Deborah Cooke: Author

Today my guest is another author I’ve met online. We started to chat and hit it off, and so I’m very happy to have Maureen Fisher here as my guest today. Please give her a warm welcome to Alive & Knitting!

I would like to extend my sincere thanks to Deborah for inviting me to be a guest blogger. My name is Maureen Fisher, and I would like to talk about the inspiration for my writing. I confess I’m not one of those people who knew from the moment she sprang from her mother’s womb that  she was destined to be a writer. I didn’t carry around a pen and notepad to scribble down pearls of wisdom, I wasn’t brimming with plot ideas, and I almost never heard snippets of conversation in my head.

For many years, I was gainfully employed as a management consultant. Over time, those snappy business suits, difficult clients, and rush hour traffic became increasingly onerous. I still didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up, but I was certain of one thing—it had nothing to do with information technology.

To compensate for the frustrations of consulting life, I embarked on a personal development and spiritual growth blitz. My journey included experiential workshops, counseling (both delivered and received), and various healing techniques, including—are you ready?—a past life regression. Yup. I even kept a recording the hypnotherapist made of the session. To this day I haven’t listened to it. Once (make that twice, come to think of it) was quite enough of that lifetime, thank you very much. Although the regression helped me make sense of certain events in this lifetime, even brought me a sense of peace, I didn’t need—or want—to hear it again.

Suffice it to say, my trip down [past-life] memory lane turned me into a believer. The experience got me thinking deep thoughts. What if we are destined to repeat our mistakes over and over again until we learn the lessons we came here to learn? What if the learning could stretch over many lifetimes and several millennia? Unable to wrap my tiny brain around a scale of such magnitude, I focused on improving my own life. At the time, I had no notion I would write a book revolving around reincarnation.

Soon after my regression, another spiritual healer channeled an unforgettable session during which my Inner Voice made itself heard loud and clear. Truth be told, it was yelling its head off. Apparently, I wanted to write books. Not dry, boring, technical treatises, but fresh, funny romantic suspense novels. Who knew? Certainly not my conscious mind. But the idea resonated.

Okay, so how hard could it be? Thousands of authors did it every year. I could too. Always an over-achiever, I quit my day job, joined the Ottawa branch of Romance Writers of America, and enrolled in a one-week seminar on novel-writing. Two days into the course, the instructor gave us homework: Write the back cover blurb for our novel.

Yeeeeek! What novel?

When my panic finally subsided into stomach-churning anxiety, I pulled together the concept of the occult energy of an archaeological dig triggering the heroine’s flashbacks to her past life as an Olmec High Priestess. I chose Olmecs over the more familiar Aztecs, Mayans, or Zapotecs, mainly because only a smattering of information exists. I could invent to my heart’s content. The one thing archaeologists appear to agree on, however, is that the Olmecs believed they could shapeshift into the jaguar they worshipped.

My imagination kicked into high gear. Pumped, I got to work on The Jaguar Legacy, a paranormal romantic suspense. Think Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (with steamy romance). Picture, if you will, a ruined city deep in the Mexican jungle. Add a sassy reporter hot on the trail of a juicy exposé and a brilliant Scottish archaeologist who hates the press. Throw in a vengeful ex-wife and a mysterious shaman who has mastered the mystic arts of the Ancients. Stand back from the fireworks when the dig’s occult energy triggers flashbacks to a past life as an Olmec High Priestess.

As I wrote the book, it gradually occurred to me that the past life I was describing was one of my own. My spiritual healer agrees. So does my Inner Voice. Certainly, the flashbacks in the book were the parts that flowed most easily, the parts that required little or no editing, the parts that presented the author (me) with surprising revelations that resolved many plot issues.

If, indeed, The Jaguar Legacy describes one of my past lives, I was one bad-ass Olmec with accumulated karma. That means I need to figure out the lessons I’m here to learn during this lifetime. Happily, I’m an over-achiever.

In case readers are wondering, I should probably mention that the shapeshifting in The Jaguar Legacy was a figment of my imagination.

Or was it?

The inspiration for my second book was unrelated to things paranormal, mystical, or spooky. I confess I broke the cardinal rule of author branding, and switched genres. Yup. There it is in black and white. Genre-hopping.

One morning, a newspaper announcement for an animal charity extravaganza called the Fur Ball caused my imagination to crackle. The result was Fur Ball Fever, a romantic crime mystery spiked with attitude (most of it warped) and enough steamy sex to drive those who dare read it racing for a cold shower. After a lifetime of impetuous mistakes, pet spa owner Grace Donnelly outdoes herself when she loses her elderly client’s prize pooch—a shoo-in to win the Jersey Shore Fur Ball. Money, careers, and lives are in jeopardy. Too bad her helpers are an aging hippie aunt, a renegade schnauzer, and a drag queen. Worst of all, the only man truly qualified to help is a former flame, the hunkiest bodyguard north of the Mason-Dixon Line. Private safety specialist Nick Jackson has his own pressing agenda: to nail the phony televangelist who pulled a retirement residence scam and whacked a witness. To salvage his case, his sanity, and his ex-lover’s velvety skin, Nick joins forces with the sassy crusader who rubs him the wrong way—and so many right ways too. Hazards soon multiply like bunnies, exploding into romance, murder, and mayhem, culminating in a Fur Ball extravaganza the locals will never forget.

The Jaguar Legacy is available at Amazon and Smashwords.

Fur Ball Fever is available at Amazon and Smashwords .

I would love it if you popped over to visit my website.