Author Notes: Psychic Summons

Hey there. Enjoy these Author Notes from the fourth book in my Psychic Guardian Angel Series, Psychic Summons.

If you wonder where stories come from, my answer is everywhere.

The T-shirt described in the prologue of Psychic Summons is real. The woman wearing the T-shirt was not at the Minneapolis Farmer’s Market. A different woman sat on the motorcycle. I was not staring. Nor could I hear her thoughts. She was handed a giant sausage with peppers and onions as I walked by.

I saw the T-shirt when we attended the Fifties International Car Show at the Anoka County Fairgrounds. This was long ago, way before my daughters would consider making me a grandparent. Before I could even comprehend the concept.

The lady who wore the shirt was typical for what I imagined a grandmother looking like at that age. I was shocked. And the T-shirt was locked into my brain as potential material.

Not long after, I saw a pickup truck with a fascinating sticker in the rear window. It said, “Keep Honking. I’m Reloading.” I was able to get next to the pickup and see the driver. I was again shocked to see it was driven by a typical grandmother.

The T-shirt and the window sticker both made it into a poem titled Oh My God that was published in April, 2016, by InkStain Press.

But the T-shirt wasn’t done with me. When I went back into the life of Jacob Daniels and wrote the essential scenes mentioned elsewhere in the early books, the scene at the farmers market appeared quickly.

Further proof that everything we see, hear, read, and experience is material for some type of writing. Or music, or art. Everything is material.

I am also older and realize there is no such thing as a typical grandparent. While age is a state of mind, it is possible to reproduce at an early age, then have subsequent generations reproduce at an early age, and there you are. A great-grandparent who is too young to retire.

One thing that I believe is typical for grandparenthood (is that a word?) is exhaustion. Grandkids, while fun, are exhausting. After a few minutes with them, I am asking, “Who is ready for a nap?” The only one that responds in the affirmative is me.

My preference is a power nap. A few minutes are often enough to leave me refreshed and ready to keep going. It’s also too short to allow a full-blown nightmare to come together. Are you a fan of naps? How are your nightmares?

I’ve got a string going of not enough naps and too many nightmares.

The psychic ability prominent in Psychic Summons is telepathy. I don’t have it. Do you? How is it working for you?

I can’t decide if being a telepath would be a good thing or not. Yes, I debate this kind of stuff with myself. Don’t you?

I don’t know that I want to know somebody’s every thought. Or even a small selection of their thoughts. I sure don’t want them knowing mine. One of the truths about writing is no matter how clever you are at hiding behind your words, you still reveal yourself. At least a little bit.

Some people reveal a lot about themselves in their writing. They might be writing a memoir, so that might have been their plan. More of me sneaks into my poetry than my fiction. At least, I keep telling myself that. Thinking yourself clever, sneaky, and hidden is a form of self-delusion, though.

Writing is a form of exploration. I research what I need and learn every day, but mostly, I am exploring my relationship with myself and the world. Maybe someday, I’ll fit in.

Another cool thing about writing is you can create worlds where you know you fit in. It would be harsh to create yet another world where you didn’t. I’ll have to check and make sure I haven’t done that, too.

I hope you’re enjoying the Psychic Guardian Angel series. I’m still having a ton of fun with it. I want to thank everybody at Marlowe and Vane and at LMPBN for making this possible. I want to again thank my family and friends for their support.

And I want to thank all the readers who have come on this journey with me. Because of you, the series continues, and this book exists.

Keep reading. Keep exploring your psychic side. Above all, stay hopeful.

– A.W. Powers

Author Notes: Flying Objects

Hey there. Enjoy these Author Notes from the third book in my Psychic Guardian Angel Series, Flying Objects.

I was engaged in a conversation with my sister-in-law, Suzanne Oliver, about the capabilities of the human mind. She asked me, “If you could train my brain to do one thing, what would it be?”

Without hesitation, I answered, “Train it to move objects.”

Suzy laughed and explained she meant training your brain to do things like remember names. The normal things we all struggle with.

I do well at remembering faces, especially in similar contexts. Sometimes, I remember faces out of context. After I remember the context, sometimes I can remember their names as well.

Remembering names has always been difficult. Maybe Suzy was on to something.

My memory has always been pretty good, especially on potentially worthless tidbits of information categorized as trivia. I should probably join a team and compete while I’m still able.

How is your memory?

What would you train your brain to do better?

Do you have a trivia specialty? Mine is probably music, movies, and TV. But I’ve never been tested on my knowledge of TV shows based on the paranormal.

A recent trivia exchange between some writing friends was based on the products we use every day that were actually a failed attempt at creating a different product. I guess they would be happy accidents. That conversation happened long after this book found its way into an electronic file. But it is reflected in this story.

The fact that many of our favorite consumables used to contain controlled substances feeds into Flying Objects. Thanks to Dawn Kennedy, one of my instructors at Anoka-Hennepin Community College for insights here. As does our desire to help and how wrong that can sometimes go.

Is every product we create a good thing until we learn the adverse reactions, the side effects, the long-term liabilities? Then it becomes retroactively bad? Should we slow down the pace of our creation until we know what can happen? Or are these creations so needed by our society that we should use them until we can collect enough evidence to know their true value? Or danger?

Jurassic Park had something to say about science. Just because we can doesn’t mean we should. I think of it often and in many applications.

Should our desire to grow and create be restrained by a larger degree of caution? Or should we just stumble forward?

As I mentioned in First Casualty and prove here again, I have many questions and few answers. But I have stories to help search for answers. I know you, the readers of these words, are engaged in the same search. You have your stories to illustrate your questions, reveal the answers you have discovered, and share wisdom we all need to hear. I hope you will find a way to get those stories to the world. We all need answers.

If nothing else, we need to know we are not alone in our lack of knowledge.

Hang in there. Stay hopeful. Keep questing. And questioning. Thank you.

– A. W. Powers

Author Notes: No Rest for the Dead

Hey there. Enjoy these Author Notes from the second book in my Psychic Guardian Angel Series, No Rest for the Dead.

I grew up in Anoka, Minnesota, the Halloween Capital of the World. Anoka claimed the title for years, then the governor issued a proclamation so that made it official.

Anoka has multiple Halloween parades, yard decorating contests, and ghost tours presented by the Anoka Historical Society. The high school football game close to Halloween is known as the Pumpkin Bowl. The center of a roundabout near the football field is a Jack-o-lantern. Anoka is serious about Halloween.

The original reason for all the Halloween festivities was to ensure that the kids of the area had something to do and would not be out causing trouble. I wonder if the results of that effort have ever been released.

I don’t know how much the city affected my fascination with the paranormal. It had to be some. Halloween is my favorite holiday. But movies and television, namely The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, and The Sixth Sense, probably influenced me more. At one point, I listed Rod Serling as a musical influence.

The stories of Stephen King, Peter Straub, and Frank De Felita fueled my fascination with the paranormal as well.

So when the Twin Cities Sisters in Crime hosted the Minnesota Paranormal Society at one of our meetings, I made sure I was there. The following week, the Society hosted a ghost hunt at the Soap Factory in Minneapolis. I made sure I was there too.

The tools that John Thompson and Jacob Daniels use in No Rest for the Dead were demonstrated by the Minnesota Paranormal Society during those events. Maybe there were too many people. Or too many skeptics. But we did not have the same success in our real events as Daniels and John Thompson do in the stories.

But, as I mentioned in my notes at the end of First Casualty, I still believe.

And I’m watching for more evidence, more reasons to believe strongly, every day.

Have you gone back and started researching your family’s ghost stories?

As you think about the paranormal, do your nightmares change? Get better? Get worse?

Do you wonder if your home needs a ghost hunt? An exorcist? Maybe just a visit from a sensitive to calm the spirits, to convince them you’re okay?

I hope they know I’m okay, that I’m harmless. To them.

In First Casualty, the scene with Latisha Ford seated on the couch was inspired by a woman sitting in the home we owned in the Camden neighborhood of North Minneapolis after we were first married. The lady I saw was older. She appeared in my peripheral vision and disappeared as I turned to face her. I never went back to tell her she inspired a scene in my first book. She probably knows.

It was a neat house. A few things happened that can’t be explained as normal, everyday occurrences. Maybe they’ll feed into another story someday too. So might the dog that shared a couple of those occurrences with me.

I want to thank my primary contact with the Minnesota Paranormal Society, Angela Rosenberg, for the information and insights about ghost hunting. The conversations and the quest for knowledge continue.

Thank you, dear readers, as I ramble and attempt to understand. As I said before, you are my teachers, my inspiration, and my hope. Keep it up. Hang in there. Stay hopeful. Thank you for joining me on this journey. Let’s see where it takes us.

– A. W. Powers

Author Notes: First Casualty

Hey there. Enjoy these Author Notes from the first book in my Psychic Guardian Angel Series, First Casualty.

“I know where you live.”

I don’t actually, but it used to be an effective threat. Until everybody used it and it quit being a threat.

I used to say, “If I want to find you bad enough, there is nowhere you can hide,” because I was psychic and knew things.

Then I let Jacob Daniels use the line. I became less psychic and knew fewer things.

I believe everyone has some psychic ability. Most of us don’t realize it, don’t know that what we use every day is some type of extrasensory perception. We couldn’t control it if we knew we had it, or we deny its existence so no one thinks we’re a fruitcake.

We’re all fruitcakes in some manner. Uniquely so. And it’s amazing.

My aunt Sis told me about the time her parents and husband came to visit her from beyond the grave. She believed it was real.

Another time, my aunt Susie told me Sis’s story. Susie believed as well.

When my cousin called to tell me Susie had died, I stayed awake the rest of the night, waiting to see if she might come visit me. I believed. She didn’t visit. Her not coming did not prove anything. I still believed.

Do you believe?

Does your family have ghost stories, too?

Jacob Daniels was born out of my nightmares. They are frequently violent, and they leave me rattled, frustrated, and far from rested. They will repeat if I ignore them. The first nightmare that contributed to my writing was so bad, I woke up shaking.

The first book I wrote, which is not the novel you are reading here but is waiting for its time, used three of my nightmares. The one that left me shaking, I used in its entirety.

For a long time, I didn’t bother to watch horror movies. They were never as scary as my nightmares. I should probably try again.  Maybe answer a few questions. Have movies gotten scarier, or have I become more sensitive and able to be frightened, or have I grown immune to imagined fears, or have my fear receptors been overwhelmed by real life?

So many questions.

The question that fed First Casualty is, “How many people go missing every year?”

The statistics are frightening. I’m not going to include them here. If you want to know what I’ve learned, come to an event and ask me. I’ll be happy to tell you. Well…maybe not happy. As I said, the statistics are frightening. The truth behind them is dark, frustrating and even more frightening. I’m willing to discuss the subject because it’s important. Just not happily.

There are many questions that need to be asked, many subjects that need to be discussed. One of the best aspects of writing is the ability to highlight and explore those subjects. But no subject, no story has only one side. Writing fiction allows me to ask the questions and discuss both sides of any subject objectively. At least as objectively as any human is able.

Other writers, maybe all, explore those subjects too. They come at them from their perspective, flavored by their environment, education, history and their objectivity, just as I do. All those writers have something to share. As a result, I read to understand the world. But I write to understand me.

If only that were possible.

It’s a journey.

Many people have helped me on this journey. Some of them without their knowledge or intent. Some by saying the correct thing at the best possible moment. I need to mention a few: my family, close and extended, the believers who indulged and encouraged me until this all became true. The Wordwhippers: Dale Butler, Barb Danson, Barbara Schmidt, Cathy Buchholz, Brittany Jaekel, Mary Rogers, Mary Sebesta, Liz Parker, and especially Joe and Denise Jubert. My continuity testers: Vicki Ryan and Carrie Johnson. And another early believer: Jeff Danielson. Thank you all.

To the rest of the world: you are my teachers, my inspiration and my hope. Keep it up. Hang in there. Stay hopeful. Thank you for joining me on this journey.

– A.W. Powers

My Writing Journey, Volume 3

Having thick skin is part of being a writer. It doesn’t take too many rejections and you find yourself not talking about one of your favorite activities. When you do learn that someone wants to publish one of your pieces, you tell your writer friends but you don’t tell anybody else.  It might be a fluke, a mistake, an accident.  It might be your last.

So you put your copy on a shelf, list the success on your resumé or more likely, in the day of electronic publication, add the link to the resumé that no one will likely read even if they ask for it, and move on to your next chance to be rejected.

You learn not to tell your family and non-writer friends that you are writing every day because they haven’t rejected you yet.  And they might once you tell them you’re creating and living in a fantasy world that could implode or die with you before it becomes real.  You’re just another nutcase, like that one uncle who hoarded snuff tins or the aunt who collected cats.

No, I don’t believe I had either of those.  But you hear stories.

And sometimes you think the whole world is crazy, so why would you admit you are too?

Back in January, which seems like a long time ago, I signed my contract for the first three books in the Psychic Guardian Angel Series and started telling people.  Actually, I hesitated, expecting to do something to mess it up and finding myself rejected once more. But I started by telling people closest to me.  And heard too often, “I didn’t know you wrote.”

Yep.  You didn’t.  Because I never admitted it.  I’ve always called myself a writer.  But never admitted it to the larger public.

As we moved further into the process and closer to publication, I started talking about the contract and the books.  And it was difficult.  I still couldn’t believe it was real and worth broadcasting.

But time and the process continued on.  I approved cover art on First Casualty.  I went through the first round of edits.  I approved cover art on No Rest for the Dead and Flying Objects.  I went through a second round of edits on First Casualty.

And I learned a lot.  Not all publishers want to receive a book like all the workshops and experts tell you.  You need to start the publicity machine way back when, like before the contract is signed.  Social media doesn’t work like you think it should.  Web pages are simple to create until you try to do it. And expectations are high.  Especially your own.

Family and friends were more excited than I was, thought being a signed author with a book coming out was huge.  It is.  But I was still afraid of something going wrong and the whole thing ending before it began.

Friends and family began to insist on a party. I can party okay, not as well as many, but I don’t know how to party when it’s about me.  And this was.  Or more correctly it was about my book.  Which made it about me.

I began to research book release parties.  It turns out there as many ways to release a book as there are to write one. But we borrowed some of the best ideas, planned a bash and it was way bigger than I could have imagined.

It was getting close and I didn’t have books.  I began to sweat.  “Let’s have a toast to something that will happen someday.” It didn’t have the right ring to it.

The books arrived with three days to spare and looked great.  Yay, it was okay to proceed with the party.

And I was overwhelmed.  The turnout was more than I could have hoped, the interest in First Casualty was immense.  I was awestruck, amazed and humbled. I still get as emotional as I’ve ever let anybody see when I think about it.

So, thank you all for the positive response to my admitting to being a writer.  For all the positive things I’ve heard after people read First Casualty.  Thank you for accepting Jacob Daniels into your world the way you accepted me.  Thank you for letting me be a writer. I am blessed.

And if you’re a creative person, don’t be afraid to admit it.  Your biggest supporters are all around you.

Love to all.  Stay hopeful.