Guest Post - Un-fantastical dynamics from author of Scents and Senses, Loren Secretts plus $25 Amazon/Paypal Giveaway

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  Scents and Senses: Supernatural Friends. What the fairy tales didn’t tell you Playing the role of a knight in shining armor is more complicated than it seems in the storybooks, as sixteen-year-old Joy discovers when she repeatedly comes to the rescue of a fifteen-year-old human. But when she meddles in the girl’s social life, Starra sends her packing. Starra is determined to completely dissociate herself from the subterranean creature that has manipulated her life and cast her into the limelight. However, her resolve is soon tested when she becomes involved in a critical situation where supernatural assistance can enable her to carry out a daring plot. Eventually, Starra’s involvement with her new other-wordly friends extracts a heavy price when she is beset by challenges that range from the down- to-earth struggles of a typical teenage student, to the realm of the fantastic. Nothing prepares her, however, for the ultimate challenge.  

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Guest Post by Author Loren Secretts

Un-fantastical dynamics

Your life is probably filled with many different relationships, and hopefully all are caring, loving, and uncomplicated – but, let’s face it, most of us don’t live in fantasyland. Even Starra, the heroine in Scents and Senses, a YA fantasy, has relationships that could use some ironing out. The book chronicles significant and unique relationships in Starra’s life from age fifteen to eighteen, some of which many of us can relate to.

Starra is an only child, but her cousin Brook serves as an excellent fill-in for a brother. Readers don’t need a degree in family therapy to pick up on the rivalry that marks the relationship between these two characters who grew up together. 

Crescent, the eldest cousin, strives to keep peace in the family without confronting the tension between Brook and Starra directly. In seeking the source of inspiration behind his tactics, I stumbled across my personal memory lane, and, eureka, I believe I’ve found my answer!

Aunt Mary flew into our lives in my tween years. I won’t reveal her real last name, but if you asked her, she’d claim it was Poppins. Thanks to her many years as a child educator, she considered herself an expert in the field of childhood ills; ranging from the sniffles to mental health disorders. 

As soon as she appeared,  she poked her bony fingers everywhere — into my school work, my appearance, my pronunciation, and my performance (or lack of it) of home chores. At an age where kids naturally differentiate themselves more from their family and go into lockdown mode on their private life, I resented this sudden meddling.

Soon I was fantasizing of a magical exiling spell because what threw me over to the dark side was her interference in our sibling dynamics. If someone heard Aunt Mary refer to her peace talks, they would assume she was an intermediary in the Syrian Civil War. Not only did she blow up our siblings spats into dire proportions, but she had the whole extended family weigh in on our “issue”, U.N. style (with females overrepresented). 

This stock character aunt built a Berlin wall between me and my freckled brother, whom she held up as the victim. She pushed the issue as the hot topic of the era and manipulated my consciousness to obsess over it, till I perceived myself at best a freak, at worst a cruel antisocial sister.  

Did this do wonders for my relationship with my brother?

As I’m sure you’ve guessed, far from it. Matters were spiraling out of control, and a vicious cycle of extreme sibling bullying was born.

I’d either be dead or typing this behind bars if circumstances hadn’t forced Aunt Mary to recede from our lives. 

If every cloud has a silver lining, this story has a platinum one, for I have learned from this experience that sticking one’s nose into sibling spats, and for that matter, fights between peers as well, usually does far more damage than good. It will only serve to aggravate the issue. Worse, tensions will escalate, as the battle is now amplified by the drive of both sides to gain the meddler’s fealty.

If blood is being drawn and the third party must get involved, the meddler should try out a couple of Crescent’s main techniques — distraction and deflection.

Now that I’ve offered you some words of wisdom, I ask for a return of the favor. If by some chance you have found a successful exiling spell, please do share. I’ve got a protagonist who could benefit from using it to rid her life of some annoying characters and dangerous creatures. 

Author Loren Secretts Loren Secretts was raised in a book-filled home, in a sleepy east coast suburb of the US. These factors are undoubtedly responsible for her early design of a number of exciting imaginary worlds that she could escape to from time to time during her childhood. In her teen years, between schoolwork and lending an ear to her friends, Loren had less opportunity to go AWOL. Instead, her experience as a confidant to others inspired her to major in psychology in college and earn her M.A. in the field on the west coast. As an adult, Loren has found fulfillment in her work with children and families for more than a decade. Her passion for writing was revived when she discovered that she enjoyed delving into the human psyche to write psychological reports. But clients' reports are safe with Loren, who guards secrets fastidiously. Indeed, one of her aspirations is to work as a psychotherapist for the CIA, but since she now lives with her family in Canada, that dream will have to await its turn…

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 Ends 6/1/14
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