Guest Blogger - Wren Emerson

This month’s guest blogger is Wren Emerson, an author whom I met while drinking at the Twitter bar for writers, also known as #pubwrite. It’s a wonderful place for authors to converge and chat, drink, and surprisingly, not get drunk. How fabulous is that?

I talked with Wren about writing which eventually led to this guest blog. Knowing Wren has a quirky sense of humor, I was really looking forward to her take on this month’s theme of “night.”  It’s a great post and I hope you enjoy it.

Please welcome the delightful Wren Emerson.

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For as long as I can remember I’ve had two minds about night.

On the one hand, there’s always been something so comforting and welcoming about a summer’s night. When I was little we spent a lot of time with my father’s mother. She enjoyed things like camping and fishing and she could usually be counted on to fall asleep early with cable on and I spent many nights as a child sitting in front of her open screen door while a puff of cool breeze brought a slightly rusty, slightly dusty sent through the old wire mesh. I’d watch cheesy horror flicks with commentary from whatever the theme was of that particular “Up All Night” show. All very positive and cherished memories that I still love to recall twenty years later.

But once the warm summer air gets a bite and it’s too cold to enjoy sitting in front of a breezy door, the darkness becomes a lot more sinister to me. Suddenly those movies I loved so much all summer long started to seem a lot scarier to me and staying up all night taking well meaning advantage of my grandma wasn’t nearly as fun because I was really too cold to enjoy it. All the fun summer activities I looked forward to all summer were off the table and winter just meant that it got dark hours earlier.

I’m in my early thirties now. I’m well past the point where I should still be scared of the dark. I’ll admit it, I used to flip the light switch beside my bedroom door and all but leap across the room and under the covers. And this until I was in my twenties. I haven’t done that trick in years, but I still have my own special quirks.

I won’t look in a mirror after dark if I’m alone in the bathroom. I know that as soon as the sun goes down, all bets are off. That’s when you see the spooky dead person in the mirror behind you or accidently summon a vengeful spirit who will kill you and everyone you love.

I don’t sleep without a blanket or sheet across my hips and butt. I have no idea why. I assume because I must think on a subconscious level that monsters dig the taste of girl-butt.

I try not to look around in the dark. I read once that there is a phenomena in which people wake up to a pressure on their chest and open their eyes to see an old woman sitting on them. It’s called Hag Syndrome or something like that. Since I’m pretty sure that would drive me completely bug crap insane, I don’t risk it.

I also haven’t outgrown the things I loved so much about summer nights. I still feel like I could walk for limitless miles as long as I have the hum of evening bugs as my soundtrack. The first hot nights of summer make me long for an adventure so fiercely that my chest actually aches from the yearning. I write less fiction, but I fill more journal pages with my hopes for the future and memories of the past.

After all this time I have to believe that my contradictory views of night are a fundamental part of who I am as a person. I assume that I’ll probably always cower under a pile of blankets all winter long or feel like I want to cry myself to sleep as I examine all the ways my life went wrong. But I’ve also been blessed to have my summer nights where I lay awake for hours just enjoying my life and remembering what it is that makes my life so very wonderful.

Thank you Eden for having me. I think it’s fitting that I wrote this post at night, during the summer, and that while I was writing I was grinning like a maniac as I thought about all the things that summer nights used to mean to me as a kid and all the things they mean to me now as an adult. I’m so glad to have had the chance to share that glimpse of me with your readers. Nothing makes me feel more blessed than to think about all the things I have in my life that are unique and wonderful and totally worth the sharing.

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All she ever wanted was a chance to settle down in one place.

Thistle Nettlebottom knows her life isn’t exactly normal. She travels the country with her secretive mother and bestselling author grandmother in a pink RV going from book signings to crazy research trips. She’s never been to public school or had a boyfriend, but she can pick a lock and hotwire a car. One day the phone rings and they set a course to a tiny town that’s not on any maps. Suddenly, Thistle finds her whole life changing.

She’s finally found the home she’s been searching for.

Thistle soon realizes that Desire isn’t like other towns and she’s not like other girls. The family she trusted has lied to her about everything her entire life and the things she doesn’t know about herself could cost her everything. Her legacy as one of the most powerful witches the town has ever seen has made her enemies that have been waiting patiently for a chance to destroy her. Thistle needs to learn to use her powers to protect herself before they succeed.

Be careful what you wish for.

Thistle has a power unique even among the magic wielding witches of Desire. She can wish things into existence. At first she enjoys the freedom of having everything her heart desires, but she soon realizes that her power comes at a terrible price. She’s losing her grip on her sanity at a time when she can’t afford any weakness. Her enemies are closing in quickly, but she might not have the strength to save herself.

I Wish… (The Witches of Desire) is available from:  

Amazon        Barnes and Noble

Wren Emerson was born on the mean streets of small town Kansas 30*mumble* years ago. She first put pen to paper at the tender age of 12 and wrote an epicly awful story. She then became publisher and editor in chief of a family newspaper which included articles written by indentured servants/siblings. It got rave reviews from all 8 members of her family.

Now in adulthood, Wren still enjoys bossing people around so she became overlord to a small army of minions; her true love, kids, a cat, and a dog. When she’s not plotting to form a dictatorship she writes. When she’s not writing, she plays video games, reads books, practices her iphoneography skills, and spends way too much time hanging out in #pubwrite on Twitter.

Connect with Wren on her blog and twitter. 

Thanks Wren for a wonderful post!  To my readers, please comment and share your thoughts about night.  What are some of your strongest memories about it?  Do you have any fears or rituals?