Melanie Wells

About me:

Melanie Wells speaks on her novels, career and life.



Here's a sampler of the first chapter of Melanie's first book When the Day of Evil Comes.

Chapter 1

.. Someone said to me that day, “It’s hotter than the eyes of hell out here.” I can’t remember who. Looking back, I wonder if it meant something, that phrase. Something more than a weather report. But as it was, I let the remark pass without giving it a thought. It was hot. Hotter than the eyes of hell. That was true enough.

If I’d known enough to be afraid, I would have been. But I was a thousand years younger then, it seems, and I didn’t know what was out there. To me, it seemed like an ordinary day.

I was making a rare appearance at a faculty event. I hate faculty events. Generally, truth be told, I hate any sort of event. Anything that involves pretending, in a preordained way, to like a bunch of people with whom I have something perfunctory in common. Faculty events fall into this category.

This particular faculty event was a picnic at Barton Springs in Austin. The picnic was the final fling of a faculty retreat—my definition of hell on earth, speaking of hell. They’d all spent the weekend at a retreat center in the hill country of Texas, getting to know each other. Or bonding, as we say in the industry.

Imagine the scene. A dozen puffed-up psychologists (I include myself only in the latter part of this description, for I do admit I’m a psychologist), wallowing in all the clichés. Bonding exercises. Trust falls. Processing groups. Sharing. I could imagine few things more horrific.

I’d begged off the retreat, citing a speaking engagement in San Antonio. A speaking engagement, might I add, that had been carefully calendared a year before, timed precisely to oppose the dreaded faculty retreat.

So I’d spent the weekend in the hill country too. But my gig involved talking to entering master’s-degree students about surviving graduate school. A topic on which I considered myself an expert, since I’d done more time in graduate school than 99 percent of the population of this grand country of ours. Hard time, in fact. I’d won my release a few years before by earning my PhD and promising myself I’d never breach the last frontier—the suck-you-in quagmire known as “post-graduate education.”

Over the weekend, I’d let those entering students in on my secret—higher education is all about perseverance. It has nothing to do with smarts or creativity or anything else.

It’s about cultivating the willingness and stamina for hoop-jumping.

Jump through the hoops, I’d said. Do it well. Do it relentlessly. And in a few years, you can join the elite of the American education system, secure in the knowledge that you too can endure with the best of them.

After sharing this little tidbit, I’d decided to take my own advice and jump through a hoop myself. The aforementioned faculty picnic at Barton Springs.

Barton Springs is a natural spring-fed pool in the heart of Austin, which is in the heart of Texas. And since it was the heart of summer, the water would be sixty-eight degrees of heaven on a hundred-degree day.

I like picnics, generally. And anything that involves water is a good thing in my eyes. I’d started swimming competitively once I figured out that swimming is like graduate school. Perseverance is the thing. And I’m pretty good at that.

So I drove to the picnic that day with a fairly good attitude, for me, considering this was a herd event for professional hoop jumpers.

I parked my truck in the shade, saying a quick prayer of thanks for the shady spot. I don’t know why I do things like that, pray over a parking spot, as though the Lord Himself is concerned about which parking space I get. Surely He has more important things on His mind. But I said the prayer anyway, parked my truck, grabbed my swim bag, and set out to find my colleagues.

They were bunched up in a good spot: near a group of picnic tables, under a live oak tree, and next to one of my favorite things in life. A rope swing. What could be more fun, I ask you? Rope swings are childhood for grown-ups.

I said my hellos and settled in at one of the tables next to my department head, Helene Levine. I liked the name. It had a swingy, rhymie sort of rhythm to it. One of the matriarchs, as she liked to describe herself, referring to her Jewish heritage.

Helene is indeed matriarchal. She’s an imposing woman, with a big battle-axe bosom and a manner that is simultaneously threatening and nurturing. I don’t know how she pulls that off, but I love her. And she loves me. For some reason, as different as we are, we hit it off from the beginning. I signed up as daughter to her nurturing side.

This day, she was in threatening mode, at least with everyone else. Foul-tempered in the heat, I guess. And probably sick of babysitting her faculty charges. In any case, she brightened when she saw me, handed me a plate of fried chicken and potato salad, and poured me a cold soda. I settled in to eat.

The food was good. Few things in the world sing to my heart like picnic food. Especially good fried chicken, and I knew Helene had fried this chicken herself. I ate a breast and a wing, two helpings of potato salad, and a huge fudge brownie, all washed down with the national drink of Texas, Dr. Pepper. A meal of champions.

Then the rope swing beckoned...

....




Events by Eventful .. .. .. .. .. .. ..

Women Can Stop the Fireworks on Independence Day: Psychotherapist Offers Tips for Women in Abusive Relationships

http://www.foxbusiness.com:80/story/women-stop-fireworks-independence-day-psychotherapist-offers-tips-women-abusive/

Go to the above link to read what I had to say.

A spellbinding example of a writer at the top of her prose


By Kane X. Faucher
Scene Magazine
London's Entertainment, Arts and News Paper
November 8-21, 2007

Dylan Foster has elected of her own volition to follow the wending labyrinth of mysteries and intrigues surrounding the kidnapping of a young neighbourhood child. As the police turn up no substantive clues in fi nding the child, Dylan relies on a constellation of unlikely sources to aid her in the quest for truth. Chilling coincidences and the unsettling dreams of a six-year-old girl, Christine Zocci, lead Dylan on an epic and shadowy journey filled with bizarre twists and feints as she unravels an even deeper mystery. As opposed to other "whodunit" books of this genre, the tale is imbued with a more intensive psychological focus, involving haunting symbols and the paranormal connection between dreams and reality.

Melanie Wells employs sinuous, rolling description in this suspenseful drama. With a natural flair for dialogue, My Soul to Keep is a spellbinding example of a writer at the top of her prose, and an exemplary highlight that just may outshine her other offerings such as The Soul Hunter and When the Day of Evil Comes. As in her other two previous novels, Wells truly excels in writing characters of profound depth and in providing her readers with a mystifying and sinister atmosphere that truly compels. Moments of levity occur throughout to give the story a strong sense of pace and realism, allowing readers to catch their breath when the macabre richness of the tale becomes vertiginous. This interplay of shadow and light effectively make this book a kind of literary chiaroscuro, and will provide delight to those readers who wish to be swept up by the intriguing and sometimes shadowy details of the human mind.



"The Soul Hunter" Will Capture Your Imagination

by Mike Parker Monday, 19 June 2006 (www.buddyhollywood.com)

Dallas-based psychotherapist turned novelist, Melanie Wells, knows how to weave a tale of human frailty laced with demonic treachery around a backdrop of such mundane reality that you can’t help but be sucked into the story.

The Soul Hunter is the second volume of her “Day of Evil” series, and it picks up a couple of years after psychology professor Dylan Foster’s initial encounter with the fallen angel blithely known as Peter Terry. As the story opens Dylan is primping and fluffing, getting ready for a hot date when she hears a thump at the door. Expecting her knight in shining armor, she discovers instead that a bloody ax has been left on her doorstep. Peter Terry, it seems, has returned with a vengeance.

No shrinking violet who waits for the men in her life to fix all her problems, Dylan goes on the offensive. This may be spiritual warfare, but it’s being played out in the natural and Dylan has no intention of going down without a fight. Drawing on her research experience she tracks down the victim of the ax murderer, a sad and defiant young stripper named Drew Sturdivant. The deeper she digs into the young woman’s life, the more bizarre, and dangerous, the hunt becomes. Peter Terry’s fingerprints, if a demon has fingerprints, are all over this case.

Ms. Wells has created an entirely believable universe where Good and Evil battle for the souls of men – believable because the incidences portrayed are all too real. We see them on the news. Sometimes we live them ourselves. But she also manages to inject a healthy dose of humor and pathos into the story, keeping it from spiraling down into an unwieldy mass of blind terror.

Yeah, The Soul Hunter is scary. And funny. And intense. You might find yourself looking under your bed after you read it, but then you’ll laugh at yourself. After all, everyone knows monsters live in the closet.

When the Day of Evil Comes

Hotter than the Eyes of Hell...

School is back in session, but for psychology professor Dylan Foster, the promise of a new semester is dying in the heat of the late Texas summer. She is about to get a crash course in spiritual warfare — and a glimpse of her own small but significant role in a vast eternal conflict. But when the dust settles, will anything be left of her life as she knows it? First, there is the bizarre encounter with a ghastly pale stranger. Then her mother's engagement ring turns up — the same ring that was buried with her mother two years before.

Soon, Dylan's carefully ordered world is unraveling, one thread at a time. A former patient accuses her of impropriety, putting her career in jeopardy. A suicide plunges her deeper into shadow. Relationships with colleagues start to crumble. And then there are those flies in her house...

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

A native of the Texas panhandle, Melanie Wells went to Southern Methodist University on a music scholarship (she's a fiddle player) and later completed graduate degrees at Our Lady of the Lake University and Dallas Theological Seminary. She has been in private practice as a therapist since 1992 and is the founder and director of LifeWorks counseling associates, a collaborative community of creative therapists, in Dallas, Texas. (www.wefixbrains.com) When the Day of Evil Comes is the first of a three-book series. She lives and writes in Dallas.