ma.”

“Forget it? Haven’t you heard what I’ve been telling you? It will only cause more problems the longer that woman has it!” She was almost yelling and Sam cringed inwardly with a glance around. She ought to keep her voice down or—

Or, what? Did he expect the VC to pop out of the surrounding sticks that had once been shrubbery admired by the whole town? Yes. He did. Damn it all. Why was it so hard for him to let go of the war he was no longer a part of? He shuffled his loafer-clad feet and sighed heavily. “What’s so special about that doll that you won’t let it go?”

His mother looked away from him as though she had a secret and twisted her hands
around her ever-present hankie. “It’s bad, evil.”

“Then, why on earth would you want it back? Good riddance, I’d say.”

“No!” She backed up a step and looked up at him, lips painted the same bright red, and he vaguely wondered if she’d worn it so long it had become permanent, a tattoo. A bright red tattoo. Blood red… “It was a gift from my cousin, Helen, when I visited her in California, before she died. I already told you that. But, it’s cursed! I can’t risk anyone else suffering because of that—that thing!”

Blood red… Sam shook the image off and looked over his mother’s head toward the
street.

Of all the times to wander in, he didn’t need Poppy showing up right then, while his mother was on her insane rampage about a doll.

A doll that Poppy’s mother had bought fair and square, according to Ma. Now it was a cursed doll? She’d said something about that last time she mentioned the damn thing. He was suddenly afraid his mother was losing her mind. “Son of a bitch.”

“Watch your mouth, young man. I won’t have that kind of language used in this house. Your father—God rest his soul—didn’t use that filth, and I won’t have my only son speak it.” She sounded so normal, suddenly.

“Sorry, Ma. I need to go…somewhere, for a while.”

“Get the doll.” Her voice poured from that red mouth like a warning.

He leaned the rake he’d been using before the interruption against the wood shed and tossed a wave over his head to his mother as he strode for the driveway, and Poppy. Suddenly, it took all his will not to break out in a run and just keep going. Never to stop until he was far, far away from this new nightmare his mother had introduced to him. Blood red, blood. Red, blood, red, blood, red blood.

Sam didn’t stop when he reached Poppy, but grabbed her hand and swung her around with him—took her away before his mother realized who she was. He especially didn’t need her to see the doll shop owner’s daughter.

He picked up his already fast pace until he felt a jerk against his hand and slowed down.  He didn’t want to talk. Not yet. Walk. Keep walking…fast.

“Whoa, soldier boy!” She yanked him to a stop. For a little thing, she was stronger than he’d have thought. “What’s with you? If I wanted to race I’d be a horse.”

Blood red. No talking. Walk. Her hand still in his, he gave a rough tug.

******************************** 

Get your copy of HOME at The Wild Rose Press and on Amazon.

Small-town country girl Calisa Rhose lives in a semi-remote area of Oklahoma with her husband, five dogs, one cat and one horse. All of her three daughters and their families live within throwing distance. She’s a member of RWA and the local chapter OKRWA. She intends to nurture and continue to grow as an author with the help of her family and supporters.

Find Calisa at her website/blog http://calisarhose.wordpress.com

On twitter @Calisa_Rhose and Facebook @Calisa Rhose

She loves to hear from readers so drop her a line at calisa.rhose@gmail.com

Thanks for inviting me here, Alana!

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