Cate: It's the final day of the Halloween celebration! Fierce is here to close it off with a howl. :). Fierce,
please tell us a little bit about yourself.
Fierce: Thanks for having me,
Cate! It’s great to be with you,
today! Did you know that fall is my
favorite time of year?! I love it! I’m so glad it’s cool and dark after all of
that hot, bright sunlight!
Cate: I love fall too! What do you love most about Halloween?
Fierce: To be honest, I don’t celebrate Halloween. I’m pagan—animist to be specific--and we
celebrate Samhain and The Dead Time. My
favorite part is skulking along the cool, foggy streets while the kids
trick-or-treat. Also, honoring those who
have died this year over a cozy meal and crackling fire, soaking in that
lively, crisp fall energy! I come back
to life, as odd as that sounds, when Nature’s color soften, and the sky goes
grey. What can I say—I love
the creepy!
Cate: :) Do you have a favorite memory of a Halloween past?
Fierce: All of them? Samhain is
my favorite holy day. I have been a
deathwalker since childhood, experiencing souls’ death moments, then when I was
older, helping them to move on. While
interesting, that’s not something I can really converse about around the water
cooler. But for that slip of time that
our culture honors the veil once a year, I get to feel like the way I have
always experienced life is normal.
Cate: Wow, that's intense. Which makes this next question seem silly, lol. Have you ever had an unusual experience you couldn’t explain?
Fierce: Many, and I’ve written about
them extensively in my other writing. As
I said, I had them in childhood and they scared the crap out of me. I knew by the time I was 6-7 that I was
seeing and experiencing things other people weren’t, and I knew not to talk
about it. Knowing that my experiences
scared other people only reinforced that I shouldn’t talk about them, which
made the whole thing harder to deal with.
Eventually I realized the spirits weren’t intending to scare me, but
that they needed help. What we perceive
as a spirit being aggressive or angry is the entity communicating the story of
how it died, or some understanding it needs to impart before it can move
on. Once I realized that, everything
changed. It became [mostly] peaceful,
and I started to work with them in earnest.
A normal day for me includes hearing voices and seeing visitors.
Cate: What frightens you the most?
Fierce: Insanity. Seriously, people, who aren’t and possibly
can’t be in control of their wills frighten me.
Mixed with things like hatred, misogyny, homophobia and that’s a scary
little problem on all of our hands.
Cate: So true. Ever gone on a ghost tour? Or ghost hunting on your own?
Fierce: I used to, because it
somehow helped me to feel legit in my own experiences. I don’t, now.
I can interact with the dead anytime, anywhere. Wax On, Wax Off. I don’t seek it out now, unless there is a
healing need behind it. And of course,
sometimes souls in need find me, even if I’m Wax Off. That’s always interesting.
Cate: Any favorite Halloween recipes you’d care to share?
Fierce: Hmm. Well, I not a prescriptivist with cooking—I
don’t measure ingredients, but I love butternut squash soup! Roast one with some garlic and onion. Purée it with a bit of broth, salt and
pepper, a drizzle of honey and some cream.
Yum! It’s the best by a warm fire
on a cool night =)
Cate: Yum! Tell us about your latest release, and where readers can find it
online.
Fierce: Frankly, it’s a bit
dark, even for me. Journal of a Lycanthrophile is the diary of Jesse Hollman, a young
man who has a fetish for justice and a kink for werewolves. Together, his passions spiral him into a
world of pain, shadow desires, and an even more sinister, secretive sort of
shapeshifter—the kind that changes without shifting. Definitely the darkest, grittiest erotica
I’ve written, somewhere along the spectrum of paranormal horror. This ain’t your grandma’s werewolf story.
Cate: lol Love that cover too. Care to share a blurb or excerpt?
Fierce:
We sat there, sizing each other up. Smaller
in stature, overall, than the other werewolf had been, his fangs were every bit
as huge. No doubt he killed those goats on the last moon.
“I’m a safe person,” I said. I swear he
cocked his head and looked at me, then sprang up, kind of bounced back on his haunches.
Pointing his nose straight up at the moon he let out this piercing, shrill
howl. He did it several times, and this is just crazy as fuck because, yes, my
ears rang like a motherfucker, but my chest hurt. My heart ached and I wanted
to bawl or fucking howl too, he seemed so sad.
After a few seconds he stopped howling
and his eyes bore into me. He stood on all-fours and backed down my body. When
he got to my feet he sniffed and dove. I thought he was going for my leg, and I
reared back to kick the shit out of him. I doubt hurting him would have gained
me anything, reflex just kicked in. He grabbed my jeans cuff in his teeth and
licked my ankle, down to my shoe. I stared down the length of my body watching.
After a minute he looked up. His dark mane blew on the breeze, a billowing fur
halo, then he ran for the trees.
Cate: What inspired you to write about the theme?
Fierce: Frankly, I’m sick of the
fluffy treatment of the paranormal genre, specifically of shapeshifters. Yet, it wasn’t enough for me to de-humanize
shifters. I wanted to demonize humans,
sort of a counter-balancing measure along the spectrum of nothing is inherently
good, nothing is inherently bad. This is
the first book in the series.
Follow Fierce on Facebook and/or Twitter, to learn more about Journal of a Lycanthrophile.
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/fiercedolan
@FierceDolan http://www.twitter.com/fiercedolan
Fierce Dolan http://www.fiercedolan.com
Need a last-minute treat? Here's the kind of recipe I love - quick and easy! All you need are Keebler fudge stripe cookies, turned upside down, orange frosting topped with a Hershey's kiss to make these cute Witch Hat cookies for Halloween!
Thanks to all the authors who joined in the monthlong celebration of Halloween! I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.
