The Selkie Legend

Long ago the selkie came to shore, seeking lovers among the mortals. They would linger with their families until the call of the sea became to great for them to bear... then they would don their seal-skins and disappear into the mists... or so the selkie legend says.

I assume that I am descended from a selkie myself. I come from an Irish line with curly dark hair and a strong affinity to water.

I've never been able to stay away from water. I'm the kind of person who stands out in the rain, no matter how cold it may be. My brother and I would swim from February to November every year as we were growing up. My parents had to instate a rule that we had to get out if our lips turned blue.

The ocean, of course, has a magic all of its own. The waves, the colors, the hiss of the water cresting onto the sand... I am very much in love with the sea.

I have always wondered if I might actually be a part of the selkie legend. What if one of my ancestors really came out of the water and lived as a mortal? Would s/he have stayed with the family or left when the call of the sea became to strong?

I dream of swimming in the depths of the ocean all the time. In my dreams I am quick and supple in the water. I don't have to hold my breath because I am so at one with the element.

I live in a desert, far away from any beaches, far away from the sea... but I am pretty sure I have saltwater in my veins.

What is Adrift?

Meg Tanner is afraid of water because her mother drowned in the ocean. Ever since then her father has warned her to stay away from the sea.

Upon her father's death Meg is set adrift in the world with no belongings and no place to go. Her only option is to hop into her beat-up old car and go wherever the road takes her.

All alone and blinded by grief she emerges in Trinity, Newfoundland, where she is approached by Devon Horan. Devon is fascinating man who immediately threatens everything she assumed about her life.

Soon Meg has nothing left but haunting questions:

What are selkies? What do they have to do with her dead mother?

And why does Devon despise Meg?

Reader Reviews for Avow

Avow is a prequel, taking place twenty years before Adrift (coming Aug. 2012). It is currently available on Smashwords, Barnes and Noble, and Amazon.


A Last Selkie Short Story.


Twenty years before Adrift, a young man named Ethan Tanner found out he had a inoperable malignant brain tumor and had less than a year to live.


Impossibly, help comes in a mythical form.


Here's what readers have to say about it:


Review by: MB Crandell on July 17, 2012 :      I liked your story. You did a great job fleshing out your characters and even though the story was short, you had an excellent plot. I'm looking forward to reading more of your work. Thankyou for sharing!

Review by: THG StarDragon Publishing on Aug. 04, 2012 :      I really enjoyed this short prequel and am looking very forward to when I can read the following tale. I adore selkie stories, and they are a type of merfolk that I think really could use more attention, as most think of the fishy sort when thinking "mermaid" and none of the other varieties. The story itself had me tearing up in sympathy, as the emotions of facing death are perfectly captures (I have had very close experience, having nursed my father in his last days and assisted in his spiritual care). I also very much like the deviation from the usual "selkie bride" motif.

Review by: Peg Lewis on July 26, 2012 :       This prequel promises an interesting yarn. There are plenty of paranormal creatures out there (and for the most part I don't like reading about them), but the selkie here has an agenda that will have implications for future generations. And she exists in an utterly believable, in fact real, world, and so she seems actually quite real, too. There's promise here for the main work, and I'm keeping my eye out for it.

Review by: Faye Hollidaye on July 24, 2012 :      A five-star short story, but not entirely perfect. Very emotionally intriguing!

Adrift

The full-length Selkie novel Adrift is coming out soon! I am excited to share this, my latest work, with my audience. I hope everyone will read it and enjoy it!  I love feedback, so I am looking forward to seeing lots of reviews.

Adrift will be available soon on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. I will also have copies available on Smashwords.

Adrift is the story of Meg Tanner.

Meg Tanner was nineteen years old when her father suddenly slipped into a coma and died. Meg was forced to sell all of their belongings just to settle his medical bills. With little more than a junkie old car and a few clothes to her name, she has no relatives, not family, nothing to hold her in one place.

She got into her car and started to drive. She ended up in Newfoundland, where she quickly learned that everything she knew about herself and her past are much different than the truth.

And truth, as we all know, is stranger than fiction.

Heaven On Earth

One summer, my parents, my brother, my cat, and I, spent a few weeks in Fundie National Park. I decided, very quickly, that it had to be the most beautiful and enchanting place I had ever seen.

I live in a desert, though we have green and rain, both of those things are brief, seasonal, and quick to fade in the sun and heat. Coaxing life out of dry, packed culiche, is time consuming and requires massive amounts of work and a tolerance for sky-high water bills.

Fundie was bursting with fertility. Everywhere there was damp and green, with wild berries of all kinds, bursting with flavor and life. It was there that I tasted my very first wild strawberry. It was about the size of the nail on my little finger, but it burst with sweet sunshine across my tongue. It was both shockingly sweet and deliciously tart, so much flavor packed into such a tiny object.

That summer I picked berries of all kinds, from blackberries to gooseberries, to wild blueberries and tiny, sharp wild cranberries. Sorrel provided a peppery counterpart to all the berries. The overabundance of life, and sensory experiences, swept me away.

I was in love.

My cat and I would go hiking in the woods together, him marching along in his harness and leash, drawing attention wherever he went. Dogs were no match for him, he would not be intimidated.

He had absolutely no interest in berries, though he did enjoy sorrel.

I think that all my definitions of paradise changed that summer. Since that time, it has been a fertile, living, breathing land of green abundance.

 It is my Heaven, my Fairyland, my Dream.

Courting Disaster

My oldest at three, weaving on my loom

I am one of those people that looks at things such as, oh, cream, or cheese, for example, and immediately I start thinking about how I could save so much money and enjoy myself immensely if I just could go to the ground up and make my own. Desires for large quantities of cream for cooking, led to me buying goats for our backyard. Desires for knowing how to make beautiful tapestries and fabric, should life as we know it end, led to experiments in spinning, weaving, knitting, etc.


I think I am horribly romanticized by the world that I fell in love with as a child: Laura Ingalls Wilder's books. Of all the books, it was Farmer Boy which really hit home. I wanted that life. I wanted to live that life. I dreamed about my children coming home from school to homemade donuts and all sorts of good things to eat. I drew pictures of the farmhouse I would someday own, with the little orchard and berry bushes all around.


Romanticism is all well and good, but I have the true gift of what I can only call disaster.


Everyone needs a talent, after all.


Disaster is certainly my talent.


For example. the first time I made donuts I managed to overheat the oil, which burst instantly into flames. Thinking only that there was no way I was going to burn down my parents' house, I quickly lifted the pan off of the heat. The flaming, literally, oil sloshed over the sides of the pan and onto my hand.


I learned in that moment that I am pretty cool under pressure and that I smell exactly like bacon when fried.


I managed to wrestle a top onto the pan and to hustle with it through the nearby back door into the backyard, where my three horses had their corral. They watched in fascination as I threw that pot as far as I could onto the gravel.


The lid flew off and soon flames were shooting up into the sky like fireworks.


The horses were very impressed. I could almost hear them 'Ooing' and 'Ahhhing' at the display.


My hand was pretty severely burned, but it healed. I lived to make donuts another day.


We have done, as a family, the whole miniature-homestead in the suburbs sort of thing. We've had chickens, turkeys, ducks, geese, and goats in our relatively small backyard. My sons have hatched eggs in an incubator since birth. (For the record, the more you want a certain breed of bird to hatch, the less likely you are that it will.)


We have had dog attacks, coyote attacks, hawk attacks, and bobcat attacks. We've had sick animals.


My other talent would probably be not knowing when it's time to give up.


I bought a loom before I had even tried my hand at weaving. It took many many long hours to figure out how to thread the big, unwieldy thing, but, eventually, I figured it out. It only took me about three days to get it threaded.


But, then I decided that thread and yarn were really expensive, so I went online and bought an entire sheep shearing, some drop-spindles, and a really cool medieval type carder (which I never actually could figure out how to use).


Our washing machine smelled like sheep for months. Our clothes reeked of lanolin. The wool seized up into a useless and huge ball of dread-locked felt.


The next time I tried Alpaca fleece, it was much easier.


Despite my frequent courting of disaster (courting? Perhaps I am married to it!) I still dream of my little homestead, hopefully somewhere green. A land of Cream and Berries, I suppose you could say.


After all, Milk and Honey wouldn't do as I am allergic to milk and bees...