Silverweed: a supernatural fairy tale

Werewolf, Young Adult, Dark Fantasy inspired by

Little Red Riding Hood

In this Little-Red-Riding-Hood-inspired paranormal fairy tale, the roles of prey and predator are blurred.

Seventeen-year-old Aiden Young travels to Indiana for his aunt’s funeral, where his unfortunate mistake leads to the discovery of the family’s supernatural secret.
Before the weekend is over, he’s trapped by a blizzard in his grandmother’s spooky old house in the middle of the woods, along with his superstitious cousin and his manipulating girlfriend. But the fear growing inside the house might prove more dangerous than the storm. And soon, Aiden faces life and death decisions, but he doesn’t know whom he can trust or who needs to be saved … or who might turn into a werewolf.

Paperback and Ebook available

Amazon US

Amazon.de

Amazon.co.uk

GoodReads Reviews

The Beginning of Silverweed:

Silverweed started out as a short story in 2006, titled, “Silverweed Muffins.” In 2008, I used the short story as inspiration for my National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) novel. Two years later, it was finally ready for the world, and Silverweed: a supernatural fairy tale the eBook was published Nov 2010 and the paperback followed June 2011. In 2017/2018, I revised, edited, and created a new cover.

Superstition Background:

The superstition references in Silverweed are a combination of my grandfather’s stories and an informative superstitions dictionary.

I’d never really been that superstitious, except for doing things like tossing salt over both my shoulders—yes, both because I didn’t know which one was correct. However, my interest sparked a few years back when my mom told me about my grandfather’s childhood stories. Apparently, his mother (pictured on the right – my great-grandmother – I think I kind of look like her) died when my grandpa was five-years-old; it happened the day after she’d told him to stop shooing the birds away that had landed on their front porch, because it meant death. He blamed himself for her death.

My grandfather had also told my mom that one day he had watched the devil walking out in his Alabama woods, pitchfork and all. (You might recognize this from the first chapter of Silverweed.)

Around the same time my mom was reminiscing, I was writing the rough draft of the Little Red Riding Hood inspired short story, and all of these memories set the entire mood for “Silverweed Muffins” which eventually became Silverweed the novel.

As I was writing the story, I researched superstitions. It took me awhile but I finally found a reference book I really liked, Dictionary of Superstitions by David Pickering. Even if you don’t need the book for reference, it’s interesting to see how our lives today are influenced by these superstitions from the past. BTW – the correct shoulder to throw salt over is the left one.