My Writing - Nyssa's Hobbit Hole

Books to Purchase:

I write fiction in various genres: fantasy, gothic/paranormal romance, and time-travel.

Tojet, novel available as e-book here and here.

Tojet is a fairy tale for adults. A mysterious girl named Tojet appears in a convent-run school one day. Two teachers, Sister Elizabeth and oddly-named Merkit Terjit, take her under their care.

But is she a lost, imaginative orphan or a time traveler with fairy powers? How does she know who Merkit is and how he was named?

Tragedy drives her away, but she returns as a young, beautiful woman, far more mature than she should be. She shows Merkit a world of obsession and dark fairies.

He can’t help falling in love with her, but what about the monastic vows he’s about to take? Can he fight the temptations that surround him?

[Longer, alternate summary, from old website:]

Written by Nyssa (penname Nerissa McCanmore), this novel is a combination of the fantasy, time travel, and Celtic genres. It combines the author’s imagination and European fairy lore to create the world of fairies in the novel. This is not a child’s fairy tale.

A nine-year-old girl appears at a convent-run school in the 1990s, saying her name is Tojet and she, a Celt, was born on a fairy mound in England in 566.

Merkit, a lay teacher, takes her into his home when asked to do so by Sister Elizabeth, a good friend of his.

Tojet says that the fairies of the mound have always favored her. They gave her the ability to transcend time, chose Merkit as her husband (knowing, unbeknownst to Tojet, that his wife would soon die), and named him so Tojet would recognize him.

Tojet now gives Merkit what she calls dream visions: interactive and sometimes dangerous dreams of her world of good and evil fairies, mixed with sixth-century Anglo-Saxon life. The longest dream vision takes him underneath the surface of the Atlantic Ocean, where he encounters mermaids, mermen, and undines.

When Merkit’s wife dies in a car accident, Tojet feels guilty because, for a moment, she wished his wife would leave. She disappears, taking all her belongings with her.

After two and a half years, Tojet returns–aged by nine years, mostly spent in other centuries. Now beautiful, brilliant, and well-educated, she wants to claim Merkit as her husband.

However, he has entered a monastery, and does not wish to leave it. Tojet does not give up on Merkit, and resumes showing him dream visions.

Without meaning to, she also leads him into dangerous experiences with fairies–and into temptation. Two prominent figures in the dream visions and real life are the fairy queen and the goblin king, who are their ambivalent allies.

Read Preview here: TojetPreview

Buy as e-book here and here.

—See reviews here and here. [Update: Last link was to Wayback Machine, but doesn’t work anymore for some reason.]

The Lighthouse, story collection, novel available as download here and here.

Enter the world of the Lighthouse, a club for supernatural beings and social misfits. In this Gothic story collection you will find castles, ghosts, vampires, romance and terror:

Bedlam Castle–An American college girl loses herself in the hallways of a 900-year-old castle. Eccentric characters invite her to dinner. One is a genie, one is an undine, and most of the others are ghosts. One man intrigues her the most–but is he a mortal man or a supernatural creature like the rest?

Jarkin–Becky Stevens falls in love against her will with Archibald Jarkin, an eccentric, austere and charismatic preacher. Their passionate marriage is tested when Jarkin’s TV ministry turns into a witch hunt. When Becky discovers the Lighthouse, their life together takes a startling new path.

Alexander Boa: Or, I was a co-ed vampire slave–When a young woman’s college is taken over by a vampire, she becomes his secret mistress. Will she be torn apart when her friends decide to kill him?

Candida–A young man is stricken with a girl who falls under a vampire’s spell. Soon married and pregnant with the vampire’s baby, she has no idea what danger she’ll be in if the baby is a boy.

The frame story–Jenny, a social misfit, is introduced to the Lighthouse, supernatural creatures, and a deceptive man. When he leaves her and then accuses her of stalking him, she can only vindicate herself by facing the horrors of a haunted cave. Will she survive? Will she fall in love again?

Read Preview here

Buy as e-book here and here.

Various works free to read on my site:

My Blog

College Fiction:

The Last Night: Romance on a Rome-Like Planet (includes college revision and high school original)

Bryan and Shyeskol: An Earthling and Martian Love Story (also see my Martian alphabet and pictures of Martians)

Pictures from my college comic strip about me, genie Zara, and Cleopatra

Goewin the Bard (story written for Celtic Roots class, final project)

The Romance of the Rosebud (Dream Vision Parody)

Memoir in Web-books:

Life At Roanoke (My College Memoirs)—

A mix of good times, along with stories of verbally/emotionally/sexually abusive boyfriends–and probably some undiagnosed form of NVLD/Asperger’s. How dark times finally gave way to coming out into the light.

They reflect 4 years of apparently dealing with a little-known learning disorder, without the benefit of knowing I had it. It has caused difficulties. But it also gave me certain abilities which helped with my writing and later jobs.

These memoirs are meant to entertain, to help young women avoid my relationship mistakes, and to show how I finally came through my relationship struggles triumphant.

Also note that while I still struggle with many things because of NVLD, I graduated college and have made a decent life for myself–the roots of which are in my college story.

The Darkness Engulfs Me: Abuse by Two Narcissists–and Betrayal by a Best Friend and Spiritual Mentor—

I thought I had found a religious and spiritual mentor in my search for the True Church, and a best friend here in my own town instead of far away, one who would always be there for me throughout life. But I believe this is what really happened:

I fell prey to a con man who eventually decided my husband and I were of no further use to him and his wife. He used to be a Mafia thug, and was easily provoked to violence. He hypnotized me without my knowledge.

They wanted to get political connections, but we were too “liberal” and not politically driven; he kept getting money and stuff from us, but the economy tanked and we had money trouble; I was his confidante of his wife’s abuses of him and the children, so she, who has a family history of personality disorders, smeared me to him to drive a wedge between us; and I spoke up against the way they both had been treating their kids.

So instead of addressing the real issues, they made me a scapegoat, made up offenses and kept me always jumping over hoops. Then because we no longer had much money to give them, I started doubting Richard’s wild stories, and I had let them know they abused their kids, they started treating my husband and I both very badly.

They found an imaginary complaint to skewer me over, so we would break off the friendship in disgust, but they would still be able to claim that it was my fault and not theirs.

Richard threatened my husband with physical violence and intimidated him. Then in 2010, I was proven correct about the abuse, when Richard choked his oldest daughter until she passed out. He plea bargained and served a year of probation.

This is my story of what happened.

Memoir as blog category:

Fighting the Darkness: Journey from Despair to Healing—

Series of blog posts struggling to deal with the events of The Darkness Engulfs Me. This link starts at the earliest posts.

Juvenilia:

(I wrote these in childhood or adolescence, and present them here mostly as originally written, except for minor edits.)

A Story-Game from my childhood: I was a moon in the solar system

An Unwilling Time-Traveler (written in high school)

(Yes, there will be various things that can be edited, fixed, expanded, researched, etc. But this is juvenilia, not anything I’m currently working on as an adult. So except for some changes here and there, I will present the stories as-is. Just remember they were written by a child/teenager. 🙂

(More I hope to find in my archives and post: stories about a desert island, the first colonists on Mars, a girl who discovers she’s from Uranus, Martians who keep humans in an “Ant Farm,” various dreams, early drafts of Jerisland. Subject to what I can still find in my boxes, files, etc.!)

***Please note that all my work is copyrighted by me. You can print it out for your own use, but do not copy beyond Fair Use, and always attribute to Nyssa McCanmore!

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