Book Lovin' Mamas: Guest Post - Author: Krista D. Ball

Important Announcement for our Followers

To ALL our followers....It is time for Book Lovin' Mamas to make the switch from Blogger to Wordpress.

We do not want to wake up one day and notice that we cannot logon to our blog due to Blogger changing its policies.

We have worked too hard to have that happen...so it is long overdue, we have moved over to our domain.

It will make it easier for YA'LL to find us.

We have already started to post over at the new site...and August 1st will be official day we say GOODBYE to this site for good.

We would love for you to follow us over at our new site because we LOVE and appreciate you all for being with us on our Blogger site.

You can find us now at - booklovinmamas.com

You can even click our blog badge below to go to our new site -

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We hope to see everyone of you over there and I hope you all are prepared for lots of giveaways coming in August and are prepared for Anna & I's big 30th birthday bash - August 18th-September 5th.

We have lots of stuff to giveaway to you all and we are bringing our 30th birthday in style. =)

GOODBYE Blogger - It was nice while it lasted...but it's time for a BIG change and to make it easier for our followers to find us. =)

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Guest Post - Author: Krista D. Ball

Today, we welcome, Krista D. Ball to our Blog. =)

A little bit about Krista D. Ball:

According to her mother, Krista D. Ball tells lies for a living. She is the author of several short stories, novellas, and novels. Krista incorporates as much historical information into her fiction as possible, mostly to justify her B.A. in British History.

Krista enjoys all aspects of the writing and publishing world, and has been a magazine intern, co-edited four RPG books, self-published several short stories and a novella series, and has been a slush reader for a small Canadian press. She has also written a non-fiction blogging guide and is currently writing a non-fiction historical book for authors called, "What Kings Ate and Wizards Drank."

Whenever she gets annoyed, she blows something up in her fiction. Regular readers of her work have commented that she must be annoyed a lot.

You can find Krista D. Ball:

Krista D. Ball talks about how she came up with Vikings in her book "Spirits Rising, below.

Paranormal fantasy and Vikings?

I’ll be the first one to admit that Vikings seem an unlikely choice for any contemporary fantasy story. After all, it’s been a long time since Vikings have roamed the earth. Vikings are the stuff of historical fantasy or historical romance. But contemporary fantasy?

I grew up in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, a place steeped in history. There’s thousands of years of history in the area, from the oldest North American burial site at L’Anse Amour burial site (circa 5500 BCE), to the more recent extinction of the Beothuk people. We even had some Viking visitors at one point.

The Northern Peninsula of Newfoundland is a wind-swept land where trees jut out of the ground on steep angle, unable to grow against the prevailing winds off the ocean. The highway winds its way along dozens of fishing villages. On a clear day, you can even see across the straits to Labrador.

For the people raised in the L’Anse aux Meadows area (pronounced locally as Lancin Meadows), they’d played on top of grassy mounds near the ocean. Since there were so many burial sites on the island, the locals just assumed it was yet more native sites and left them alone. No one poked at them. No one dug them up.

We Newfoundlanders are, by and large, a superstitious bunch. If you leave the dead alone, they’ll usually leave you alone.

Well, in the 1960s a pair of Norwegian and their teams came to Newfoundland. They were convinced that the Vikings landed in the area and, if they could prove it, it would signal the only known Norse site in North American outside of Greenland.

Well, they found a lot more than a few iron nails. They found an entire Viking village hidden in those mounds that the kids were playing on top!

Today, L’Anse Aux Meadows is a Unesco World Heritage Site. The original site of the Viking village has been buried to protect it, with a few buildings reconstructed just off to the side. Inside one of the sod longhouses, you can have a bowl of caribou stew while locals dressed as Vikings tell you the story of living in a harsh environment.

Newfoundland has a rich artistic heritage. We can all do something, be it woodcrafts, knit, sew, bake and cook traditional foods, sing, play an instrument, write, compose, or create pottery and ceramics. I wanted a way to ensure that I kept true to my own origins by writing about my home. So, I wrote about Vikings, Spirits, and Newfoundland.

I recently had the pleasure of reading and reviewing her book, "Spirits Rising". You can find my Review on "Spirits Rising", here. If you love reading about Spirits, Vikings and History, you will definitely enjoy this book. I hope to one day visit Newfoundland. Check out some interesting photos on Wikipedia.

XOXO,

FranJessca

You can Buy "Spirits Rising" at the following Stores: Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Smashwords