Okay, I finally get to tell you. I’ve waited for over four months to talk about it. I kept my little secret even after receiving a couple of extremely vitriolic reviews that bluntly confronted the storyline of The Kure as unrealistic, implausible, and so farfetched that it came off as unbelievable – even for paranormal fiction – which by the nature of the beast can admittedly be a bit bizarre.  From calling it “different and disturbing,” (thank you, I liked that very much, as I’ve always believed a good book should shake its reader out of predictable complacency – I mean, isn’t that what paranormal fiction is for?) to comments about a rancid zombie penis (again, thank you – although there is not a single zombie to be found in The Kure, sales of the book jumped significantly the day that particular review was published), the few but reaching attempts to discount The Kure’s believability quotient were misguided and ill-conceived.

As an aside, perhaps one day I will write a book about zombies, their penises, and the angst of the walking dead when faced with an attack of penile disintegration disorder (PDD), but for now, we’ll have to go with the existing character line-up.

Time to talk about the elephant in the room.  It was always my intent to base The Kure on a derivation—or interpretation—of fact. When I started researching background material for the book, I found myself in the unusually fortuitous position of finding an incredible wealth of history, folklore and legend. And frankly, I wasn’t ready for what I found.

Disturbing?  That’s an understatement.  Just ask my husband, who spent more nights than he wants to remember trying to get me back to bed after my nightmares erupted into sleep-shattering screams.  I re-wrote the ritual several times, trying to tone down its graphic nature, hoping to make it more palatable to those comfortably nestled in the upper strata of propriety.  But with each new and diluted draft, I felt like I was cheating – as if I were describing a fatal car accident as a slight mechanical mishap, ignoring  the loss, the victims, and the struggle to adapt to a life that was changed forever.

My readers – and you are the ones who count – deserved more.

So here’s the bottom line: The ritual, and the scene in the barn when Sarah combines the two spells to release the Kure’s power, are based on the recorded beliefs and practices of the “virgin cure” – the medieval concept of having sexually-based contact with a female virgin to cure the afflicted from all manner of disease. The graphic realism had to be there because it represented actual demonic practices of the time. It’s there because the story demanded it. And to ignore the ritual’s source and historical relevance – albeit a dark one – would have been an insult to my readers.

I wrote The Kure with the intent of opening a long-locked door, hoping I could provide a little peek inside a huge room filled with superstition and ignorance.  And yes, I know The Kure has scared the be-jesus out of some of some you. But your laments over lost sleep were usually accompanied by a question, asking me when book two will be out, often expressing the hope that the next installment will be just as scary.  (Don’t worry.  It will.)  It was exactly what I needed to hear.  It confirmed my faith in an intelligent and demanding audience who would not settle for anything short of my best work.  Which is exactly what you will continue to receive.

In book two, “The Karetakers,” I’m going to reveal the source, the linage of practitioners, and the historical practice of red magic. And while The Kure series is fiction, I promise to continue basing the evolving story on relevant and accurate references from some of our not-so-shining moments in human history.    

The nice folks at Night Owl Reviews will be hosting me on their blog tomorrow, and I will go into a bit more detail about the historical relevance of The Kure’s story line. I’ll provide a link so you can take a look, and reprint the post here a week or so after it’s published.

I’d also like to share a bit more of my personal research with you.  So in a day or two, I’ll talk about some of the more interesting aspects of the virgin cure—particularly why virgins were thought to possess healing power, and the rationale behind sexually-based contact enhancing curative powers when applied by practitioners of the black arts.

Hang on, it might get a bit bumpy before we’re done.

Until next time,

Jaye