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On Having Adventures by Doranna Durgin
About Having adventures: Do That.
You know you want to!
More than that…if you write, then your characters want you to, too.
There's a thing about adventures: They bleed over to the page. (With luck they don't also literally bleed, but you never know.) Adventures in travel enlarge your world and perspective; adventures in emotion do the same. Adventure in activity enlarge not only your knowledge base, but your foundation for interpreting everything else.
For me, I've mostly had adventures in remote areas and with animals. That time in the log cabin (shared willingly with the black snake, not so willingly with other creatures) gave me a perspective on a different time of life. Later, down off the mountain and into the bottom of a back holler in southeastern Kentucky, I found myself rubbing elbows with a fading generation of people who were truly still pioneers--and when I headed over to visit my elderly neighbors, I not only got a glimpse of life as it was a century earlier, I saw that life still in action.
Adventure, you might think? That was just me, living my life.
Just so.
The time I spent living in minimal circumstances, a summer in a tent and in the elements, taught me what it feels like that moment you realize nature is so much bigger than you are. Not the birds and bunnies or the horses I was caring for, but the wild, atypical thunderstorms of that year--circling our little valley to strike again and again and again. I learned what it felt like to dive repeatedly for cover (pointlessly, of course) as lightning struck within reach, or to shiver in my tent at night with the sound of trees falling around me and not knowing if the next one would land all too close.
Adventure? That was just me, in my summer between college years.
Just so.
With the riding, the adventures include days of riding out at dawn in thick, wondrous fog, getting caught out in deep darkness in unfamiliar mountain territory, handling a runaway in overgrown woods, inadvertently spurting out over the edge of a mountain and riding it down…
That was just me, on the horse of the moment.
But that's the whole point. Whatever your life is about, there are adventures. Maybe some more exciting than others (hey, go for it!), but if you absorb them, whatever they are, they can inform your writing.
Because it's not like I've ever actually done the things my characters do. I mean…seriously, look at what I write: fantasy or action-based romance or paranormal romance! But still.
When Garrie faces ethereal energies unlike anything she's imagined before, I can draw on what I've absorbed to make her world real--and that means digging down deep and re-experiencing the awed terror of those endlessly raging thunderstorms and microbursts, waiting for that tree to fall or that lightning strike. It means Immersing myself in those feelings, and the awe of understanding how much bigger the world is than I…how much more powerful.
When Trevarr moves with the protective ferocity of his nature, then I think about that moment I went over the side of the mountain on horseback, and what it took to ride that through. I channel me to become him.
When Trevarr's bond-partner Sklayne shifts from his not-cat body to his more flexible self, zipping along power lines and crunching down bugs, then I…
No…no. I got nothin'. I make that stuff up.
Really, it's all about tapping the adventure--regardless of how big or small, or whether it was actually labeled as "adventure" at the time. It's about taking personal experiences and bringing the deepest and the most affecting aspects of them into the written word so that the written word comes alive. It's just life.
Just so.
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STORM OF RECKONING by Doranna Durgin is now available from Tor Paranormal
Lisa "Garrie" McGarrity is young woman once mentored by a ghost who now leads a ghostbuster team--all of whom are recently entangled with Trevarr, a fiercely driven demon-hunter from a different dimension. After tumultuous adventures in San Jose, the team finds themselves much changed and struggling to adjust, while Trevarr returns to this world--and to Garrie--a battered exile.
But Garrie and her team don't head for home; Quinn Rossiter has a lady friend in Sedona who needs their help. There, in that area of power convergence, Garrie is astonished to find the ethereal breezes quiet, the earth's activity so diminished as to be nonexistent...if you don't count those oddball surges that don't taste like our world at all. Soon enough, Quinn's skeptical friend soon goes missing...soon enough, their efforts to contain the situation go amazingly awry.
With Trevarr wary and alert, his opinionated not-cat bond partner dropping dire hints of trouble on their trail, Sedona ghosts rising to act out against Garrie wherever she goes, and one living Keharian ethereal breeze detector gone completely amuck and on the loose, she has only just so much time to figure out what's going on before the power plays are too much even for this one-of-a-kind reckoner and her otherworldly partner.
Purchase Locations: Amazon | Allbookstores.com
About the Author
Doranna Durgin writes across genres to include fantasy, mystery, tie-ins and various flavors of romance--from the action-oriented Bombshells to this latest paranormal release; she also manages the Backlist eBooks project with author partner-in-crime Patricia Ryan. She spends what's left of her time hanging around with horses, dogs, and wildflowers.
For more about Doranna's books, you can catch up with her at her webstead, FaceBook, Twitter, or her blog. There are also free bookmarks to be had!
Check out the Night Owl Reviews digital magazine. It comes out monthly on the 15th and has exclusive content and interviews.
