How The Story Began - The Temple of Fyre

As usual an autographed copy will be given away to the person who gives me a way to reach them.

A call went out from one of my editors who asked about submitting stories that contained Fire. Now I seldom write to these kind of calls since my creative side has a hard time with this. This call was so general that I wondered if I could do it. Around that time, I had a pair of opals I wanted to have set into earrings. Also my sister showed me some fire opals from Mexico. Something clicked and fyrestones were born and the striving to find a story to fit the idea of these stones. Each of the stones was a color of the flames seen in a fire. Suddenly a temple where the priestesses used these fyrestones to do magical acts. What better than an evil priestess who had ambition and the desire to rule her part of the island of Fyre. To oppose her, since this was a romance, I needed a hero and heroine. What if he was a stone finder, a rare skill. Perhaps the heroine could be a novice priestess who was almost ready to move into the ranks of the priestesses . She became the favored of the evil priestess. Now the story took shape. The heroine makes a discovery in the archives about blue fyrestones and how they needed a pair bonded in body, mind and spirit to be able to use them. Then the heroine faces her test and is given a task she refuses, that of destroying a village that refuses to pay homage to the temple of Fyre and the priestess. From here, the story took shape and the tale was spun. Not without some going back and forth from draft to draft making changes. The hero is searching for his parents. The heroine was rescued from slavery by the priestess. And the love making was hot and necessary so the hero and heroine could manipulate the fabled blue fyrestone. In making this a fantasy I was able to turn an idea into a story.

Here's a bit from one of the reveiws of Temple of Fyre.

Sometimes violent, sometimes tender, this nicely written and inventive fantasy tale takes place in an intriguing world. Although the plot is a little confusing at the start, the mythology becomes clearer as one reads on. The characters have depth, and Malera is a villainess you will love to hate. The love scenes are erotic and sensual.