I am
not a fan of earthquakes. I lived in California for a while and I remember two quakes when I was a child and another when I was an adult. The first quake I can remember hit when I was about five years old. All the dishes in the kitchen began to rattle and glasses fell off the counter. My grandmother told me to get under a table and I did and more stuff fell off the wall.
It was the most terrifying--and longest sixty seconds of my life. The second quake happened a few months later and I took shelter in a doorway--no where near as much broken stuff, but I remember the stomach sinking sensation and the pounding of my heart. We moved away from the area the year I turned seven and I never looked back again until I was in my twenties.
Oddly enough, my second greatest terror occurred later the same year when I was out riding a bike in my neighborhood and a couple of the local bullies thought it would be funny to throw a rubber snake at me. I had lived in the area long enough to have learned that some of the snakes were poisonous--but more than that, they creeped me out. I will never forget the image of that snake flying at my face. I had no idea it was rubber, I came off the bike backwards, skinned both elbows, my leg and cut my head (no I wasn't wearing a helmet, we didn't even have bike helmets).
Fear is a Powerful Motivator
The bullies laughed and laughed and laughed at my predicament and my bike was broken at the same time. Infuriated, I beat one of them up. Yeah, I know, we're not supposed to admit that, but I was a mean little kid when I got scared. It was only my second fight ever (the first happened when I was six and one of the mean boys who lived on the other side of the alley from my house was throwing a kitten up in the air and trying to catch it--he kept dropping it and the cat cried piteously--I blacked his eye and bloodied his nose and took the cat home. Tiddles was my buddy for the next ten years) but that's neither here nor there.
The snake incident stuck with me forever, I could never not react to seeing a snake again. I'd break out in a cold sweat, my heart would hammer and I'd flee. Yep, a full fledged phobia. I've only ever managed to handle being anywhere near a snake again when my kid was around--but even then I'm ready to run like hell if it makes one false move. Let's just say that if I'd been Dudley in the first Harry Potter book, I'd never have bothered Harry again--I'd have died of fear on the spot.
Flash forward a few years and I lived in California again for a few months in my early twenties and my third quake happened while I bunked at a friend's apartment in a high rise.
The effing building swayed.
Swayed.
And I had the exact same reaction to the land shaking that I had to snakes--utter terror.
Confronting Fears
I don't believe in letting fear control me, no matter how motivating, so I put both in the book
Plan Witch From Out of Town. There is a scene in the book where a snake slithers onto Chance that creeped me out while I wrote it and every gut churning, heart pounding, mind numbing earthquake that happened--I reacted to those viscerally. My heart would race, I'd start to sweat and I could feel the bile rising in my throat.
This book remains one of my favorites because I love Chance so much and because writing it presented an opportunity to confront some of my own fears. Has it helped me to put them out of my mind? Not at all--I still screamed like a girl when a snake slithered over my foot a few months ago and when the earth shakes...yeah, not my favorite things.
And for the record...yes, Virginia has earthquakes. I felt the earth tremble when I lived there and you'd be amazed by the number of seismic activities recorded there over the years. Sure it's not California, but the thing about an earthquake is where do you go to get away from one?
Yes, I am sweating just thinking about it!
Plan Witch from Out of Town is available now. It is book 2 of the
Chance Monroe series.
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Blurb
Life should be getting back to normal…Chance survived a serial killer returning from the grave and said yes to a date with her ex-lover Jack. But survivor’s guilt eats away at her and her world turns upside down when earthquakes begin to rattle the landscape and devastate the region she calls home.
Madness becomes her…Terrified that she is the source of earthquakes devastating the land, she tries to shut down her connection to the Earth. But when enemies aware of how to shatter her bond to the earth kidnap her, Chance faces her most desperate hour,
When the earth shakes, the witch bleeds…Staring into the face of madness, she must learn to trust her allies or risk losing everything—and everyone she loves.
Read an Excerpt
