Brenda Drake | A Fated Story

Whenever I’m at a book event, one question seems to spring up: Where do you get ideas for your books? Inspiration comes in various ways—a song on the radio, a current news story, or just while chilling with friends and family. The idea for Touching Fate came from seeds planted in my past, fertilized with moments and connections in the present, until they bloomed into a story.

I’ve always been fascinated with the supernatural, with ghosts and witches, with séances and tarot cards. I first encountered a séance as a young girl when my siblings and the neighbor kids piled into our shed. The doors closed, the lights off, we’d call for Jessie James and Lizzy Borden to show themselves. Noises in a shed tend to be louder in the dark, but we all swore we heard a woman moan. We tore out of that shed so fast, screaming and flailing our arms. It was such a rush.

A few years after the séance, a friend bought a deck of tarot cards at a yard sale for fifty cents. Not knowing how to read the cards, she’d have us each pick one. That single card, determined our fate. I pulled one with a woman in bed burying her face in her hands with nine swords over her head. My friend said I would die in bed after nine men stabbed me. Her interpretations were a little morbid. A boy, who drew the Death card, freaked out and told his mother. My friend’s mother took the tarot deck from her and grounded her for a week.

Down the street from another close friend’s house, lived an old woman, bent over and crooked from arthritis. We’d walk by her house and she’d snap at us to be quiet and to stop our laughing. Pointing at us, she would grumble that we were disturbing her rose bushes. She was so scary. My friend insisted she was a witch and had just placed a curse on us.

Recently, I attended a book convention in New Orleans and had my tarot cards read in Jackson Square. The reader didn’t look like the stereotypical image I had burned in my mind. She was pretty, with long blond hair, and stylishly dressed. The reading was fascinating. So far, three out of the four predications she made for me has happened. I’m crossing my fingers hard for the fourth one. It’s a biggie. This reading gave me the spark for a story.

A few months later, I attended my publisher’s conference in Las Vegas. There were brainstorming sessions and an idea hit me. A story bloomed, mingling with my recent encounter with the tarot reader and memories of my past. It haunted me the entire conference. I had to tell this story. My writer friends helped me hash out a plot while in the hotel elevator, and I couldn’t wait to write it.

Ideas grow from tidbits of the past, from something as simple as a turn of phrase, from lyrics of a song, from a coffee table book filled with the world’s most beautiful libraries, and just from witnessing the lives of others around you. Stories whisper in your ear like a ghost in a darken shed, and if you don’t listen and grab the idea, it will be lost in the flip of a card.

And that’s how TOUCHING FATE came to life. It's a story filled with romance, betrayal, curses, fates, friendships, and family bonds, with a touch of magic. I am currently working on book two in The Fated Series, CURSING FATE.

About Brenda Drake

Brenda Drake grew up the youngest of three children, an Air Force brat, and the continual new kid at school. Her fondest memories growing up is of her eccentric, Irish grandmother’s animated tales, which gave her a strong love for storytelling. With girls of all ages populating Brenda’s world, it was only fitting that she would choose to write stories with a bend toward the fantastical for both younger readers and the young at heart. And because she married her prince charming, there’s always a romance warming the pages. Her favorite books are The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis, Kings Row by Henry Bellamann, and Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins.

When she’s not writing, she hosts workshops and contests for writers such as Pitch Wars and Pitch Madness on her blog, and holds Twitter pitch parties on the hashtag, #PitMad. In her free time, Brenda enjoys hanging out with her family, cuddling their two cats, and chasing their ferret around the house, or haunting libraries, bookstores, and coffee shops, or just reading someplace quiet and not at all exotic (much to her disappointment).

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About TOUCHING FATE

One touch is all it takes...

Aster Layne believes in physics, not psychics. A tarot card reading on the Ocean City Boardwalk should have been a ridiculous, just-for-fun thing. It wasn't. Aster discovers she has a very unscientific gift-with a simple touch of the cards, she can change a person's fate.

Reese Van Buren is cursed. Like the kind of old-school, centuries-old curse that runs in royal families. Every firstborn son is doomed to die on his eighteenth birthday-and Reese's is coming up fast. Bummer. He tries to distract himself from his inevitable death...only to find the one person who can save him.

Aster doesn't know that the hot Dutch guy she's just met needs her help-or that he's about to die.

But worst of all...she doesn't know that her new gift comes with dark, dark consequences that can harm everyone she loves.