Undawnted: The Official Site of DL Mullan: Smothered

About Smothered, by B.T. Clearwater

Annie Brown's life could use some renovation. She's in trouble at work, her ex-boyfriend is stalking her, and she's just inherited a dilapidated Victorian home from her late mother, who hasn't quite moved out yet. The last thing Annie needs in her life is a man, but when handyman Mike Tolbert comes to fix her dishwasher, she lets him demo her doubt.

Mike doesn't need the distraction of a relationship either. An Iraq War combat veteran and divorcee, Mike suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and is dealing with a manipulative ex. Yet, something about Annie snags his heart and he finds he cannot walk away from her.

Annie's mother doesn't approve of their relationship, and she's willing to cross from the realm of death to that of the living to control her daughter. With the ghost of her mother haunting them, Mike and Annie face his PTSD, her troubles at work, and a deadly plot to steal her childhood home, all while fighting to keep their love alive.

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Interview with Author B.T. Clearwater

In your novel, Smothered, you delve into some deep topics about emotional health and the human psyche. What enticed you to develop characters rooted in these personal struggles, such as a narcissistic mother for Annie, and PTSD for Mike?

Well, all characters in any story need to encounter obstacles and overcomes hardships, both external and internal. I suppose using PTSD for Mike's big internal struggle came naturally, as I work for the Army, and see people with this condition quite frequently. And while Annie's struggle seems to stem from her mother, it flows much deeper than that, and has to do a lot with her failures at prior relationships. I wrote this in the time building up to my second divorce, so failed relationships appeared in a lot of my work then.

Do you enjoy writing in the genre of paranormal romance? What inspired you to create a story within this style?

I enjoy writing in every genre, but not for the reason you might think. A story is a story. If you tell it right, including using the right genre, it'll be fun to write. The "fun" of any story is, afterall, the resolution of a situation that we've built around our characters. A situation that seems impossible at first, and gets worse from there. But somehow, our protagonist figures it out in the end, overcoming those internal and external hangups. It's kind of like playing classical music at a monster truck rally. It puts the story in the wrong context, and changes the way both your characters and your reader are going to think, feel, and act. So if you're trying to shoe-horn a romance into the structure of a western, it's going to feel off. Unbalanced. Oh, and one more thing. This is, technically, a Supernatural Romance, not paranormal. The latter has an element of science to it, which lends credibility and provides skeptical readers some hooks into their reality. Supernatural shirks science and turns to magical solutions to aid the characters' struggles. As Jim Butcher put it, "Paranormal is the X-Files, Buffy is supernatural."

Do any of your characters remind you of someone? Is that why you wrote the character? Or, is it that you recognize the similarities in hindsight?

This is a tricky question to answer in this modern world of lawsuits and victim mentalities. If I say a character is based on so-and-so from real life, I open myself to litigation and lawsuits if that real person takes offense, or just needs a few bucks. So officially, no. My characters are not like anyone else.

In all honesty, though, I use existing people to model them physically and emotionally. It's not that I just notice some day that Annie looks like a young woman I know, or that Mike says something that sounds familiar. Every character anyone has ever written is based on a series of someones starting all the way in a person's infancy. We store in our minds images, words, sounds, smells, movements, and so on about the people we come across in life. We build them from skeletons to fully meat-suited as we remember those people, and as our memories warp and reshape them over time.

So in short, yes. And no. 1

Have you ever experienced a haunting? Seen a ghost? If not, would you ever take an adventure to a haunted location to gain that experience? If so, what was your experience?

The closest I have come was after my late father's celebration of life last year. At one point, I could almost swear I felt him there in the house I grew up in. I never saw, heard, smelled or otherwise detected anything with my five senses, but that sixth one sure made up for the lack. And for a moment, I knew he was looking after my mom, and that he would watch over my sister and me too. Damn but I miss him.

And no, I wouldn't want to change the way I see the supernatural world by tainting it with commercialized ideas about what a haunting is supposed to be like. I have a viewpoint that seems to ring true with readers. Why change that?

5. In the game of life, your characters, Mike and Annie, seem to be holding the short end of the stick. As a writer, do you use the literary device of adversity to create hope? A happy ending? Or, do you write the downward spiral to an unfortunate end? Which do you prefer writing comedies (happy endings) or dramas (sad endings)?

Those aren't the only types of endings, though. In fact, the romance genre itself has Happily Ever After (HEA), Happy for Now (HFN), For Now Not Forever, and a few more, less used, including tragic endings. In a romance, you won't generally see those very often. It's not what the reader is looking for. And the other endings are best used in book series, where each ending comes with hope that the lovers will get it right in the end. And "Happy" isn't the only non-tragic ending descriptor. A character can resolve all the loose strings of their storyline, defeat the antagonist, and sail off into the sunset, and yet not find happiness. Take Inigo Montoya from The Princess Bride. He has spend his whole life searching for the six-fingered man who killed his father, yet when that killer offers him money, power, and anything he wants, all Inigo can say as he drives his sword into the man's chest is, "I want my father back, you sonofabitch!" Inigo got his revenge, but nothing can bring his father back.

Which ending you choose depends largely on how you want your reader to feel when all is said and done.

Anything else you would like to add?

Yes! My next supernatural romance should come out in the summer of 2027. It is currently untitled, but the story is like a cross between the movies "This Means War" and "The Devil's Advocate."

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About B.T. Clearwater

B.T. Clearwater grew up writing stories, winning Literary Student of the Year for Lake George Central High School in 1984. He holds a Bachelor's Degree in English from the University of Nebraska at Omaha, and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Western State Colorado University, graduating both Summa Cum Laude, and is a two-time alum of the Superstars Writing Seminars run by Kevin J. Anderson. B.T. routinely judges the Zebulon writing contest for Pike's Peak Writers, and has published fiction under the science fiction, fantasy, romance, western, horror, and crime genres under different pen names. B.T. Clearwater lives in Colorado Springs with a dog, a cat, and a cast of fictional characters for company.