KELLY J MASSEY

The story involves Jack and the Devil, but it has nothing to do with a fiddle. The Legend of "Stingy Jack" starts in a tavern as any good story should. Stingy Jack invited the Devil to have a drink with him at the bar. He then convinced the Devil to turn into a coin in order to pay for their drinks. Once the Devil did so, Jack changed his mind and placed the coin in his pocket next to a silver coin with a cross on it. This didn't allow the Devil to change back into his origin

October is an ideal month to talk about vampires. The lore of vampirism is millennia old, as even the Mesopotamians and Ancient Greeks and Romans had versions of their own kind of vampire. Yet the vampire as we know them today is mostly built around the stories from southeastern Europe in the early 18th century. Bram Stoker popularized this humanoid creature with his novel Dracula, and since then the notion of the vampire has caught our imaginations. They sometimes appear han

Saint Patrick's Day is a just a little under a week away here in the United States, but already the stores are flooded with shamrocks, green shirts, green beads, and little ginger-haired men wearing green suits and hats. Actually, who am I kidding? The stores have been stocked with this holiday stuff since February 15th! 'Murica, where we take decorating for our monthly holidays seriously. Anyway, back to the little dudes with ginger beards and green suits, also known as Le

This month's mythical creature of the month is the Siren. Now, this might seem like a stretch for some of you, but think of it astrologically and the major holiday associated with the month of February. The majority of February is dominated by the astrological sign of the Water-Bearer, often depicted as a woman carrying jugs of water. The Siren is associated with living in the water, is often depicted as a mermaid, and often lured sailors to their deaths with their beautiful

In Elemental Bloodlines, (currently planned to be the third book), a mythical animal known as the Snowy Griffin appears. This is a hybrid between a snowy owl and a snow leopard. The snowy leopard behaves much in the way of a fickle cat personality, but with the tenacity and flying capability of an owl. The Snowy Griffin in Bloodlines is named Névé, which means snow, a precipitation that is dwindling drastically in the changing atmospheric conditions of the planet Flidais. Név