Cate: Please welcome Jane Lebak to my special Halloween celebration. Jane,
please tell us a little bit about yourself.
Jane: I'm Jane Lebak. I've been writing stories since I was three years
old, although I've gotten a bit better at it since then. I also don't write in
magenta crayon any longer. I've published three novels and a lot of shorter
fiction, and I'm also one of the bloggers for QueryTracker.net, a resource for
beginning writers and writers who want to find a literary agent.
Cate: What do you love most about Halloween?
Jane: I love dressing up as
Death's Incompetent Assistant and looking at all the costumes the kids come up
with. My husband takes the kids trick-or-treating while I sit outside giving
away the candy. Last year, we gave away thirteen pounds of candy!
Cate: Ha, that sounds like fun! Do you have a favorite memory of a Halloween past?
Jane: About six years ago, it was unseasonably warm, so I sat out on
the front steps trying (and failing) to crochet a granny square. It was about
one inch by one inch big. I told anyone who stopped by that maybe I should have
started making my costume earlier.
Cate: Have you ever had an unusual experience you couldn’t explain?
Jane: Heck yes! I blog most of them. My favorite would be the time I
asked my guardian angel where would be his favorite place on Earth, and that
night I had a dream showing me a specific location. It took six months for me
to track down the place, but it's a real honest-to-goodness place on Earth. (I
could be cagey, but the answer is Cadaques, in Spain. As for why, well, that's
over at my weblog here: http://wp.me/p8I00-48.)
Cate: Oo, looking forward to reading that. What frightens you the most?
Jane: The possibility of being deceived by something evil.
Cate: Yikes. Ever gone on a ghost tour? Or ghost hunting on your own?
Jane: No. Any ghosts I've seen have come to me. I saw my daughter once
about 14 months after she died, and after her baby brother was born, one day I
was intensely aware of her presence.
Cate: Any favorite Halloween recipes you’d care to share?
Jane: I'm such a disaster as a cook, I'd have to say no. Pretty much
anything I make is scary.
Cate: Tell us about your latest release, and where readers can find it
online.
Jane: The Wrong Enemy is available at Amazon for Kindle as well as the
publisher's website in all ebook formats. It may still be on new-release
discount at the publisher's site, so check there first: http://tinyurl.com/jlebakt
The Wrong Enemy is the story of a guardian angel who killed the child
he vowed to protect, an action that should have landed the angel in Hell and
instead gets him…a second chance? And it’s not a second chance guarding a
popcorn stand at the circus, either. Tabris is assigned as co-guardian over a
ten year old girl with an angel who absolutely doesn’t want Tabris anywhere
near that child for fear he'll do it again. The only one who does seem to want
Tabris around is a demon who’s making a full-court press for him to leave the
God who set him up to fail, and Tabris isn’t sure the demon’s wrong.
Cate: Care to share a blurb or excerpt?
Jane: Sure! Here are the opening
paragraphs of the novel.
Raguel waited at the back of
the Judgment Hall to hear the verdict passed on the boy's soul: Heaven. He
nodded as he registered the word, but without rejoicing as he should have.
Based on the expressions of the other witnesses, neither was anyone else. Half
the angels in the room watched the boy as he leaped in delight and hugged the
angel at his side, but the larger number studied the angel who stood at the
back of the hall, Tabris.
Tabris
had not reacted to the echoing verdict. Staring only at the chains binding his
wrists and securing him to the floor, he stood like a horse at a hitching post.
Only once did Raguel see him look up, struggling for a glimpse the boy before
the other angels crowded into his line of sight, but then they'd taken the boy
away, and Tabris said not a word.
Two
Archangel guards flanked Tabris, one wearing a thousand-mile stare and the
other struggling against grief. Everything about their posture read duty
to Raguel, broadcast without words in their alert stance, the readiness of
their weapons, and their raised chins. Between them, Tabris seemed smaller,
slumped, his two-toned wings drooping until they touched the floor. With a
shudder, Raguel realized at least one of the guards had probably been his
friend.
They
had no idea how to act. And rightly so. Angels didn't usually take one of their
own into custody.
Cate: What inspired you to write about the theme?
Jane: This story wouldn't let me go. I got the idea during January of
my junior year in college, just that idea of a guardian angel who killed his
charge and then got reassigned rather than tossed into Hell. I kept feeling the
sense of isolation, the desperation, the regret – and I wanted a happy ending
for him.
But I told myself no, I won't write this because I had classes and I needed
to concentrate. But the story kept coming into my head and growing, and finally
I caved and started writing it…during finals week! But the book got published and I aced all my
finals, so it can't have been that bad a thing.
Cate: Anything else you’d like to share?
Jane: October 2nd is
the feast day of Guardian Angels in the Catholic Church, so it's the perfect
time to talk about them – and say hello to yours.
Thank you so much for hosting me on your blog, and I hope you enjoyed
the interview as much as I did!
Cate: Thanks for sharing in the celebration, Jane!
Jane's interview made me curious about some of the Halloween superstitions dealing with souls or evil. I found these:
To ward off evil on Halloween you should walk around your home three times clockwise and three times counterclockwise
To see a spider on Halloween means it is a relative returning from the dead to check on you
Knives were hidden on Halloween night so that returning spirits would not come to any harm
If you place a turnip on your gatepost on Halloween then no evil spirits can harm you or your home
Originally children would ask for food (soulcakes) and money when they went from door to door-for every cake a prayer was said for the dead
If a bat flies around your house on Halloween it is a death omen
People used to lock up their cats on Halloween as an elf could travel on your cats back into your home and create havocIn ancient times a person always rang a bell (not a doorbell) which would ward off evil spirits for the entire year
If you see an owl diving then he/she is coming to take your soul away
