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She Never Got to Say Goodbye Tour: Guest Post and Giveaway



Ica Iova on Writing Paranormal




 

I was born (and lived a good portion of my life) in Romania—a country crisscrossed with stories and legends about things that eat you in your sleep, so the fact that the paranormal found its way into my writing is no surprise, at least not to me.

“Write what you know,” says critically acclaimed author Nathan Englander. That’s excellent advice if you write non-fiction and even fiction, relative to places and emotions. Why? Because we experience them on daily bases, and a good writer could easily translate them into brilliant prose. However, the same doesn’t quite go for writers of the paranormal. And no, I don’t mean because we are diabolical or psychologically troubled, as some might believe. Even our twisted imagination is a matter for debate, based on the fact that we, like everyone else, try to rationalize our visions.

What I mean is that a lot more goes into writing paranormal stories than meets the eye. Most of us can’t base our writing on something that we have experienced—on material that is familiar or conclusive. We have to rely on testimonies from total strangers as we delve into the unknown, and that alone can be a challenge.

My inspiration comes from people who claim to have experienced something supernatural, or as I like to call it, something unexplained. But I, as an author, have to make the story authentic and believable. Yes, the paranormal is still fiction where everything goes. The difference is, I’ve never been a ghost, nor have I met one who could tell me exactly what it’s like to be a ghost. So, I have to rely solely on what other people say as well as my imagination to take that far-fetched piece of information and, if necessary, go completely over the edge to bring that convincing quality to it.

Writing the scene where Olivia realizes she’s a ghost, was, for me, a real challenge that took countless hours of research and devising. And once I nailed that, I then had to extract myself, literally, from the world of the living and place myself in Olivia’s ghostly shoes. I had to visualize what I would do if I “woke up dead.” Where would I go from there? Would I want revenge? Would I just go with the flow?

But the beauty of writing paranormal stories is that we live a constant adventure. Think heart-pounding moments, like three o’clock in the morning when you seem to be the only being still awake. Deep into writing that scary scene you just nailed, you hear an ungodly sound coming from somewhere beneath your feet. Your fingers freeze above the keyboard as fear slithers up your spine. You feel a scream working its way up your throat, just as you realize, too late, that the eerie sound came from your dog—your faithful writing companion.

In the end, except for having a greater ability to form a mental image of something that doesn’t exist, we’re not that different from ordinary people. We, just like everyone else, jump out of our skins at the frailest possibility of anything paranormal lurking around.

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Giveaway:


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5 comments

  1. Thank you for hosting a tour stop!

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  2. Congratulations on your book's release, it sounds like something that I would enjoy reading! Good luck on the tour and thank you for the awesome giveaway!

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  3. Hi Ali. Thank you for hosting my book tour. I really appreciate it.

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  4. Once again, thank you for hosting the tour. I would also like to thank everyone for your tweets, comments and support. Good luck!

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