Legend of the Luna
The Moon Cried Blood Book 1
by Sumiko Saulson
Genre: YA Dark Fantasy, Horror
Book
One of the serialized tale of "The Moon Cried Blood," the
Legend of the Luna introduces us to the Lunae, and to the character
Leticia Gordon.
Leticia “Tisha” Gordon, a thirteen year old girl living in Los Angeles in 1975. Tisha has been beleaguered by tragedy all of her young life. She has lost her father, her mother is in a mental hospital, and her stepmother has been raising her along with her three year old half sister. At the beginning of the story, a third tragedy strikes as she loses her stepmother and sister in a car accident and is threatened with the possibility of ending up in foster care. Under these devastating circumstances, she learns that she is endowed with powers, to look into the hearts of men and see their underlying motivations, as well as the potential to travel through time in the dreams of her ancestors because she comes from a long line of witches called the Lunae who are imbued with their power by the moon. The Lunae do not begin to exhibit power until they enter puberty and experience the onset of menstruation, known as menarche.
Series
Overview:
It
is said that the Wolf may howl at the Moon, but the Moon never howls
at the Wolf. In the gritty urban streets of Los Angeles in 1975,
Leticia Gordon is forced to come to terms with many things: the
tragic death of her stepmother and baby sister in a car accident,
fear she’ll wind up in foster care, and the sudden revelation she
belongs to a long line of powerful witches known as Lunae – who
exhibit first power at menarche (first menstruation). Running from
foes natural and supernatural, will her new found powers be the
turning point that elevates her position of honor, or will it destroy
her like the dark forces that consumed her father? In a world turned
upside down where time itself seems in flux, in whom can she trust?
Bloodlines
The Moon Cried Blood Book 2
The
Moon Cried Blood Saga continues as young Tisha Gordon travels across
country with her great-great-grandmother Letty and learns both her
fate and her history. Meanwhile, her estranged mother, Joy, is on a
journey of her own. Will mother and daughter be reunited? Are Tisha's
tragedies finally at an end, or are they only just beginning. Who is
this mysterious Nana Letty, and what is the secret she is hiding from
her past?
It
is said that the Wolf may howl at the Moon, but the Moon never howls
at the Wolf. In the gritty urban streets of Los Angeles in 1975,
Leticia Gordon is forced to come to terms with many things: the
tragic death of her stepmother and baby sister in a car accident,
fear she'll wind up in foster care, and the sudden revelation she
belongs to a long line of powerful witches known as Lunae – who
exhibit first power at menarche (first menstruation). Running from
foes natural and supernatural, will her new found powers be the
turning point that elevates her position of honor, or will it destroy
her like the dark forces that consumed her father? In a world turned
upside down where time itself seems in flux, in whom can she trust?
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Dreams of the Departed
The Moon Cried Blood Book 3
The
Moon Cried Blood chronicle continues with “Dreams of the
Departed”.
For
Tisha Gordon, it is a family reunion. For her mother Joy, it is a
homecoming. Things seem to have calmed down in both of their lives,
but things are still not all wine and roses for the Gordon family.
Joy has had a disturbing premonition and fears the worse, while Nana
Letty is being stalked by a California condor, a death omen, and is
anxiously performing rituals in the apartment of the tragically lost
Bridget and Kara Gordon in anticipation of some late night visits by
family members from the other side of the veil.
The
relatives who have left this plane are not the only ones who have to
be faced: Joy is reuniting with her estranged adoptive parents,
Joseph and Noelle Todd, and is about to be visited by another blast
from her past.
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Death Omen
The Moon Cried Blood Book 4
Joy's reunion with her birth family is tainted by tragedy and as the story of her family unfolds, it becomes ever the more clear the ways in which her separation from the Lunae of Beyond left her, and by extension, her daughter Tisha, in a vulnerable position, open to exploitation by the forces of darkness and the sometimes malevolent machinations of Tisha's bigamist father, Mark Gordon, whose betrayals are even deeper than they seemed. Letty continues to be stalked by the death omen, and even as Tisha and Joy meet their extended blood family, Letty's mind is seeming to unravel. Who is the tall and mysterious Elle, and who was the troubled Victoria? Why is the condor still following Letty?
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Shadow and Substance
The Moon Cried Blood Book 5
In Book Five of the serialized tale of "The Moon Cried Blood, "Shadow and Substance," things really start to heat up when the Lunae witches start to suffer from frightening dreams and visions, and a new threat, the Dark Luna. Who is she and why is she such a danger to all of the Lunae witches? Shocking supernatural/family revelations abound in the wildest episode of the Moon Cried Blood series
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Ghosts of Time
The Moon Cried Blood Book 6
Tisha Gordon's mother Joy was adopted. After years of separation, the death of Tisha's biological grandmother Victoria reunites Tisha and Joy with Joy's birth family. During the wake of Victoria's funeral service, Tisha is visited by her ghost, and the strange apparition of a sickly young girl named Lita who says she is from the future. Lita claims to be Tisha's grand daughter.
Moon Shadow
The Moon Cried Blood Book 7
This
is the seventh book in The Moon Cried Blood series about a young
witch named Tisha Gordon who lives in Los Angeles in the 1970s.
In
a dream, Tisha’s father, Mark Gordon, comes back from the dead, and
boy does he have some explaining to do. Not only are his exwife Joy
and daughter Tisha annoyed with him, but his evil daughter Alita
wants to have words with him. Meanwhile, Bobby Guerrero, the boy
Tisha has a crush on, turns out to be one of Lucia's relatives. He
shows up at the house and makes life a little more interesting for
Leticia Gordon.
Blood Moon
The Moon Cried Blood Book 8
In the eight and final book of The Moon Cried Series, there is a showdown between the forces of good and evil. The corrupt Alita faces off with Joy and Tisha Gordon, aiming to prevent the birth of Tisha's powerful granddaughter Lita forty years in the future. It is said the moon never howls at the wolf, but in this strange, new, unpredictable time, things that were never seen before are seen. Those who fought on the side of the wolf, after generations spent in the moon's bloodline, change their allegiance. Is there now hope even for those like Mark Gordon, who were taken over by dark forces long ago?
Sumiko
Saulson Silver Dagger Book Tours Guest Blog
Q. Can you, for those who don't know you already, tell something
about yourself and how you became an author?
A.
While I have been writing for all of my adult life, having started out in
spoken word poetry and journalism back in high school, I didn’t write my first
novel until I was 42 years old. Mind you, I tried to write a novel when I was
25. But the blog bogged down and became convoluted, and eventually, I lost the
floppy disc it was on – wow, anyone remember those? So, I stopped trying to be
a novelist and went back to my day job as a computer repair technician for a
bunch of years.
Fast
forward to 2010, the year I started writing my first novel, Solitude. My mother been been diagnosed
with multiple-myeloma, a rare bone cancer that predominately affects African
Americans, a year earlier. My parents were divorced, but remained on friendly
terms so that they could both be in the lives of their children and
grandchildren. I was working as my mother’s in home health care aide, when
my
father was been recently diagnosed with lung cancer. I decided it was now or
never because if I didn’t start my novel now, my parents might not be around to
see it.
Q. And were your
parents able to enjoy your successes as a writer?
A.
My father was a huge sci-fi and horror fan, and he read my books. Well, I’d
give him the manuscripts, and he would have Dragon Naturally Speaking read them
on his computer. I wrote three books while he was alive – Solitude, Warmth, and the
Moon Cried Blood series. Warmth was
his favorite. But he had a copy of Solitude on his bedside when he died in
2013.
My
mom attended most of my book readings, and was my plus-one at various
conventions, fairs and festivals over the years. She also collaborated on
projects with me. She co-wrote a script for a pilot for a television show based
on Warmth with me. We also wrote a
play together based on Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde called The Strange Case of Dr. Henriette Jekyll. She had me illustrate a
comic book based on her novella, Living a
Lie.
Q. What inspired you to write this
book?
I actually started
writing it as a short story when I was eighteen. I submitted it to Fangoria, and they sent it back with a
really friendly rejection letter, saying it was a great story but it was
suspense, not horror. They asked me to please send them something else. I was
too insecure so I never did. But I decided to resurrect it when I was writing
my third novel. I set it back in the 1970s, when I was a kid, in Los Angeles,
where I grew up, and made the protagonist thirteen years old, just five years
older than I was at the time. I enjoyed drawing on personal experience to talk
about the music, culture and architecture of the time.
Can you tell us a little bit about
the characters in The Moon Cried Blood
series?
The main
character, Leticia Gordon, who goes by Tisha, is a thirteen year old African
American and Mexican American girl living in Los Angeles in the 1970s. She has
had a difficult life – her mom is in a mental hospital, and her father was
murdered. She discovers early in the book that she is a witch, from a long
bloodline of witches who get their power from the moon. Because her mother,
Joy, was adopted, both of them have been cut off from her birth family and
unaware of the powerful legacy they have inherited. Early in the book, she
meets a very old woman named Letty, who is a hundred years old. She’s Tisha’s
great-great-great grandmother. The wise and very personable yet very funny
Letty starts to train impetuous young Tisha on how to control her powers, and
protect herself from the dark forces that hunt her. Like Little Red Riding
Hood, Tisha is hunted by a wolf - not a literal wolf, but a terrifying wolf
spirit that possesses people and compels them to do its bidding.
Q. What can we expect from you in
the future?
I have a
new book of dark poetry and prose coming out on October 10, 2021 called Within
Me / Without Me. It’s available on Amazon, at Barnes & Noble, on
iTunes/iStore, and Kobo as an eBook, in paperback and in hardcover. You can
find out all about it at https://dookyzines.com/. You can find out more about the
Moon Cried Blood Series at https://sumikosaulson.com/tcmb/
Sumiko
Saulson is an award-winning author of Afrosurrealist and
multicultural sci-fi and horror. Ze is the editor of the anthologies
and collections Black
Magic Women, Scry
of Lust, Black
Celebration,
and Wickedly
Abled.
Ze is the winner of the 2016 HWA StokerCon "Scholarship from
Hell", 2017 BCC Voice "Reframing the Other" contest,
2017 Mixy Award, 2018 AWW "Afrosurrealist Writer Award,"
2020 HWA Diversity Grant recipient.
Ze has an AA in English
from Berkeley City College, and writes a column called "Writing
While Black" for a national Black Newspaper, the San
Francisco BayView. Ze is the host of the SOMA Leather and LGBT
Cultural District's "Erotic
Storytelling Hour."
Website * Facebook * Twitter * Instagram * Amazon * Goodreads
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The art on the covers is amazing! It pulls you in and makes the you want to dive into the story.
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