Featured Interview With Candace Lynn Talmadge
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I was born in Los Angeles but spent four of my teen years in an all girls high school in Winchester, England. Central California is my home now after a 34-year stay in Texas.
Not only am I an author, I am also a storyhealer and paranormalist. I talk with my spirit guides, and believe the generally accepted definition of normal is way too limited. I perceive and live in wider realities that include the heart and soul.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
As a preteen, I was captivated by the Lord of the Rings, and a bit later by Dune. When I was 13, the mother of my closest friend put a Taylor Caldwell novel in my hand and told me I could write something like this.
I spend the next several decades thinking about my characters. In my imagination I saw them and heard them speak. I got to know them.
I also tried several times to start writing the story but got nowhere fast. In 1986 I met the woman who became my business and life partner and later my wife (officially).
She was a Sunan storyhealer and help me heal at an emotional and spiritual level. I became a Sunan storyhealer myself. And out of my profound healing arose, finally, the beginnings of my tale. I started writing it in 1998 and keep going to this day.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
Apart from J.R.R. Tolkien and Frank Herbert, I read a lot of authors and many different genres. I enjoy Jana DeLeon, M.C.A. Hogarth, Steve Higgs, J.N. Chaney, and many others. The rise of indie publishing ushered in a golden age of storytelling. That is what inspires me to continue–that and an obsession to tell my story.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
His power seeks to destroy it all. Can she rise up to stop him?
The Stoneslayer paranormal fiction series charts a lost world of political scandals, explosive family secrets, and the reincarnation of a line of extraordinary women who challenge the cataclysmic rampage of an ancient, demonic foe.
My just published work is Book One Scandal.
Lt. Helen Andros is a mixed-race outcast in Azgard. Saved from death when her true parentage comes to light, she now faces the outrage of the overclass, the lethal hostility of the mighty Temple of Kronos — and a powerful, high-ranked father she neither knows nor trusts.
Steering a volatile personal journey with her stranger parent, Helen is stalked. Will a hidden menace — the deadly Stoneslayer — plunder the mysterious green gem she inherited from her mother? Will political necessity bind her in marriage to a man she does not love and who cannot love her back?
The series is a paranormal fusion with elements of fantasy, sci-fi, and lots of romance. It’s the work I began in 1998, seriously revised and expanded to include a demon of destruction.
To my complete shock, once I began writing it, and my wife read and critiqued my first drafts, we both realized I was writing about one of my past lives. And my wife was one of the characters in the book, as I was and as were friends and family.
The more I write in this series (halfway through Book Eight now), I realize it is drawn from four of my past lives. Characters in the series reincarnate on their spiritual journeys, trying to make things right, and usually just getting into more trouble.
Connect with the Author on their Websites and Social media profiles
Candace Lynn Talmadge’s Website