Tena StetlerAuthor of Paranormal Romance/Suspense & Cozy Mysteries With Magic Spark!

Now for some fun. Second Speed Round <Only two words allowed>

1.What is your favorite book of all time? Dracula

2. Where do you relax to read? Under my cuckoo clock
3. What sound drives you right up a wall? My children’s whining
4. What sound relaxes you? Babbling water
5. Favorite drink? Red wine
6. Walking in the sand, shoes or barefoot? Barefoot
7. Favorite pet Miniature Dachsund
8. Snow? Love or hate? Love
9. Doing ________ is like nailing jello to the wall. What everyone else tells you to do
10. Rock and Roll, Country, Jazz or Classical? Classical
11. What can’t you leave the house without? My keys
12. Calender or not; Paper or electronic? Both
13. Favorite place to write. my Pier One chair
14. What is your decadent indulgent? Chocolate
15. You’ve just won $1,000.00, you have only 24 hours to spend it, so what will you buy? Airline tickets
16. Plotter or panster? Plotter
17. Introvert or extrovert? Introvert
18. Flight or fight? Fight
19. Favorite Monster? Ganon
20. Magic or Not? Magic!

The sun seems to have forgotten Wales. I didn’t think there was any place on Earth that could make me long to be in Egypt again, but I couldn’t escape the memories that flooded me. I shivered in the absence of the Valley’s merciless heat, where for summers on end its oppressive dryness sucked the life out of my lips and baked my skin into hardened, sand-beaten clay. That dryness had followed Ramesses, Amenhotep, Aken-aten, and his son beyond the world’s suffering down to their resting place, and kept the divine kings ready in the dark, empty stillness.

But the day’s oppression had always faded with the sun. The perfection of those nights on the Eastern Bank, at our host Hani’s home—that was what I missed. Invigorated by the fresh, life-giving breeze off the Nile’s surface and snuggled between my parents under thin woven blankets was a warmth I knew I would never feel again. The cold and damp of Britain, once the stronghold of the Druids, was relentless. The gnawing feeling at the pit of my stomach grew, and the thought I’d pushed away more than once made itself more insistent.

This was a mistake. I shouldn’t be here.

            My fingertips numbed to the statuette in my hand, a solid representation of the wet chill in the air. Its faceless form was as alien to me as the bog in which I crouched. The shape of the stone fetish was at least interesting, a long, slender column with a severe “V” etched into it. It held more promise than the dozens of thin rings fashioned out of iron, bronze, and even gold, heaped together in a tangle, the clay pottery, now in shards, and scraps of linen that appeared to be tossed desperately into the bog as a last-ditch effort to avoid Roman destruction. But I couldn’t enjoy it for what it was. It was inscrutable, too disconnected from anything familiar. Its primitive, obscure expression reminded me of my own cold thoughts, and as I squeezed the chilled stone in my hand, I doubted if I would discover anything that had once been warm—made of flesh and blood. We were as deep down as the famous bog bodies had been, more so in certain places, and still we had nothing, or rather no one, to show for it.

I lifted my head, trying to shake off my melancholy and averting my eyes from the stone carving that would not reveal its secrets to me. I was too low down to inhale even a whiff of air that wasn’t saturated with the grassy pungency of the bog wall. From my vantage point, huddled low in a deep, man-hewn pit, the sodden depression of the bog appeared even more overgrown on all sides. Birch trees poked out of humble clusters of willows, red-speckled buckthorn, and mountain ash. Except for these trees skirting its outermost edges, the sunken area was wide and open. The cauldron bog retained its secluded atmosphere, despite being carved into a series of waterlogged cavities.

My somber mood deepened when I saw my advisor approach. Up until then I’d been successful at avoiding him. I deliberately didn’t linger, and always found a reason to visit another pit when the one we were in suddenly emptied of other researchers. I’d resisted the wrenching feeling in my gut too long, but as our excavation wound down, it was impossible to ignore, with nowhere for my thoughts to hide—there was nothing left of what used to be my life.

“How’s it going?” Alex asked, and knelt beside me.

            “Fine,” I answered, not bothering to look up from the peat I was brushing off of a link of iron rings sunken into the over-saturated soil.

            After a long, awkward silence, he said, “It’s okay, you know.”

            “What is?”

            “If you don’t…if we don’t find one.”

            I swallowed hard. The only place for my rising fury to go was back down.

            “I just don’t want you to think that this whole thing was a waste—”

            “A waste?” I shot back. “I’ve got enough to keep me occupied for the next decade, thank you.” It was true, but that didn’t make the prospect of studying human sacrifice sansa human sound any better. Nothing would tell us as much about the Druids as human remains that had, willingly or otherwise, undergone their practices. It may have been more than anyone else expected, but the bar had been set impossibly high. A human discovery might have been the only way to exceed my father’s own discoveries in the Valley of the Kings and earn the same level of respect in my own right.

            “All right, all right,” Alex said, contrite. “I didn’t come over here to upset you.”

            “Then why are you here?” There was more bite in my voice than I meant, but he had that amused eyebrow raised again, the one that made my anger meaningless and painted me as a silly, wide-eyed novice with dreams of finding the next Tut.

            “I thought you might need a refill.” He offered me a cup of coffee.

            A gruff “thank you” was all I could manage. My brain had reached maximum capacity for caffeine, but it went down easy. Milk and two sugars, just the way I liked it. Damn.

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I’m an historian by day, a novelist and baker by night. I like to write what I read – fantasy, romantic fantasy, gothic fiction, historical fiction, mystery, paranormal, horror, and weird fiction. In nonfiction, my research interests include Spiritualism, the history of the North American Indian, and issues of race, class, and gender in the West as well as the gothic/weird/occult traditions from around the globe in all cultural outlets (literature, film, folklore, etc.)

When I’m not writing or reading or teaching, I’m either playing a video game, or a board game, or watching a horror movie, making croissants, or adding some new weird creepy cool thing to my art collection. I love to travel and learn new languages, and… oh! Have fun with my adoring hubby and kids, of course.