A Non-Supernatural Mystery In Prague

First, though, private investigator Quille C. Davis will travel to Prague to question a psychic medium, who is also a murder suspect, in my Q.C. Davis mysteries.

While the Q.C. Davis mystery series is not supernatural, Prague’s long history of mysticism and alchemy make it an ideal home for the psychic medium character. And the city’s overall beauty makes me willing to have Quille spend time away from Chicago, which she (like me) loves and where she lives, practices law, and solves crimes.

Supernatural Books And Mystic Prague Nights

More on the new series, which will be a follow up to my Awakening Supernatural Thriller series, down the road. But to give you a hint, some highlights, photos, and ideas.

Simply being in Prague felt mystic, especially at night. Above is a statue on the famous Charles Bridge. 

And the monastery sparked many ideas for twists and turns in a new novel, as it included two halls of books. Look at the sign on one of them — perfect for a religious conspiracy thriller.

The Missing Bones

I also toured the convent of St. Agnes of Bohemia in Prague. (Hall and scale model of convent below.) What intrigued me most?

My guide told me that the crypt that bears the name of Agnes of Bohemia is not her final resting place. 

Turns out her supporters hid her bones from enemies after her death. They did such a great job that no one has ever found them.

I’m sure I can do something with that legend, or borrow from it.

Cathedrals And Castles

In Krakow, the Wawel Castle and the cathedral in it captured my imagination. In particular, the skull on one wall and what looks like a goat’s head with a sword thrust into it on the ceiling.

Why are both there? I’ll need research. Which will be fun and no doubt will lead to more ideas for plot twists.

Here’s the castle:

If you want to be first to know when the new supernatural thriller series begins or the new Q.C. Davis mystery is underway, click here to join my Readers Group email list and get a free Reader’s Guide to the original Awakening series.

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This week The Awakening Complete Supernatural Thriller Series is on sale at a special price.

If you haven’t finished series yet (or started it for that matter) it’s a great time to get it. The ebook editions of the complete 4-book series are 99 cents through Sunday, June 30, 2019.

Kindle

Kobo

Nook

Apple

GooglePlay

If you’d like a doorstop (or just love print), feel free to check out the paperback edition (but sorry, that’s not 99 cents).

Then And Now

I finished the series in 2017 and released the box set edition in September.

It feels longer ago than that, maybe because lately I haven’t written in the supernatural, fantasy, or occult genres. I’m sure I will again at some point, but right now I’m well into the third book in my new Q.C. Davis Mystery/Suspense series.

Also, a lot has changed in my neighborhood. I live near Printers Row in Chicago, which is where one of my favorite Awakening series characters, Sophia Gaddini lives. (And where my new protagonist, Quille, lives.)

Happily, Dearborn Park, right down the street from Sophia, is still beautiful:

Why This Sale

Every once in a while I run a 99 cent sale on an ebook edition of one of my books. It’s fun to share the book with new readers.

It’s also fun to see it climb different charts. Especially when it hangs out for a while with books of favorite authors like Stephen King or Neil Gaiman:

More important, it’s a nice way for new readers to find my novels.

Whether you’re new to the series or a long-time fan, thanks so much for joining me in the world of The Awakening.

The post 4-Book Box Set, 5 More Days, 99 Cents (Sale On Awakening Series) appeared first on Lisa Lilly.

Recovering from a broken foot, oddly, slowed down my writing process a bit. (It’s tiring to be in a cast–who knew?) But I did at last finish the Books In Order And Reader’s Guide for the Awakening Series.

If you’re a member of my Reader’s Group and have searched the Internet far and wide for my blog posts and interviews, you may have seen some of the material in it. Now all of that is in one easy-to-follow guide.

The guide also includes brand new pieces.

If you haven’t finished reading the series yet, don’t worry.

The Reader’s Guide portion is segmented by installment, so you can easily skip to and read only the interviews or essays for books you’ve already read.

Where Are They Now?

One of the new interviews the guide includes is with reader favorite Sophia Gaddini. The interview takes place after the end of the last book in the series, The Illumination. Sophia gives her candid–as always–opinion on Tara’s and Cyril’s relationship, her own love life, and on how exactly Tara’s supernatural pregnancy was caused.

She also shares updates about the characters’ lives.

Highlights From The Reader’s Guide

Highlights of the Reader’s Guide include:

• An interview with Tara about how she felt the day after The Awakening, Book 1, ended;
• Sophia’s views on character relationships, including her own and Tara’s and Cyril’s;
• The author’s take on the themes of the series;
• An exploration of forced pregnancy narratives;
• Updates on events and characters a year after the fourth and final book, The Illumination.

Where To Find It

Those who join my M.O.S.T. (mystery, occult, suspense, thriller) Reader’s Group will receive a link to download the guide free, plus will get other bonus items and a monthly e-newsletter.

Otherwise, you can buy the Books In Order And Reader’s Guide for the Awakening Series at the following links:

Kindle

Paperback 

Nook

Kobo

The post The Inside Guide To The Awakening Series appeared first on Lisa Lilly.

My mother was 42 years older than me.

She grew up in a time when questioning church authorities simply wasn’t done. She and my dad memorized doctrine as children. They didn’t talk about what it meant or why it had been decided the way it had, and they certainly weren’t asked whether they agreed with it.

My parents as adults weren’t against talking about issues or examining their faith. They found it interesting to look at what was said in the Bible and what it might mean. They encouraged us to think about moral and ethical questions.

All the same, there were certain aspects of faith that for my mom were not negotiable or open to question.

I remember her once telling me, “Your problem is you ask too many questions.”

Personal Support And Comfort:

Part of the reason the Church meant so much to my mother was that it was a great source of comfort for her throughout her life. When she hit hard times, praying was one way she found to deal with them. Also, the Church had a structure and a predictability that she found comfort and beauty in.

For that and other reasons her religion was very personal to her and very important, and it was hard for her to understand anyone (especially an “anyone” who was her child) who didn’t share that feeling or belief.

Some of my mom’s feelings for religion are reflected in Cyril Woods, the initial love interest/antagonist I created for Tara. While Cyril’s experiences are vastly different from my mother’s, he too has a very personal connection with his religious beliefs.

Cyril And Religion:

Cyril joins a religious brotherhood because a man who serves as a mentor to him urges him to do so. This mentor saves Cyril from becoming a very troubled and perhaps violent young man. Cyril connects his better life with the man’s religious beliefs. That’s why he finds it so hard when he begins to question those beliefs.

It feels to him as if he is abandoning the man who helped him so much.

Conflicts Between The Heart And Faith:

Cyril’s love for and admiration of Tara eventually becomes a huge challenge to his faith. Before Tara, everything his religious order required of him fit with Cyril’s own personal values.

But when his superiors begin to see Tara as an enemy, Cyril is at a loss.

He has been an actual soldier, serving in the Armed Forces, and he sees himself as a soldier still. In fact, he tells Tara he is a “soldier for our Lord.”

Being a soldier means following orders without question because that is the only way the military can operate efficiently.

So at first Cyril listens to his superiors despite his misgivings. Next, he becomes determined to convince them that they are wrong. That in itself is a big leap for him, and he is uncomfortable with it.

Later he is so uncomfortable that he turns on Tara in an awful and almost unforgivable way. While he blames her outwardly, inside he feels that he is weak and a failure because he can’t reconcile the disconnect between his religious faith and his feelings for her. He’s also not yet willing to examine his own beliefs and choose them (or not) for himself.

Finally, all of it is mixed up with his gratitude to his mentor and his fear that his mentor will no longer be there for him if he changes his religious beliefs.

These types of conflicts are real ones that real people face.

Almost everyone has had times when a belief they held was severely challenged by a tragic life event or even a happy life event.

I believe this is why Cyril is the character about whom I get the most reader questions and emails. Readers who haven’t finished the series nearly always say they can’t wait to find out what happens to him.

I can’t say where he ends up without spoiling his ending for those who have not yet read The Illumination. But I will say that I believe Cyril is a good person and always was. He simply had a long road before he figured out what he believed.

The post Values v. Religious Beliefs (a/k/a Why Readers Ask About Cyril) appeared first on Lisa Lilly.

I was working long hours as an attorney at a law firm in the Sears Tower. Each morning I did my best to get to Starbucks around 7:15 so I could read for 10 minutes before clients and partners started calling and emailing me.

I discovered it was impossible to read The Da Vinci Code for only 10 minutes.

While I managed not to be late for anything, I read much more than I really had time for and sped through the book in a few days.

More Than A Page-Turner

My friend’s strongest reaction to the book wasn’t to its fast pace.

Rather, what she learned about the early Catholic Church fascinated her, especially how the roles of and for women had been downplayed and buried.

A devoted Catholic her whole life, she felt angry that part of the Church’s history had been hidden from her.

What Women Loved About The Da Vinci Code

I noticed that whenever I spoke to a woman about The Da Vinci Code, her eyes lit up. She always mentioned the book’s themes of divine femininity and a deeper, more significant role for women in Christianity’s early years.

It seemed to me that this spoke to the absence of leadership roles for, and divine images of, women in many major religions (particularly Judaism, Islam, and Christianity).

At the time, trying to answer my own questions about religion, I was reading a lot of books on the origins of monotheism. I also read about early goddess culture. (Many of those books are listed in the bibliography for The Awakening.)

The fascination so many women, including me, felt for a story that put femininity at the heart of the divine stayed with me.

The Seeds Of A Supernatural Thriller

A couple years later when I was ready to start a new novel, these things came together in my mind:

• the reading I’d done about the history of religion
• my love of the book Rosemary’s Baby and the movie The Terminator and
• my experience growing up in house where we talked about stories of the Virgin Mary

What if? I thought.

What if a young woman who has never had sex discovers she’s pregnant and a religious cult tells her the baby will be a messiah—until, that is, they find out the child will be a girl?

That’s how the idea for The Awakening was born.

That’s all for today.

Next Wednesday I’ll talk about questions regarding abortion that arose when I was planning and writing The Awakening Series.

The post The Da Vinci Code, The Divine Feminine, and The Awakening appeared first on Lisa Lilly.

Writing about those women was pretty easy because I had a strong picture of each of them as I began the first book. More challenging for me was the part of Book 1 that was more grounded in real life.

Specifically, how Tara’s friends, boyfriend, and family would react to her news that she was pregnant, but had never had sex and didn’t know how it had happened.

Being true to those characters was important to me.

My favorite occult and horror stories are the ones where in the beginning it’s unclear whether something truly supernatural is happening or whether the characters are misunderstanding the situation or being Gaslighted by someone.

Also, I wanted the ways Tara’s friends and family reacted to be realistic.

After all, if your college-aged daughter, sister, or girlfriend claimed she was pregnant but never had sexual intercourse, your first thought wouldn’t be “Oh, obviously she has a supernatural pregnancy.”

Like Tara’s friends and family, most of us would feel we at least needed to consider that the young woman might be repressing something, lying because she didn’t want to identify the father or for some other reason, or had become delusional. Our first thought would not be that she had a supernatural pregnancy.

Life Is Hard

Writing fiction is all about making life hard for your main character.

One way I did that was to create Tara as a character who is not religious. She doesn’t believe in any sort of god.

Her stepdad (whom she has always thought of as her dad), though, is very religious. His daughter’s virgin pregnancy seriously challenges his faith.

In one way, he knows he ought to be open to the idea because he believes that a virgin pregnancy occurred in the past and that Jesus might return. Yet logic tells him that such a thing is impossible, and if it were possible, the virgin mother would not be an atheist.

Tara and her mom, too, have a lot of tension even before the pregnancy. Like many mothers with oldest daughters, the two clash over Tara’s choices and aspirations as Tara becomes an adult.

Tara’s mother also fears that Tara is seeking attention because her littlest sister is very ill, and Tara stepped in to help parent the other kids.

A lot of Tara’s mother’s anger towards Tara is actually fear that she has failed her daughter and caused her to have some sort emotional or mental illness.

The Boyfriend And The Best Friend

At the beginning of Book 1 Tara plans to marry her boyfriend when she finishes college and before she starts medical school. Knowing how hard it is to be a parent, though, she’s very concerned about not getting pregnant, so she refrains from intercourse.

Minor Spoiler Below:

Her boyfriend is not too happy about that decision and his reaction to her pregnancy reflects that. While the way he treats her is less than ideal, I felt it was realistic that he wouldn’t jump to the conclusion that her pregnancy was supernatural. At that point, Tara herself didn’t believe that and was still seeking medical answers.

To make life harder for Tara, her best friend is also the boyfriend’s sister.

Tara and her friend also have a sibling -like relationship. Tara’s friend feels like she has always been the one who has messed up while Tara has been super-responsible. So it’s hard for her to process what Tara is telling her and easy for her to assume that Tara is just having a hard time accepting responsibility for her actions now that she’s done something others might see as a mistake.

Reflections

Tara’s friends’ and family members’ feelings about Tara’s predicament reflect more about themselves than about her.

Her dad, deeply religious, plunges headlong into a crisis of faith.

Her boyfriend assumes she’s behaved in a way that reflects his own life choices.

The one person who totally supports Tara from Day One is her littlest brother. Due to his age and personality he is open to and excited about the world. He sees odd and wondrous things in it all the time, and so easily believes Tara has a supernatural pregnancy.

Overall, I hope I showed realistic conflict between Tara and her friends and family rather than simply giving her friends and family who were unpleasant people (though, OK, maybe her boyfriend falls into that category).

That’s all for today. See you again next Wednesday when I’ll talk about why so many women loved The Da Vinci Code and how that inspired me.

Lisa

The post Mean Characters Or Reality? appeared first on Lisa Lilly.

For a lot of reasons, though, in actual practice men dominated certain areas. 

This was true in my area of practice, civil litigation.

I’d been a lawyer for about a year when I had a case where the young lawyer on the other side also was a woman. When we went to court, often we were the only two women lawyers in the courtroom.

We got to talking about that. After the case was over, we stayed in touch and became good friends, often sharing our experiences working for male partners.

Real Life Women Mentors v. Women in Fiction

Later in my career I explored starting my own practice (which I did about a year later). Women solo lawyers generously shared their time and advice on everything from how much I should pay to rent an office to how long it took them to get their practices into the black to how to find clients and learn new areas of law when needed.

Many men also served as mentors, but I mention the women because when I read novels and particularly when I watched movies I didn’t see my experience reflected. This was especially so in the genres of thriller, suspense, and horror.

When I did see a woman character, she was typically surrounded by men. If there were other women, they were presented as rivals either for men’s affection or for professional advancement.

The other thing that bothered me was how rarely women of different ages were depicted.

Again, this was most obvious in movies where there were few roles for women who looked to be older than late 30s. But I also noticed it in books where “middle-aged” seemed to serve as a shorthand for dumpy, frumpy, and/or dissatisfied or boring.

Age and Women in Fiction

Note: Minor spoilers ahead for Book 1 in the series.

When I wrote The Awakening, most important to me was telling a good story. I also wanted to reflect the variety of female friendships and mentors that exist in the real world, but seem invisible to many writers and directors.

My protagonist, Tara, is a college student. Nanor Kerkorian is old enough to be her grandmother.

After a short period of distrust on both sides, Nanor gives Tara information, advice, and guidance. The two don’t always agree, but they develop a relationship of mutual respect.

Tara finds great value in Nanor’s many decades of experience and accumulated wisdom.

Nanor tries to persuade Tara to adopt her views on Tara’s mystical pregnancy, but she respects Tara’s intelligence and determination even when she thinks it is wrongheaded.

Nanor’s granddaughter Kali, who is younger than Tara, also serves as a guide for Tara. She is the one who first connects Tara and Nanor, risking Nanor’s disapproval in doing so.

Former nun and professor of religious studies Sophia Gaddini also serves as a mentor to Tara. Sophia is in her mid-30s, so she is about 10 or 12 years older than Tara.

In the very first draft of The Awakening, Sophia had the thankless job of conveying historical information about the origins of religion and Christianity and about female deities. Basically, she got to speak all the research I did. I eventually cut almost all of that to keep the pace of the book fast.

What’s left of Sophia’s information, though, is what draws the most questions from readers who want to know how accurate it is. (Very, other than my embellishments of Andrew of Crete and creation of the Brotherhood of Andrew.)

What I love most about Tara’s and Sophia’s relationship is how it grows and develops.

Sophia is the first stranger to keep an open mind when Tara tells her about her virgin pregnancy. Initially, Tara relies on Sophia for practical help and emotional support. But as the books go along, the two women develop a more mutual friendship.

I loved writing a series of thrillers that featured varied and dynamic women characters who both conflict with and cooperate with one another, as happens in real life. Though The Awakening Series is now completed, I’m sure I’ll revisit that theme in future books.

That’s all for today. See you again next Wednesday when I’ll talk more about how Tara’s friends and family members react to her supernatural pregnancy.

Lisa

P.S. If you’d like bonus materials about The Awakening Series, including deleted scenes, join my Reader’s Group.

The post Women Mentors, Aging, And The Awakening Series appeared first on Lisa Lilly.

One reason I love the new CBS show Extantis the relationship between main character Molly and her best friend and physician Sam (Samantha). I started watching Extant because of the mysterious pregnancy aspect. No surprise, given my love for the book Rosemary’s Babyand movie The Terminator. Extant is well acted, with compelling plot lines, and I love the Sam/Molly dynamic. Molly trusts Sam, and Sam puts herself and her career on the line for Molly. When drastic circumstances push them into conflict, they strive to understand one another through the depths of their anger and fear rather than becoming enemies or, worse, engaging in the emotional equivalent of a hair-pulling fight. Or, worse still, engaging in an actual hair-pulling fight, which I’ve never seen two women do in real life, but have seen several times on TV.

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