(The other Debra here... I'd like you to help me welcome semi-regular guest Deborah Smith! In about a week, her first urban fantasy under the pen name Leigh Bridger should be shipping. I'm sure she'll answer questions about the book but she's blogging on art ! For those curious about the book--please be curious, I've added a synopsis at the end of the blog. And one lucky blog reader who comments will win an ARC/Bound Galley)
This is what happens when a tame women's fiction author turns to writing urban fantasy: I stood in the art-studio corner of my basement, brush in hand, chortling happily at
a bloated, red-eyed, fanged demon.
Compare him to this sample of art from my pre-demon days. Yes, kids, that's a pair of cartoon puddy-tats. For the children's book I'm working
on.
Seriously. This is my Jekyll and Hyde confession: By day I write women's fiction and cartoon kitty books; by night I write about cannibalistic demons and heroines who indulge in threesomes with ghosts.
After Deb Dixon, my Bell Bridge Books partner, editor, and trusted art critic, pronounced my first demon painting "smiley and bloated" but not remotely sinister, I tried again. I 
set "Smiley" aside and painted this one. Check out this demon manhood. Skull Head, as I call him, is a hunka sexy non-human seduction, IMHO.
His, uhmmm, "focal point," which is NOT covered by a green Photoshop graphic on the actual canvas, is so amazing it prompted my startled husband to suggest I "tone down that highlight." Men get so testy when their wives prop a three-by-four-foot painting of demon junk on the living room coffee table.
If nothing else, my amateur art skills helped me create more much more vivid characters on the page. I promise you, the drooling, slurping, fanged, clawed demons in my book are far creepier than Smiley and Skull Head.
SOUL CATCHER, under my new nom-de-fantasy, Leigh Bridger, comes out next week. Now I'm back to work in the gentler world of women's fiction, writing a novella titled THE TOMATO MOONS OF MORNING GLORY and also working on a big trilogy (first book: KITCHEN CHARMS.)
But the lure of the dark side continues to call me, so, hopefully, I'll follow up with SOUL HUNTER next year.
Hmmm, let's see. The demon will have a head like a goat, ears like a bat's, tusks, razor-sharp heel spurs, and a twin set of . . . well, you'll just have to wait for the painting.
SOUL CATCHER: From the gothic eccentricity of Asheville, North Carolina, to the terrifying recesses of the Appalachian wilderness, from modern demonology to ancient Cherokee mythology, Soul Catcher follows the tormented journey of folk artist Livia Belane, who has been stalked through many lives by a sadistic and vengeful demon. Livia and her loved ones, including her frontier-era soulmate and husband, Ian, a Soul Hunter, have never beaten the demon before. Now, in this life, it's found them again.
