Crossroads Queen series

## Genre Information

Urban Fantasy
Dark Fantasy

Paranormal Romance
Necromancer

 (Series Content Ratings Click on Explicit Ratings for details.)

* **Genres:** Paranormal, Necromancer, Dark Fantasy, Urban Fantasy
* **Theme:**
* **Narrative style:**

Lorelei Clay isn’t like other people.

She isn’t even like other supernaturals. Her specialties are the nightmares of the living, communication with the dead, and cooking bacon until it’s golden brown and perfectly crispy—no magic required.

Six months ago she moved to the ultimate fixer upper, a monstrosity from the Gilded Age that borders the local cemetery in the sleepy Pennsylvania town of Fairhaven. Lorelei is content to spend the next few years in solitude, renovating the house and avoiding humanity, until a missing young woman disrupts her plans. Lorelei’s search for the teenager means crossing paths with the residents she’s successfully avoided so far, including the human police chief, the coven, a cursed vampire, the assassins guild, the werewolf pack, and the mysterious and infuriatingly alluring owner of The Devil’s Playground, an elegant nightclub that caters to the local supernatural clientele.

Lorelei plans to find the girl quickly and return to the privacy of her castle walls before anyone learns her secrets, but you know what they say about the best laid plans…

Dead to the World is the first book in the Crossroads Queen urban fantasy series.

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This is a planned as a six book series.

1. Dead to the World (Crossroads Queen Book 1) (2023)
2. Dead of Night (Crossroads Queen Book 2) (2023)
3. Dead Last (Crossroads Queen Book 3) (2023)
4. Dead Wrong (Crossroads Queen Book 4) (January 11, 2024)
5. TBD
6. TBD

## World Building

### Setting

Small town Fairhaven, PA in the Pocono mountains.

### Fantasy Elements

All kinds of supernaturals, not just the usual witches, weres and vamps. Demons are involved and several creatures from various mythologies, predominantly Welsh.

### World

Modern day Earth where most humans are aware of the supernatural.

#### Terms

Crossroads
Not the intersection of two roads, but a location where two or more realms intersect. The Crossroads at Fairhaven, is in the "Wild Acres" about 20' north of the falls. The "Gate" it is a very powerful crossroads that intersects with all of the realms. Usually, any powerful crossroads is guarded by a liminal deity.
Liminal Deity
A liminal deity is a god or goddess in mythology who presides over thresholds, gates, or doorways; "a crosser of boundaries". These gods are believed to oversee a state of transition of some kind; such as, the old to the new, the unconscious to the conscious state, the familiar to the unknown. (*See: Liminal deity at wikipedia for more information*)
Examples:

* Enodia - goddess of crossroads (Greek)
* Hecate - goddess of magic and crossroads (Greek)
* Janus - dual-faced god of gates, doors, doorways, beginnings and endings, for whom January is named (Roman)

Matilda of the Night
Mallt-y-Nos (Matilda of the Night), also known as the Night Mallt, is a crone in Welsh mythology who rides with Arawn and the hounds (Cŵn Annwn) of the Wild Hunt, chasing sorrowful, lost souls to Annwn. The Mallt-y-Nos drives the hounds onward with shrieks and wails, which some say are evil and malicious in nature. (*See: Matilda of the Night at wikipedia for more information*)
Gwrach y Rhibyn
aka Gwen
The legend of the cyhyraeth is sometimes conflated with tales of the Gwrach-y-Rhibyn (pronounced [ˈɡwrɑːx ə ˈr̩ibɨn]) or Hag of the Mist, a monstrous Welsh spirit in the shape of a hideously ugly woman
The cyhyraeth (Welsh pronunciation: [kəˈhəreθ]) is a ghostly spirit in Welsh mythology, a disembodied moaning voice that sounds before a person's death. (*See: Cyhyraeth at wikipedia for more information*)
#### Locations

Wild Acres
a track of land that is left in it's natural wild state, popular with hikers. Within the Wild Acres there is a waterfall.
*The waterfall was likely acting as a conductor, absorbing the supernatural energy generated by multiple gates and spreading it through the surrounding area that included the Wild Acres and Fairhaven*.
### Protagonist

Lorelei Clay
is 35 years old who just wants to renovate "Bluebeard's Castle" a dilapidated "Gilded Age" mansion, complete with a moat and next to a cemetery. She is working on restoring the mansion and just wants to be left alone, but it turns out that her new town is a hot bed of of the paranormal thanks to the local water fall and crossroads.
**Spoiler**:

*I was, after all, Melinoe reborn. Goddess of nightmares and ghosts. Bringer of madness*.

## References

1. ↑ Chase, Annabel. Dead to the World (Crossroads Queen Book 1) (p. 190). Red Palm Press LLC. Kindle Edition.
2. ↑ Chase, Annabel. Dead Last (Crossroads Queen Book 3) (p. 222). Red Palm Press LLC. Kindle Edition.