S.J. Cairns creates paranormal romance fantasy from her hometown in Southern Ontario, Canada. When S.J is not plugging away at her laptop on her comfy couch, you can find her chasing around her four-year-old daughter alongside her husband of over twenty years or working in true chaos at local homeless shelters and anti-human trafficking safe house.

Author: @sjcairns

Cat Links Blog

Superstitions – No One Is Safe

Posted on @sjcairns

“Wow. It’s quiet today,” someone says at work. “Noooo! Don’t say that!” *I feverishly look for REAL wood, not that pressed wood crap, to knock on* When you work in a shelter, you never, ever, comment on a quiet shift or you risk immediate karmic backlash. No. Instead, you ignore the quiet and when someone mentions it, you knock wood, flex, and stare the bad luck down like an alpha wolf about to go rabid if it dares to mess with you. Then, twenty minutes pass and it gets busy anyway because that’s the nature of social work. Hrumph. Superstitions

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Cat Links Blog

Writing Communities are All About the “V” Word

Posted on @sjcairns

(My original post was on The Fabulous Fictionistas website.) Which “V” word? You ask. Vampires? No, but you may stumble over a few in the dark on the way to kitchen for more snacks. Vagina? Pfft. Even if we Fictionistas are taking one each on our writing journey and at times listening to it’s gut feeling instead of our tummies. Victims? Sort of. Maybe. You’ll find many and we writers love to rack up the kill quotient and decimate the hearts of our readers for our own sick pleasure. The “V” word I’m getting to is “VALIDATION”. Boring after realizing

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Cat Links Blog

Deleted Scenes – Soul Discovery, Soul Seer Chronicles

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Everyone loves a nugget of what could have been, so I’m sharing a few small and unedited nugs from Soul Discovery. Made more difficult by the fact it’s a new release and I risk revealing too much. #1. Unfortunately the scene didn’t pertain to the forward motion of the story, so it was cut. I still envision the old man down in the park when I get to this part of the story. Laundry tumbling, I lacked direction again. 5:30am was an okay good time to walk Bosco before he peed on the couch he was sniffing at and all

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Cat Links Blog

Creative Spaces – Office Makeover

Posted on @sjcairns

Heya creative people, Sometimes inspiration hits at the craziest places, like the shower with no options to write things down. Ideally, your muse slides up to your shoulder and whispers sweet plot lines while you’re in front of the computer with swift fingers. (err…maybe not put quite like that). You know what I mean. A creative space is important and can welcome you into the proper head space to build captivating characters and worlds to better illustrate the story rolling around in your noggin. I’ve been in my new home since December and this weekend I FINALLY got my office

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Cat Links Blog

20 Facts about Author S.J. Cairns

Posted on @sjcairns

I was tagged by @SpartaGus to reveal 20 facts about myself. You can find his here. When I was 13 I wanted to be an actress/model/singer, because you can’t choose just one. Duh! I hate hashbrowns. Potatoes in any other form is acceptable. Hashbrowns? May as well be cigarette ash. It’s possible I have an unhealthy obsession with journals.   4. My first kiss was at 15 on a high school production balcony, Spiderman style, while I was unknowingly high on shrooms (Friend of a friend dosed our pizza). Pretty sure the guy doesn’t even know. 5. In college I

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Cat Links Blog

BEA16 – Book Expo of America for Introverts

Posted on @sjcairns

Hey guys! Huh? Well, that was easy. Arm in arm with the anonymity of a keyboard and editing options, saying hello to a bunch of strangers is simpler than blinking. Walking through the doors of McCormick Place in Chicago and seeing the thousands of people milling around ranging from readers, bloggers, authors, librarians, advertisers, publishers, and anything else you could possibly think of that’s related to the publishing world, PLUS the expectation to talk to them and make future contacts? Cha’right bud. Simple eye contact was a no-go. It granted permission for people to talk to you, to ask questions,

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Cat Links Blog

Release of Soul Discovery Tomorrow. Almost There!

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Anyone who knows/follows me on social media is probably sick of hearing about my writing a book, especially when it’s taking a millennia to be real. Once I signed with Booktrope Publishing my hobby became a second job and “advertising” my progression through the trenches came with hesitance and excitement, so hopefully only a few have added me to their hit lists. A year after signing with  BT (maybe more than a year…definitely more…Gah!) it has taken me to get my first book SOUL DISCOVERY, SOUL SEER CHRONICLES ready. Which sounds like it was a POS to begin with, maybe

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Cat Links Blog, Book Reviews

Book Review: Patient Zero by Jonathan Maberry

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  Genre: Horror > Terrorists > Zombies   Synopsis: When you have to kill the same terrorist twice in one week there’s either something wrong with your world or something wrong with your skills… and there’s nothing wrong with Joe Ledger’s skills.  And that’s both a good, and a bad thing.  It’s good because he’s a Baltimore detective that has just been secretly recruited by the government to lead a new taskforce created to deal with the problems that Homeland Security can’t handle. This rapid response group is called the Department of Military Sciences or the DMS for short. It’s

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Cat Links Blog, Book Reviews

Book Review: Out of the Silent Plant by C.S. Lewis

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  Genre: Science Fiction   Synopsis: In the first novel of C.S. Lewis’s classic science fiction trilogy, Dr Ransom, a Cambridge academic, is abducted and taken on a spaceship to the red planet of Malacandra, which he knows as Mars. His captors are plotting to plunder the planet’s treasures and plan to offer Ransom as a sacrifice to the creatures who live there. Ransom discovers he has come from the ‘silent planet’ – Earth – whose tragic story is known throughout the universe…   My Star Rating:     My Review: This is my first experience with C.S. Lewis. Yes,

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