Guest Blog by Kristina Meister, Author of CRAVING, & I Guest Blog Elsewhere

I'm guest blogging about scary things at The Non-Reluctant Reader today, with a contest for Dark Companion, and telling you about the movie that scared me the most. I had a wonderful time meeting the NRR's Benji, who hosted a dinner for bloggers and Tor Teen tour authors when we where in Seattle. He is all kinds of awesome. Come by and tell me what freaks you out, and enter for a chance to win my young adult gothic.

I'm leaving you in excellent hands with Kristina Meister, author of Craving, the first book in her Apocalypic darj fantasy series. I remember very clearly meeting Kristina when I gave a few workshops at the San Francisco Writers Conference. At the reception, a young woman with a bleached blonde mohawk came up to me and said, "My friends tell me that my stories are just like something your character Milagro would write." Milagro de Los Santos, the funny, quirky protagonist of my Casa Dracula series, writes eccentric stories featuring zombies, conspiracies, and lots of subtext.

Well that intrigued me right away. The mohawk, I mean, because I love mohawks, but also her comment and her unabashed embrace of all that is geek.  We've stayed in touch and I was delighted when Kristina was signed with Laurie McLean of the Larson-Pomada Agency.

So when I found out that Kristina's debut novel had been released, I invited her to tell us a little about her fascinating worldbuilding.

Here's a summary of Craving:

When Lilith Pierce's younger sister commits suicide, Lilith consoles herself with cleaning up Eva's final mess. But when she returns to the coroner's office to collect the body, she finds that the last few days were all a bizarre waking dream that never actually happened. Aided by the detective who witnesses her brush with the paranormal, she tears apart her sister's shadowy new life.

Yet after reading hundreds of Eva's detailed journals Lilith still has no explanation and no suicide note. Her search becomes a maddening obsession uncovering tantalizing questions but no answers...until she meets a stranger at her sister's funeral. Drawn to the mysterious man in a way she cannot explain, Lilith seeks the help of his crew of equally bizarre friends, including an immortal, blue-haired hacker and a Desert Storm veteran. As her prophetic visions intensify and she begins to develop even stranger powers, she uncovers a culture woven into the fabric of history-a culture founded on an idea of peace gone horribly wrong. From philosophy, to faith, to freakish genetic mutation, man's deepest desires became his greatest flaws, turning all those who succumb into vicious monsters. And very soon, Lilith will become one of them. 

The other books in the series are The One We Feed (#2) and A Handful of Seeds (#3), and the entire dark fantasy series is now available online.

Please welcome Kristina!
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Readers of the paranormal or mythical fiction genres know all about Lilith, the first woman of Kabalistic lore, the mother of Satanism, the feminine embodiment of deceit and lust. But I felt like a lot was missing, and I wanted to know more. We often track the evolutions of words, but we seldom trace the lineages of stories. As I began to research Lilith, I found that her origins were much older than the Bible, and in fact, could be traced back to the most ancient artifacts of human history. The Epic of Gilgamesh’s mention of the ki-si-kil-lil-la-ke, a winged snake monster in a sacred tree, is the first hint of what we might call a banshee, or wraith. Over centuries, this creature is melded with sky and moon goddesses, spread throughout the Middle East, Europe, and parts of Asia, tainted by misogyny, and before long, we have sirens, vampires, and witches.

The more I looked into Lilith, the more myths got pulled in, from the garden to the underworld.

I began to see her evolution as a tree, and imagined her birdlike face peeking out at me. I was inspired, and I decided that while I could write a folklorist dissertation on the subject, I could also write a Dark Fantasy trilogy.

The Apocalyptic Series is an attempt to explain Lilith in her own words. She begins as a normal woman, mourning the death of her sister. Her investigation unlocks her abilities, and soon she discovers that an event as profound as the end of the world, might just echo backward through time. It is a chicken or the egg question. Which came first, Lilith or the monster? Did the idea result in her, or did she begin the whole thing?

I’ve had a lot of fun writing the books, putting new spin on old concepts, and though the hours of research should entitle me to some kind of honorary credential, it was a blast. Unfortunately, I've developed a caffeine addiction, eye strain, and I now have an entire section of my library devoted to books that would greatly impress a professor of Cultural Anthropology.

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Thanks for telling us about Lilith and her history, Kristina!

You can visit Kristina at her website.



GRATUITOUS VIDEOS OF THE DAY

In honor of Kristina's new book, Craving, today's theme is women who learn that they have a greater destiny.





A few curse words in this one, but much good humor about my favorite ghost.