To reiterate what I wrote last week, I absolutely love and respect strong women! Heck, I had a fabulous one as my life partner for over three decades. I try to impart that same strength and resolve to the female characters in all of my two dozen+ books, and that is especially true in my four horror novels. Let me introduce you to my next two women of horror.
JANET LOWELL
Unlike my other three female leads, Janet Lowell has no baggage whatsoever at the start of The Modoc Well (originally published as The Well by Bantam Books). She’s been happily married to Greg Lowell for nearly two decades, has two well-adjusted teenagers, and enjoys a career as a registered nurse. So what could go wrong?
It is after they relocate from L.A. to the small, seemingly idyllic Northern California town of Bonner that Janet’s life devolves into a living hell. They’re staying on a ranch where, well over a century ago, Greg’s ancestors, as well as many other settlers, were brutally murdered in what became known as the Fire Valley Massacre. Modoc Indians were blamed, but the real perpetrator was a demon named Montanni, long trapped underground but unleashed when a well was dug on the property.
Now that a descendant—Greg—of the original settlers has returned, Montanni gradually regains its powers, and each atrocity outdoes the previous one. It is up to Janet Lowell to keep her family together, especially after the demon marks her as its own.
GAIL FARRINGER
In my first horror novel, Demon Shadows (originally published by Bantam Books), bestselling author Paul Fleming is dealing with writers’ block after a messy divorce. He reluctantly accepts a month-long residency at the Thorburn colony, a prestigious artists’ and writers’ colony in the Sierra Nevada mountains, near the site of the Donner Party incident. There, as he attempts to regain his mojo, he encounters an enigma named Gail Farringer. She is a talented artist, though all of her paintings are dark and foreboding. She does not socialize with anyone, even sits by herself at the formal dinner each evening. Paul has to wonder why she is even there.
Gail harbors a terrible secret about her past. As she gradually lets Paul in, a different mystery about the colony’s past, one even more horrifying, is about to resurface, and it will challenge them both, but especially Gail. Will her new-found resolve, and her unexpected friendship with Paul, be enough to counter the ancient and deadly evil that haunts the snow-covered grounds of the Thorburn colony?