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Pulling Teeth and Other Stories

Old wounds.

New beginnings.

Jellyfish monsters.

Teenage Regina Slaughter finds out there are three sides to life: human, monster, and human-turned-monster.

Restarting her life with an emotionally barren Void hunter for a teacher and a caring werewolf for an adopted father gives her a bright, shiny future. But her world didn’t start out so bright and shiny.

When little Regina unwillingly became a werewolf at the tender age of nine, she lost her whole family soon after. Her new life in a cage at the whim of HADES monster hunters’ experimentations is even worse than her old life.

Now on the monster side of life, Regina learns that there are no limits to the kind of monster humans can be.

Regina is saved by the Alpha of a werewolf pack, who was also once human…and also once a werewolf hunter himself. Joyfully accepted into the Alpha’s new pack–joyful on her side, not on all of theirs–Regina enters the perilous world of monster hunting to protect the world from actually evil monsters.

Although sometimes she ends up keeping them as pets.

Buckle your seatbelts, put on a helmet, and hold on tight as you join Regina Slaughter in this grimdark paranormal fantasy collection that features five stories, two mad scientists, and one wolf girl.

Get your copy on Amazon today

Jessa Forest‘s The Slaughter Chronicles kicks off with Pulling Teeth and Other Stories, an anthology that reads like a novel. Follow Regina Slaughter through her young life as a werewolf who wants nothing more than to shift into wolf form and run under the moon—except she’s imprisoned by monster hunters who want to experiment on her. But this isn’t her first brush with danger. And it won’t be her last. At times visceral and at times light-hearted, Pulling Teeth and Other Stories is an exciting journey into a new paranormal world you’ll love!
Proof Positive

Very dark and beautiful. Visceral. Lovely mix of realism and paranormal elements.
Suzanne, Goodreads review

This book is a rather darker fantasy than I usually read. But it turned out to be a real page-turner. Beautifully written and a plot that keeps you moving quickly through the pages. Regina, the lead character, is no slouch. Fearless, not always a nice little girl and sometimes luckier than she deserves. The fantastical world the author creates could use a bit more filling out but I assume she will do that in future entries in the series. I will read those too.
Jerry G, Amazon review

Dark and beautiful. Jessa’s writing is very visceral and real, even if the plot is fantastical. Loved this collection.
Aaron D, Amazon review

SURVIVING YOUR AUTHOR INTERVIEW

If you’re an indie author like me, you love listening to other authors talk about their books and writing process… but when it’s your turn to share your thoughts about the fictional universe that you know EVERYTHING about; you get nervous.

Nevertheless, your dream is to one go on blog tours, book signings, and have interviewers ask you those deep and hard-hitting questions you’ve watched your writing idols answer.

How do you do that if you’re extremely shy and introverted (like me)?

I’ve outlined seven tips that will help you get through your author interview without too much anxiety.

1) Write yourself a script/outline (even when you don’t know the questions)

You can always count on the host to ask you to introduce yourself and having a few points of reference will make you more comfortable and ease you into fluid, natural sounding conversation.

I hate talking about myself, and I get uncomfortable listing my accomplishments. It sounds too much like bragging. So I like to plan out what I’m going to say ahead of time.

Some suggestions:

Come up with a tag line to describe your writing
Write a more conversational version of your professional bio
Narrow down in two or three sentences what you want your writing to accomplish (really pinpoint what you’re giving to your readers)
One or two fun facts your audience might like to know about you

Remember to keep it short and sweet. This is just your introduction.

2) Have a motivational picture in the background

When I found this piece of advice, I was skeptical. I’m not one for affirmations or gratitude lists. But this really works. I printed out a graphic of “Doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will.” (Suzy Kassem) and every time I felt myself panicking I looked at it.

Having a sentence or two that grounds you in your purpose, or a confidence booster, in big letters that you can tape to the wall behind your camera goes a long way.

3) Emotional support cat

Pets can be unpredictable but I look at that as part of the genuine, unscripted experience.

As long as my cat isn’t showing his butt hole to the camera or trying to push something off of my desk, having him next to me while I’m talking about my book definitely helps keep my blood pressure low.

4) Get there early

As I write this, all the interviews and events I’ve been to were virtual, but this applies to in-person events as well. If your interviewer says they’re going to be on Zoom or Stream Yard fifteen minutes early, get there fifteen minutes early. Don’t wait until the last minute to show up. Getting to your interview early gives you time to ease into talking to your interviewer, which is really great for meeting someone for the first time. You don’t want to start an interview cold.

Also, getting there early gives you time to prepare, ask questions, and tell your interviewer about any announcements you have ahead of time.

5) Wear headphones

This applies more to virtual events.

Headphones cut the background noise down and feedback. Having headphones with a built-in microphone helps, and they don’t have to be expensive. Just have them.

6) Have all your technical issues and background set up ahead of time.

Another one that applies to virtual events.

Test out your lighting and internet connection before the interview is recorded or goes live. If you’re using bluetooth devices, make sure the connection is working before you start the interview. This might seem like common sense but I’ve been in situations before where I’ve *meant* to check something and forgot.

Sometimes technical issues can’t be helped, like if there’s atmospheric interference. So, don’t worry about what’s beyond your control.

7) Do your research

If you’re doing an event or interview that is part of a series or a regularly broadcasted video chat or podcast, listen/watch previous episodes. (Do this before querying to be a guest too.) You get a feel for how the interviewer runs things and you’re not coming into a stiff conversation.

I like to check out my interviewer’s website beforehand or read one of their books just so I have a good idea of what their writing is about. I know all of our TBR piles are enormous but doing a little background research can help with making a professional connection.

BONUS:

And use the mistakes you think you made to make your next interview better. One of my goals is to research how to set up better lighting so I don’t look like I’m broadcasting from a cave.

Have tips of your own? Please share them in the comments.

TRAMPOLINE POETRY

My poem “Lab: Medusa’s Head” is in Issue 6 of Trampoline Poetry.

I want to write a poem to the lackluster scales
dusting her cheeks. But someone else
did that 10 years ago and I feel so old,
Older than stone.
The teacher says cut.
The teacher says peel.
The teacher says uncover the eyes last.
Jessa Forest Lab: Medusa’s Head

Click here to read Issue 6 and my poem in its entirety 🙂

READING LAURELL K. HAMILTON

The Laughing Corpse by Laurell K. Hamilton
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I don’t do a lot of traditional book reviews and this isn’t going to be one of them, I guess, more like thoughts on the book while explaining why I think it’s so great. Maybe that is a traditional review. Whatever. It’s morning and I’m not awake yet.

A little bit of background:

The Laughing Corpse was published back in 1994 and is the second book in the Anita Blake Series. I first picked up Guilty Pleasures, book 1, with my high school bestie in 2002.

At that time the only other horror literature I’d been exposed to were the classics: Edgar Allen Poe and H.P. Lovecraft. I’d read Anne Rice but found Interview with the Vampire too serious (much like Louis himself). Reading Anne Rice, for me, is like reading Herman Melville. I love it (some of it in Anne Rice’s case) but I have to be in the mood for long, plodding tones and slow, plodding plots. I’d also read Amelia Atwater-Rhodes and found her books entertaining and the characters compelling but they were very light and fluffy for me.

When I was on a summer job, one of my coworkers suggested I read Bloody Bones. Bloody Bones is book 5 so when I picked it up I was totally lost. But then my high school best friend bought a copy of Guilty Pleasures and said I needed to read it. So I did. And here’s why I loved it: Anita was real. I could hear her, see what she saw, smell what she smelled, feel what she felt. Laurell K. Hamilton makes her books like you’re plugging into the matrix. You get to live the book right along with the characters.

This was pre-Twilight. This was before everyone thought vampires and black nail polish was cool. I was more of the stereotypical goth girl than my friend but where I’d always been an “outsider” at my school, all the “cool kids” avoided her because she was new, she’d just moved to Arkansas from Florida and, as Southern preppy high schools are also incestuous institutions that follow the “keep-to-your-own-kind” paradigm, no one wanted to hang out with her except the other “outsiders.” This was before facebook took off and this was before anti-bullying regulations were set in place. We were no strangers to harassment and discrimination.

We weren’t accepted in our limited version of society, we had family problems at home, we struggled with addiction and alcohol abuse, we had unreliable boyfriends, but we could escape into books.

Here’s an image for you: underaged teenage girls sitting on a balcony overlooking a dark forest and the Arkansas River beyond, smoking cigarettes and reading Guilty Pleasures aloud to each other. At night. She was team Richard, I was team Jean-Claude. Guess who won 😉

I felt like Anita was someone I could look up to and maybe even be friends with, she struggled with thinking about religion and spirituality the same way I did. I wanted to be just like her and have a job when I graduated college. I wanted to have meaningful relationships and a solid sense of self. I found Anita and the rest of Hamilton’s cast of characters more real than any other characters I’d read at the time.

Thoughts on The Laughing Corpse:

In The Laughing Corpse, a killer zombie murders two families. But it doesn’t just kill them, it rips them apart and eats them.

You see a child with its stomach and intestines torn out. You see another child’s severed hand. You see a blood soaked baby blanket and possibly the little blob of meat that was left over from the baby.

You see ribs, you see ball joints, you see organs.

And that right there is my bread and butter. Because it’s real. When someone is murdered it’s not pretty, it’s not neat and tidy; it’s visceral and in-your-face. Showing this in literature, and the characters’ human reactions to this violence, are extremely important because somewhere in the world, this scene has happened. Minus the killer zombie, of course. But out here in the real world, a very unfortunate person met an extremely unfair end.

Daily life, for most people, is not filled with violence and death. But there are other bad things out there. You know the saying, “Everyone is going through something.” Hamilton not only gives me an escape from my “something” but makes me feel normal for having “something” to go through instead of feeling like a weird freak who can’t get her shit together (that’s another story for another time).

In the afterword to The Laughing Corpse, Hamilton writes, “Once upon a time it bothered me that I don’t think like the majority of people. That I walk through a world where the worst can happen, and often does. That I see danger where most people see nothing.”

This isn’t about being an alarmist or living in fear of all the things that can kill you, this, I feel, is about acknowledging and respecting the nightmares and, most importantly, showing that you can live through them.

When I re-read this book I’d forgotten that Anita was almost raped. Not by a vampire or any other supernatural creature, but a person. A human bodyguard for a human villain. Thankfully though, she wasn’t raped. She got free and kicked the shit out of that guy. But it still happened. A man put his hands on her.

I’m going to say something that you might not like. That attempted rape scene was important.

Not just for character development or plot, not because I like reading the horror genre, but because atrocities need to be looked at and acknowledged.

I didn’t like seeing Anita in that situation. I cheered when she got out of it. Anita was also tortured (physically beaten as incentive to do what the bad guy wanted) in that scene and yes, Hamilton could have chosen to not go that far–or faded the scene to black the same way romance authors will sometimes do sex scenes–but she did and I’m glad she did because, again, telling stories where REAL things happen is important.

I could look at Anita and say, “Wow, bad things happened to her.” Bad things happened to me too; making a connection with a character through a shared experience like that helped me not feel so alone, helped me function as a real human being.

In interviews and at book signings Hamilton talks about how fans will come up to her and say “Thank You” for making role models and heroes for them to look up to. She’s had people tell her that if Nathaniel could get therapy then so could they. And that’s a beautiful thing. And that probably wouldn’t have happened if Hamilton didn’t write the dark aspects of the human condition.

But it’s not all gloom and doom. Anita has loving relationships with people, Anita is happy with herself (most of the time) and if she can do that then so can I.

The Laughing Corpse ends with the bad guys defeated but the mystery of life is still sitting there waiting to be solved. Anita solved one problem but she has others to deal with in book 3. That’s life too. Even when things are going good something will happen to turn things upside down. Anita handles those things like a human. She gets pissed off, she gets sad, but she always solves the problem and carries on with her life. Even when it hurts.

View all my reviews

CURSE WORDS IN THE SLAUGHTER CHRONICLES

And a little about world building…

My writing friend Lily Hammer made an interesting point on Instagram the other day:

“I love world-building, and I love unique worlds that other authors create. I personally walk a fine line as a reader between how much world-building I can handle. If an author introduces a ton of strange concepts, I can’t relate to or I can’t see clearly in my mind, I immediately disconnect from the book… For example, when authors create their own curse words, or use a normal English word as a curse word in their world. That immediately takes me out of the story.”

This made me think about how I present my Void-side/Void-Born citizens of Dark Home.

Language and People of Dark Home

Since the 1800s, Earth-side humans from the hyper zealous religious hunting organization Sanctum have tried to “colonize” Dark Home. I use the word colonize loosely because they have been, in the last 300 years—give or take—very unsuccessful. It’s hard to expand when monsters eat your troops. And in the 1970s, Hyperion’s Fury began sending hunters into the Void as well.

Because of this Earth-side presence, many of the Void-Born picked up English from the HADES hunters and Latin from the Sanctum hunters. But they have their own language and their own alphabet. In the early drafts of Book One I was taking the soft fantasy route and using just the backstory of the two Earth-side forces to excuse the fact that the Void-Born humans of Dark Home speak perfect English.

Well, that isn’t good storytelling, is it?

Where things are now

Fast forward a few drafts and I have pieces of the alphabet and some of what I call the English translation of Dark Home words for decorating magical items and fleshing out the magic system.

I don’t have the linguistic expertise or the imagination of Tolkin.

I don’t want to copy another language structure, tweak a few things, and call it my own.

I don’t want to disrespect other cultures by appropriating something I have little or no knowledge of.

So what will you find when you read my books?

Two groups of people who speak different languages. There will be translation errors and miscommunications. There will be all kinds of technical issues that will give the plot flavor.

As a child, I lived in Panama on and off for a few years. My Spanish was passable, but I did not have strong communication skills. I struggled through school and though a lot of my classmates helped me; I got to experience firsthand how a non-native speaker has to adapt to a different culture.

Now, years later, I get to use some of these experiences as inspiration for my writing.

So what does all this have to do with vulgarity?

My books have mature language in them. I enjoy using mature language. My characters enjoy venting their frustrations with expletives.

I do not use slurs… unless I introduce a fictional all female pagan punk band called Burning Bitch. Because they are the shit. And it’s an example of reclamation. (They have since been taken out of my current draft because they were taking up words and not moving the plot along. You can read the deleted scene here.)

And Void-Born characters have a unique set of profanities than the Earth-side people.

So, when coming up with swear words for my fantasy population, I wanted to use the element of realism and come up with words that they would naturally use as curses or view as insulting based on their historical and cultural experiences.

The Void-Born humans of Dark Home are very into their gods. Gods being Void Creatures. Dark Home is itself a god, the principle god of the Cloud City. The citizens of the Fire City worship another Void Creature, so much so they procreated with it and filled the city with its human-hybrid Mage descendants.

So they center their profanity on what will make their enemies angry, curses directed toward other peoples’ gods.

There is a bit of crossover. Void-Born humans don’t use Earth-side swear words, but a few of my Earth-side characters use Void-side swear words. The most notable is Theodore Thane because he spends most of his time in the Void, interacting with the Void-Born. He prefers the Void-Born over Earth-side humans, so he subconsciously picked up a few of their mannerisms.

The problem with language like this is semiotics (the study of signs and symbols and their use or interpretation). You might read the word and interpret the context of its use one way, and another reader can make a completely different and sometimes opposite interpretation.

For me, there is a big difference in quality when an author takes the time and care to make up their own swear words that make sense with their fictional population. I do not particularly care for stories whose authors use their fictional language as an excuse to mince oaths instead of dropping the f-bomb like any sensible person would. Like, if it makes little sense contextually, and the author wants to be profane without using vulgar words, I feel sad for the missed opportunity there.

Character Development

Regina gathered her catalog of swear words from adults she listened to as a child. People she was imprisoned with at the HADES black site, for example.

I struggled a little with whether I wanted her to use religious profanities because she’s not a religious person, but she heard words like dammit enough times that saying them became a habit. And also, as a young child, nothing would have pissed Regina’s mother off more than hearing her daughter say “damn.” So Regina’s most frequent swear word is turning out to be “damn,” where other characters might choose more intense vocabulary. It works with her personality.

TITLE INSPIRATION

She lay on her cot and pretended the bullet hole in the glass above her was the eyepiece of a telescope, and the ceiling was the sky of a strange alien planet with a dozen rectangular, daytime, fluorescent-light suns. The daytime moon was the Exile’s Moon, cold and barely alive in an ocean of cloud-choked blue. Forever alone and abandoned by the shield of night and the unconquerable legion of stars. A sky where day was not separated from the night, and the Exile’s Moon wasn’t alone anymore and her sisters, the Dead Girl Moon… and Havoc’s Moon, the patron saint of troublemakers, prisoners, and hopeless little girls, was almost full.
from Dead Girl Moon, Pulling Teeth and Other Stories of The Slaughter Chronicles

Regina cast a suspicious glance upward, through the canopy of bare oak branches and prickly pine boughs to where the moon hung and the stars twinkled. Overhead, the moon was one week from full. Havoc’s Moon, she thought. Patron saint of best laid plans and miscellaneous fuckery. The tall pines of the forest were stalwart sentinels, their branches were spears and their needles were beautifully crafted rapiers battling the terrors of the night in the sway of autumn’s bonfire smelling breeze.
from Havoc’s Moon, The Slaughter Chronicles Book One

What inspired The Slaughter Chronicles titles?

In case you haven’t noticed in The Slaughter Chronicles series list, all the forthcoming novels have titles that involve the moon. Book one is Havoc’s Moon, book two is Exile’s Moon. Book three… you get the idea. So, aside from the whole werewolf aesthetic, what’s up with all the moon stuff?

Regina Slaughter, my main protagonist, was just a child when her biological father accidentally contaminated and transformed her into a werewolf. In the years before and the two years after, Regina received zero formal education. Before her parents met their tragic end, Regina was homeschooled by her mother. Regina’s mother was a religious zealot who did not believe in Sesame Street, or that little girls needed the same learning opportunities as boys. She taught Regina how to read so she could read the Bible and other religious texts, but she was not allowed to write, sing, play, or do math. Or watch TV.

Regina’s mother… how can I say this nicely?… was a terrible person who should never have been allowed to reproduce and be responsible for children. But if she wasn’t, we wouldn’t have Regina so… *shrug*.

And then, after Regina’s mother (thankfully) died, Regina was kept in a secret laboratory for two years, where she also received zero formal education. But she had a lot of time to think by herself and, as a coping mechanism, she came up with her own unique version of numerology in which she tried to predict the fortunes of her fellow prisoners based on the time displayed in the laboratory’s big digital clock.

Also, in the laboratory, Regina was heavily sedated and given drugs to keep her, and the other adult prisoners, from using their supernatural abilities to escape. (Keeping a bunch of werewolves in cages without sedating them is not smart.) Because she could no longer connect with her werewolf-self, Regina also fabricated her own phases of the moon, based on how she was feeling physically and mentally as the doctor in the laboratory experimented on her werewolf strain.

After she and the other prisoners were liberated, Regina continued to refer to her own moon phases. And that is how the titles for my books were born.

Each moon phase coincides with the theme of the book. For example, the novella Dead Girl Moon is about Regina’s time in the laboratory and the days leading up to her escape.

Havoc’s Moon is the waxing gibbous moon, the phase immediately proceeding the full moon. Havoc’s Moon (also my principal work in progress) is about building conflicts and finding order in the chaos. But the next book, Exile’s Moon, is the daytime moon, the moon of loneliness, defeat, and despair. I don’t want to give too much away, but if everything worked out at the end of book one, there wouldn’t be a need for a book two.

Also, I AM writing grimdark fantasy so expect that if there is a happy ending, it won’t come right away.

THE SLAUGHTER CHRONICLES MAGIC SYSTEM

A bit of backstory

The Slaughter Chronicles takes place in a fictional universe where there is the “everyday world” (which 21st Century humans on Earth are familiar) and then there is another reality underneath that called, by some, the Void where giant creatures and celestial monsters float around in “space.”

The bigger creatures are home to Void-Born humans and smaller creatures. Sometimes these smaller creatures exist in a symbiotic relationship with the larger ones, other times it is a parasitic relationship. The largest of these is a giant snail-like creature the Void-Born who live atop it have named Dark Home (because of the shell…there’s no light inside the shell and the snail’s home is the shell…accept my giant space snail!).

The magic system

In the Void, Magic is the actual manifestation of one’s intent. Depending on the intentions, everything will have a different outcome based on what type of catalyst you are using and what strain of contamination you have.

The most efficient magic users are, of course, Mages. Two mages casting the same intention will never have the same result because of their Void Creature strain. Life experience influence the intentions which influence the results of the magic.

Mages can generate energy internally or externally, depending on their strain.

Internally, the energy for the magic comes from within the Mage themselves. Externally, the Mage must draw on the energy of the thing/person they are trying to effect.

Catalysts

Mages can use catalysts instead of their internal or external resources, however, catalysts are not preferred because the intent of the catalyst can influence the results of the magic. If the catalyst is a living organism, that organism will influence the magic. If the catalyst in not living (a magical item) it has to at least be organic, be organic. Anything like metal or synthetic cannot be a catalyst.

The non-living item carries the intent of the living thing it was made from. Sometimes they carry the feelings from the day that they died and using them can be pretty traumatic.

Practice and intense training can force false intentions or intentions contrary to the Mage’s or the catalyst’s personality/character. But these efforts always yield mixed results.

Magic for non-mages

For the Void-Born werewolves and vampires, using magic takes years of training and grueling effort. Because their Void Creature strains are not innate (not born with Void Creature blood) non-Mages have a harder time successfully manifesting their intent. Instincts gained from the experience of contamination can affect the vampire or werewolf’s intent in negative ways. Sometimes a non-Mage user dies if they try.

But it can be done.

A general warning

When ego warps intention, there are disastrous consequences.

Syllabary

Magical items and non-Mage magic users can employ special symbols to focus and manifest their intent. Their internal/external energy fuels their intent and their intent psychically activates the symbols of their everyday language and can turn their words into tools or weapons.

Pulling Teeth and Other Stories