Summary on Eternal Press’s informational page for “Sister Margaret”:

Michael has always felt bad about the way he treated his friend Charmaine when they were younger, even going so far as to blame himself for her becoming a prostitute. Now she’s a priestess to Rakkir, the god of secrets and lies, and he is given a chance to make up for mistakes of the past when she calls him to deal with a problem for her. A vampire problem. But the more involved Michael gets, the more he realizes Charmaine may not be telling him the whole story…and she may have changed even more than he suspected.

Know what? I typically hate vampire stories.

But not this one. “Sister Margaret” by Rhonda Parrish isn’t your typical vampire story.

Set in a familiar “Dungeons and Dragons” type setting, the story is told from the point of view of a bounty hunter named Michael. He’s hired by Sister Margaret, an old friend of his, to kill the vampire who is stalking and extorting money from her “girls.” What happens next? Well, you’ll have to read the story to find out!

Rhonda shows her ability as a true wordsmith in this story.  As a fledgling writer myself, while reading this piece, it was as though each word was carefully measured and painstakingly chosen because it was the exact word needed to make the story flow.

The choice of details and description within the story truly bring out the richness that she has wrought.

You can purchase “Sister Margaret” at Eternal Press as well as read an excerpt.

Rhonda is not only a fabulous writer, but she is also the editor and publisher of Niteblade magazine, an online horror/dark fantasy e-zine. 

Inspiration for “Sister Margaret” by Rhonda Parrish:

Charmaine was my best friend in junior high and I loved her tons. I was a bit wild for the small town I grew up in, and Charmaine was a bit wild for me LOL Her real name was Margaret, but she went by her second name and that’s what everyone called her. I don’t think most of the people we went to school with even knew it wasn’t her first name.

I digress.

Charmaine and I were inseparable for a very long time. Best friends the way you can only be in junior high. Eventually life conspired against us and under somewhat mysterious circumstances we lost touch. I’ve heard rumors (as often happens in small towns) about what happened to her, but no one seems able to confirm anything for sure.

I miss her.

She helped inspire one of the main characters of my new release, Sister Margaret. I borrowed her name, eye color and a few other bits and pieces and gave them to a priestess (something Charmaine could never be). I fictionalized a lot, of course, but the very base of my character was factual and based on someone in my life.

Inspiration is like that. At least for me it is. I get a little bit from here and a little bit from there and I tuck them away in the back of my brain and let my subconscious go to work. Like a pearl created from a speck of sand, my subconscious mind plays with the ideas, molding them together, expanding, cutting, shaping, and creating. The end result is rarely recognizable as what it started as.

Sister Margaret was inspired in part by Charmaine, in part by a writing exercise at NaNoLJers (a writing group I moderate), partly by Sin City and largely by the setting I’d created a while back for a novel. In fact, it’s likely also inspired by things I am not even consciously aware of.

Being inspired isn’t really the trickiest part about writing. It’s taking that inspiration, turning it into something special and then writing it down. I think Pablo Picasso said it best when he said “Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.”

Rhonda Parrish
http://www.rhondaparrish.com

Related posts:

1. Interview: Rhonda Parrish, author of “Shades of Green” and “Sister Margaret”
2. Book Review: “Shades of Green” by Rhonda Parrish
3. Guest Post: Nurturing Creativity by Terri Main
4. Guest Post: Madness & Method by Patricia Kemp
5. Guest Post: Play With Your Writing by Tamlyn Leigh

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