Why I Became A Writer
by Kathryn Meyer Griffith
August 24, 2011
Truthfully, what started me off as an author was simply this: As a child, eight or nine (same time I began drawing pencil pictures and years before I dreamt of being a singer with my younger brother Jim), I began reading library books, science fiction, historical romances and scary books. I had six brothers and sisters and though I had a loving mother and father, a loving family, there was very little money. I can’t say we were poverty poor, but we were poor at times. Sometimes our meals were scarce and we rarely had extra money for toys or outside entertainment. I think in my whole young childhood my father only took us out to eat once. Try paying for seven kids and two adults. So we learned to entertain ourselves. Played outside. Climbed trees and hid in deep dirt gullies. Sang, howled really, outside at night on the swing set.
I loved to read. The library books were free and plentiful. I’d sit on my bed, especially during the long summer days and evenings (after chores, of course) and read one amazing book after another. If I was lucky, with a chocolate snack or cherry Kool-Aid nearby. Those books, those words on the page, took me to other places, times and worlds. It was magical. I got lost in people-on-a-spaceship-going–to-some-faraway-planet books. There was this horse book when I was a kid that knocked me out, made me cry, and laugh with joy at the end it was so real and so full of pathos because I loved horses so much. It was called Smoky. Sigh. I never forgot how those wonderful books made me feel…so free. So adventurous. So rich. Like I could be or do anything someday. And when I grew up I wanted to create that magic for others. So…that’s why I began writing. And when I get depressed over my writing at times, I remember that.
I remember vividly one day at school (must have been 10 or so) when a box of Weekly Reader books were delivered and we got to pick one to read. The smell of those new books in that box as I looked at them, the excitement and awe of the other kids and the reverence for those authors, and I thought: Wouldn’t it be something if someday a box of these books were mine…written by me? Oh, to be an author. People respect an author. It was the beginning.
And why do I keep writing after 39 years? Because I can’t not write. I can’t stop. The stories take over my heart and mind and demand to come out. Like birthing a baby (I have one real son and two grandchildren). You carry them for a short or long time span and then once they’re born (published) they go on to be their own individual entities that sometimes continue to amuse and amaze you. Or disappoint you. Whatever.
Being a published author isn’t like anything you would imagine. There’s excitement, the passion and feeling of being right with the world, as the story is being created and the words tumble out into the computer; there’s the exhaustion of writing hours and hours, the doubt that your words will mean anything to anyone and why am I doing this? that creeps in but that you have to chase away; there’s the pride in seeing the finished book, either e-book or print, and finally there’s the feeling of unexplainable happiness when someone says they read and liked/loved it. I love to hear: I couldn’t put it down. The characters were so real. I got carried away with it. Didn’t want to leave the world you’d created. Wow. That makes the sometimes low pay and grueling hard work worthwhile. Because writing is hard work. The creating and promoting anyway. Hour and hour, day after day, year after year. It’s your life you’re using up. Precious time. You have to truly love it to give all that up…to strangers.
Writers live so much of their life in their make believe worlds they get lonely for the real world, real breathing people and adventures. I know I do. But the writing won’t leave me alone until I write down the words, tell the tale. The easiest way I can put it is when I’m writing or dealing with my writing I feel like I’m doing what I was born to do.
I believe a writer is born to write – like an artist is born to paint and draw; a musician to write or play music. As an artist myself I know I’m not really happy, or fulfilled feeling, unless I’m writing, drawing or singing. Creating. Though the singing and the artwork have gone more by the wayside as I’ve become older…writing mostly takes all my free time now. Writing make me happy. Grin. Except the rare times someone hates one of my books…and that happens, too. I’ve finally learned that reading and loving a book or short story is subjective. Some people love my stories, get them, and others…don’t. And that’s okay. We’re all different people. That’s a lesson a writer must learn. One person’s criticism is not a blanket criticism of all your work or even that one work, it’s just one person’s opinion.
People ask me if I still enjoy my writing. Sure, I love it. It’s like breathing, eating, dreaming. A part of me. Second nature. It took me 39 years, 14 published novels and 7 short stories to say I’m a writer and really feel like I wasn’t being a pretentious so-and-so or outright lying. Telling stories is what makes me feel…complete. Happy. Hey, look at me I’m a storyteller! Ha, ha, now I just have to figure out a way to make it more profitable. Now that’s a whole other story. Working on that. As one successful writer said to me: Just get the books out there…nothing else matters. (Presumably good books, I’d add.) The rest will come. Gosh, I sure hope he’s right. Cause I’m been working soooo hard.
Witches -Revised Author's Edition
Author: Kathryn Meyer Griffith
Genre: Contemporary, Historical fiction, Fiction, Paranormal, Thriller, Horror, Romance, Suspense
Publisher: Damnation Books
Ebook
Pages: 278
Purchase Links: Damnation Books |
Amazon
Synopsis:
"Amanda Givens is careful how she uses her powers. She doesn't want the people of Canaan, Connecticut to know they have a witch among them . . . even a good white witch. For years, she's lived quietly in a remote cabin with Amadeus, her quirky feline familiar. At first with her husband, Jake, the love of her life, until a car accident; but now alone after his death. But when she's wrongly blamed for a rash of ritualistic murders committed by a satanic cult, she knows she can no longer hide. She's the one the cult's after and she is the only one who can stop them and prove her innocence.
As punishment for fighting and destroying the cult, she's drawn back in time by the ghost of the dark witch, Rachel Coxe, who was drowned for practicing black magic in the 17th century.
Now, as Amanda tries to rehabilitate Rachel's reputation in an effort to save lives, as well as her own, and falls in love all over again with Joshua, her reincarnated dead husband from the future, she has to rely on a sister's love and magical knowledge, and a powerful sect of witches named the Guardians to help her get home safely."
Now, with her heart breaking, her eyes shut, her hands waving languidly over the fire, she chanted the nefarious words that would bring her husband back from the dead.
Mandy...no, Mandy...
Something crashed against the door, as if something or someone were throwing themselves against it. Wood splintered, but the door held. Amadeus, who had powers of his own, was fighting mad now. It was his responsibility to protect her, protect her from herself, if need be. She heard him growling at her through the door.
Open up, Mandy. Open the damn door!
“No. I told you, Amadeus, either help me or go away.”
The cat grumbled beyond the door, hissed and spat as loud as any big cat, and the battering resumed.
Amanda’s eyes flew open, widened as the apparition began to take form inside the pentagram—the outline of a man, tall, his arms thrown over his face as if in defense.
“Jake?” She moaned, staring at the thing.
It lowered its hands and a ghoulish, misty face peered out at her, a face so full of torment and fear, Amanda fell back in shock.
“Don’t do this, Mandy, I beg you! Remember me as I was. I don’t belong there anymore.” She heard the plaintive whisper, an echo on the still air. Its hands reached out to her. “Let me go. You don’t know what you’re doing.”
She couldn’t stop. The enchantment wasn’t complete. It would be better when it was. He was between two worlds now and he would be frightened. Half-formed. Between two worlds.
If she wasn’t careful, those unearthly denizens—shade demons, she called them—that haunted that dead world could escape into hers. So dangerous. What the hell was she doing opening the forbidden portals like this?
What happened if she was a moment off, a word wrong and the demons came through? If she unleashed them? A disaster.
Amanda steeled herself, wiped the fresh tears from her face with the back of her hand. “Damn it, I want you back, Jake. I’ll have you back,” she swore.
She took up where she’d left off, knowing if she stopped at this point of the spell, it could ruin everything. Everything.
The door groaned behind her under its assault (damn but that cat was strong), the wind screamed outside the windows. The candles placed around the pentagram fluttered in a strange breeze in the shadowy room.
Amanda’s heart froze. She stopped in the middle of the spell, her eyes going wide with fear, her hands half-raised before her, and her head thrown back as the flames from the fire glowed more brightly across her tense face.
What was that word? Suureerustus? Summertus? Or...
She stared at the blurry figure trying to form in the circle. It was yelling at her now...something...something...she couldn’t make out the words.
It was no longer alone.
Things writhed around its melting feet, flew about its head. Terrible things. Things from the dead world. Unholy things. Gaping mouths with sharp bloodied teeth, glittering fiendish eyes in deformed, hideous bodies. Some almost human, some insect like. Others indescribable. Some growing before her eyes to be taller than she was.
Monsters. Coming through the barrier, crossing the lines of the pentagram, into her world.
Amanda grabbed the nearest thing with which to fight them off, a broom, and started swinging at them.
She was so busy hitting and spewing out new spells to keep the shade demons from coming through that she never heard the door burst open; never felt the cool storm wind enter the cabin until something determined and furry flew by her face toward the pentagram, hissing all the way.
Then Amadeus was helping her herd the malignant spirits back from where they’d come. All claws, teeth, and unearthly glowing eyes. He snarled the word Sutterus at her in passing and Amanda quickly supplied it in the spell where it belonged.
The demons began to slowly dissolve in shrieks of rage.
Don’t send us away! Don’t send us back there! Let us out. Out!
Jake’s figure returned. A shadow with hanging head. Just one or two sentences and the incantation would be complete. Jake would be there, solid, before her.
Amanda hesitated. The thing in the circle looked so pitiful. So unnatural.
Before she could finish, soft, but strong paws clamped tightly around her neck and wouldn’t let go. Something howled like a banshee in her ear, as sharp teeth angrily nipped it. She couldn’t breathe.
“Amadeus! Get off!” She screamed, tumbling to the floor with the huge cat on top of her, still holding on like a leech, its yowling and screeching enough to wake the dead—instead, it woke her.
By the time she’d yanked the cat off, throwing him roughly against the opposite wall so that he yelped in pain, and she’d crawled back to the pentagram, Jake was gone. The enchantment broken.
Amanda gazed at the empty pentagram for a long time, suddenly horrified, disgusted at what she had almost done.
She’d almost crossed the line. Almost. Thank God for Amadeus.
She curled up on the floor next to the fire and sobbed, the last of her anguish finally releasing itself. The cat limped over to her and licked the tears from her face. He didn’t seem to be angry with her any longer. Just worried.
“I’m so sorry I hurt you, Amadeus, so sorry.” She pulled him into her arms, and hugged him like a baby until he began to purr. “Forgive me?”
Of course.
“Thank you for that, Amadeus. You saved me from making the biggest mistake of my life.”
He was smart enough not to answer that one. She snuggled him, rocking on the floor.
ENDS 24th May, 2012
International
eBook Copy of Witches
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About the Author:
2012 EPIC EBOOK AWARDS NOMINEE for her romantic horror novel The Last Vampire-Revised Author’s Edition
Since childhood I’ve always been an artist and worked as a graphic designer in the corporate world and for newspapers for twenty-three years before I quit to write full time. I began writing novels at 21, over forty years ago now, and have had fourteen (nine romantic horror, one historical romance, one romantic suspense, one romantic time travel and two murder mysteries) previous novels and eight short stories published from Zebra Books, Leisure Books, Avalon Books, The Wild Rose Press, Damnation Books and Eternal Press.
I’ve been married to Russell for thirty-three years; have a son, James, and two grandchildren, Joshua and Caitlyn, and I live in a small quaint town in Illinois called Columbia, which is right across the JB Bridge from St. Louis, Mo. We have two quirky cats, ghost cat Sasha and live cat Cleo, and the four of us live happily in an old house in the heart of town. Though I’ve been an artist, and a folk singer in my youth with my brother Jim, writing has always been my greatest passion, my butterfly stage, and I’ll probably write stories until the day I die.
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