Jeannie Musick grew up with her feet firmly planted in two universes.
As a child, that gave a lot of ammunition to other children. Her naivety was stretched but unbroken in fifth grade when two “friends” decided to convince her that both universes were one. It began simply. “Don’t sit there! Can’t you see Fred is already sitting there?” Fred was a brownie. Not the edible type, or even the pre-girl scout. He was a mythical brownie. (If you don’t know what they are, you might check out Wikipedia for a short introduction to what was about to torture her world.) Apparently, Fred was mischievous and liked to move around, because wherever she wanted to sit – there was Fred. But what was really annoying was that Donna and Anne could see him and she couldn’t. After much time, they told her there was a ritual they could perform that would help her see brownies. All she had to do was sneak a pillow out of her house and take it to school. They would do the ritual there. Do you know how hard it is for a fifth-grade girl who doesn’t weigh enough to stay on the ground during a windstorm to sneak a big pillow out of the house under her coat??? Not easy! But she managed. She got to school and met with the conspirators. To this day she doesn’t remember the ritual, but she does remember that she never saw Fred. Of course, that was her own fault. She just wasn’t special enough to ever be able to see the brownies. Broken-hearted, she gave up the quest but not her fascination with that other universe.
Jeannie read everything she could find about mythology: Greek, Roman, Norse. They were all fascinating to her. She even began reading Egyptian, Indian, German, Russian, Hawaiian, and other international legends. And like many children, she became interested in vampires and monsters, although she preferred the non-gory versions. Her favorite television shows as a child were Dark Shadows, Bewitched, and I Dream of Jeannie: vampires, witches, and genies, oh my!
After high school and a year of college, Jeannie joined the US Air Force and was stationed in both Texas and England. She had the opportunity to visit old castles and haunted grounds. The RAF base where she was stationed in England had its own haunted priory thanks to Henry VIII and an unfortunate love affair between a nun and a canon. In college her inclination to ancient stories and myths led her to theatre. She received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Theatre and completed all but her dissertation in the PhD program in Theatre. Unfortunately, a severe accident and ensuing health problems prevented her from finishing the PhD itself.
She remembers living in the United States (California, Texas, Utah, Illinois, Alaska, Nebraska, Louisiana, and Wyoming), Germany, England, and Italy. She speaks English and Italian fluently and can still muddle through some German. She is interested in cultures worldwide and loves to research them. Even more, she hopes to be able to visit them.
In contrast to her interests in the supernatural, Jeannie is extremely religious. That spirituality impacts her own writing. Her characters are rich in internal conflict making them multi-dimensional. One reader, who was a counselor after Hurricane Katrina stated that Lilith showed all the signs of post-traumatic stress syndrome after the Flood (as in Noah’s Ark). Such little details are extremely important to Jeannie.
Above everything, Jeannie hopes that her readers care about her characters even when they know they aren’t real. “I want my readers to mourn the death of even an evil character, because no one is pure evil. We all came from God.”