Land holds energy and memory. It’s alive and multi-dimensional. That’s why people are drawn to sacred sites. If you remain quiet and meditate, rather than run around taking photos, you can feel the accumulated energy over time and it becomes a part of you and your story.
Among other awards, Wendy Hawkin recently won a National Indie Excellence Award for Lure: Jesse & Hawk. In this blog, she shares what went into the writing of her book and writing process. A woodland walker, who loves to feel the energy of land, Wendy visits the places where she sets her books.
Lyndi: Before you wrote novels, what were you writing?
W.L.: First I wrote the usual angsty poetry that teenagers write. Then, I learned how to play chord charts on piano and wrote a few bad songs. I also wrote academic essays. I wrote my first novel just to see if I could, and that’s the book we’re talking about today.
Lyndi: After you wrote a draft of Lure: Jesse & Hawk, your romantic suspense novel, you set it aside for a long period of time. What did you decide to part with and what part(s) of the original draft did you decide was(were) most important to keep?
W.L.: The original title was Dyad: The Story of Jesse & Hawk (dyad meaning two parts of a whole.) I changed the title to Lure when I moved it from Northern Ontario to central Minnesota. Part of the reason for that was the inclusion of the creepy sheriff who blackmails the town into voting for him. A nasty RCMP officer just wouldn’t work the same way. They don’t have that kind of political power. They’re hired, not voted in. The landscape is similar on each side of the Great Lakes so the shift worked. Jesse & Hawk are original characters as as are Sam Flanagan and Ira Griswold. I like my characters to have reasons for being the way they are and the dynamic between Sam and his father, the sheriff, drives the action in several ways.
Lyndi: In Lure: Jesse & Hawk, your main character, Jesse, a wildlife photographer, makes a startling discovery. What does she discover and how does this drive the story?
W.L.: Yes, after an intense storm, Jesse discovers a skeletal hand in the earth floor of her shed. Because she’s renting a cabin on the Chippewa reservation, she immediately informs the tribal police. I asked my muses who it was and the young girl told me her story. I decided to weave it through Jesse’s story to show that she is living alone in a potentially dangerous place. We don’t know until the very end what happened to Ruby Little Bear. I like hearing her voice as we relive the night of her tragic death twenty years before. It affects several characters. It’s important for people to realize that Indigenous women and girls have been and still are being targeted. We need to support them however we can. Ruby Little Bear also shines a light on the land and environmental degradation, and Jesse & Hawk both want fur-trapping stopped, especially when it’s done in cruel, antiquated traps.
Lyndi: You’ve included indigenous culture and spirituality for people on a healing journey. How did you prepare to write this part of the story?
W.L.: That’s a complex question. I was beginning a healing journey myself when I first wrote this thirty years ago. My self esteem was at an all-time low, and I was carrying my weight in secrets and scars. My studies at Trent University in Indigenous studies focused on holistic healing, so reflecting on how Indigenous learning affected my body, mind, and spirit. Things that continue to help me are smudging with sage; introspection, prayer, and meditation; and time in Nature. Hawk, in particular, is on a healing journey. That’s why he’s living in seclusion on the land with just his wolf. Canines are so healing;) Hawk couldn’t save Shen but he can doctor Jesse, and this in turn, supports his healing.
My writing process is intuitive so I prepare with meditation. I trust my muses and really write from a meditative place. I’ve just written a book called Writing with your Muse: a Guide to Creative Inspiration. For the most part, I just keep asking the characters for assistance and they tell me what happens. So far, I haven’t had to make major changes. I do engage a developmental editor, though. When I’m that far into the zone, sometimes I miss things.
Lyndi: What myths have you shared in your stories?
W.L.: My Hollystone Mysteries are laced with mythology and magic. There are Irish faeries, based on the Tuatha de Danann who, it’s said, live underground in the passage tombs. The ancient Celtic Horned God, Cernunnos, makes regular appearances. My main character, Estrada, first conjures Cernunnos along with the ancient Oak/Holly King Robert Graves discusses in The White Goddess, when he’s at the Ballymeanoch Standing Stones in Scotland. Sensara, the high priestess of Hollystone Coven, channels the goddess Hecate. In To Sleep with Stones, the vampires make their first appearance, then feature in To Render a Raven, and To Dance with Destiny (coming this Halloween.) In To Kill a King, we time-travel to Iron Age Ireland, and it’s not so much myth, as historical fiction.
Lyndi: Why do you think it is important to visit the places where your books are set?
W.L.: First and foremost, the land holds energy and memory. It’s multi-dimensional. That’s why people are drawn to sacred sites. If you remain quiet and meditate, rather than run around taking photos, you can feel the accumulated energy over time and it becomes a part of you and your story. That’s one of themes in To Sleep with Stones. When Dylan sleeps with the stones he sees and hears what they’ve experienced. I love this idea: being able to communicate with the spirits of sentient beings. In To Dance with Destiny, Conall Ceol, the Druid bard can talk with trees. Not just the energy, but the lay of the land is important. Is it mountainous, boggy, treed, clear cut? How has history affected it? Has anyone died here? Are there spirits? When you visit, you see what your characters see and feel what they feel. This raw knowing comes through in the work.
Another reason I visit is because I glean details I can’t get any other way. For example, when I visited a small town in Scotland, I heard a story about a man who disappeared one day and returned a few months later as a woman. The people were shocked. My books are LGBTQ+ and that made me wonder what it would be like to grow up gender queer in a small town. That wondering morphed into a character who affected the story considerably.
Lyndi: How do you decide which genres you will mash together in your books?
W.L: It’s not so much a decision. With my organic process, I try not to think. I let stories arise. Essentially, my books are character-driven and the genre derives from them.
I love mysteries, so in the beginning with To Charm a Killer, I set out to write a murder mystery featuring a wicca coven who solve it. Because they use ritual magic and other-than-human characters appear, it got labeled urban fantasy. Then things shifted in my process. I followed that with another mystery but partway through To Sleep with Stones, the vampires appeared and my process shifted. In book three, the vampires stole Estrada’s baby from her crib on the eve of her first birthday, so that book became a thriller as we watch the coven try to rescue her from these evil creatures. At that point, I was watching and recording what was happening. In To Kill a King, we time-travel to 200BCE Ireland to rescue an archaeologist who’s trying to save a king from being ritually executed, so it moves into the realm of science fiction, I suppose. It’s also historical fantasy.
Lure started out as a boy-girl HEA romance, something I’d never written before. Then the mystery arose with Ruby Little Bear and Jesse and Hawk’s romance turned into a dangerous action-adventure. In the end, it became romantic suspense. I feel it’s important to let the characters tell the story rather than fit them into a stock plot.
Lyndi: What have you found to be effective ways to market your books?
W.L.: Having a publicist is a boon because it opens doors and opportunities like this one. I like to sell my books at markets. I’ve found that I sell way more print books by talking to people about my books than I do running ads on social media. I like to attend events and read aloud whenever I can. I also ask libraries to stock them. There are people who love to read but can’t afford to buy print books. I also meet readers at markets who only read ebooks or listen to audiobooks, so I can point them in that direction as I have them too. It’s important to take a multi-faceted approach. My favorite social platform is Instagram. It’s there I show a little more of myself and the places I go.
W. L. Hawkin writes the kind of books she loves to read from her home in the Pacific Northwest. Because she's a genre-blender, you might find crime, mystery, romance, suspense, fantasy, adventure, and even time travel, interwoven into her stories.
If you like “myth, magic, and mayhem” her Hollystone Mysteries feature a coven of West Coast witches who solve murders using ritual magic and a little help from the gods. The books—To Charm a Killer, To Sleep with Stones, To Render a Raven, and To Kill a King—follow Estrada, a free-spirited, bisexual magician and coven high priest as he endeavors to save his family and friends while sorting through his own personal issues. Book Five, To Dance with Destiny, is launching late 2023.
Her latest release, Lure: Jesse & Hawk, was a recipient of a National Indie Excellence Award and Crowned Heart Award from InD'Tale Magazine; a finalist in The 2022 Wishing Shelf UK Book Awards, and nominated for an Eric Hoffer Award. Lure: Jessoe & Hawk is small-town romantic suspense story set in the American Midwest in the fictional town of Lure River.
Hawkin graduated from Trent University with a B. A. in Indigenous Studies. It was then she discovered her great-great grandmother was an Indigenous woman. Wendy went on to study English literature at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, and then teach high school. She found her voice publishing poetry and Native Rights articles in Canadian news magazines and is now an Indie author/publisher at Blue Haven Press.
For the past few years, Wendy has been a book reviewer for the Ottawa Review of Books. A member of the Federation of BC Writers and the Writers Union of Canada, she actively engages with readers and writers at conferences, and is represented by Creative Edge Publicity.
As an intuitive writer, Wendy captures on the page what she sees and hears, and allows her muses to guide her through the creative process. Watch for the release of her nonfiction book entitled Writing with your Muse: a Guide to Creative Inspiration.
Wendy needs to feel the energy of the land so, although she’s an introvert, in each book her characters go on a journey where she’s traveled herself. If you don’t find her at Blue Haven Press, she’s likely wandering the woods with her beautiful yellow dog.
