Most people know her as the author of Frankenstein. That is just a small part of her story. Mary Shelley was a woman unlike others of her time. She thumbed her nose at convention. She couldn’t be categorized by the ton. By anyone. She was truly unique in ways we’d still find amazing if she did them right now in this century.

How do I know? Because I’ve been studying Mary Shelley for years now. I’ve always known I’d write about her. Not just about her creation- Frankenstein’s monster, but about Mary Shelley the person. The woman who I feel is a real heroine in so many ways. Was she perfect? Absolutely not. She ran away with a married man. She didn’t care what people thought of her love and eventual husband Percy Shelley who was a vegetarian and atheist.  Her family turned their back on her for a time. Friends betrayed her. Percy, who I have tried so hard to like but just can’t, saw other women while they were together.  The only good thing I can say about Percy is that he didn’t underestimate her uniqueness or talent.

Mary kept Percy’s heart after he died. Mary helped a trans couple escape to France to avoid persecution. Mary wrote books beyond Frankenstein. It is believed by some that she was bi-sexual. It is believed by some that there was some inappropriateness to her relationship with her father. How much of that is true? How much of it speculation?

I have read so many books about Mary. Some written by scholars. Some are accumulated correspondence from her contemporaries. A lot is educated conjecture.  The one thing I can say for sure after reading all these books is that Mary Shelley was ahead of her time and completely amazing!

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I’ve always known the story of how Mary Shelley’s League of Supernatural Hunters came to be.  I’ve written a short story about it and thought that would be the end of it. But my agent had other plans. He wanted readers to fully understand where the League came from, how it started and what the rules were. So, my plan has changed and I’m writing a trilogy to explain all the details, of which there are many, about the League and how it works today.

The challenge in writing anything historical is that you have to immerse yourself in that time period. Mine begins in 1816 which is the Regency and Georgian eras. I had to be careful not to mention items, procedures, events or people that were not of that era. For example, I have a scene where Mary Shelley is being hypnotized by Dr. John William Polidori, but the word “hypnotize” wasn’t used then. So, instead, I talk of Franz Mesmer and get the idea of what Polidori is doing by that reference.

Another example is the scene where Mary is looking at photographs. But, this is 1816 and photographs weren’t readily available until 1822. I had to change the scene and show them as small drawings instead.

I admit that I didn’t follow the dialog of the day exactly. If you have read The Vampyre or Frankenstein you can see why. It’s almost as though you need to learn the language of the time to understand it easily. I wanted my readers to have a seamless time of understanding the story on the written page.  So, please do forgive me for that. I know readers who love historicals like it to be accurate.  Do know that I spent hours and hours researching for the book. I have so many books about Mary Shelley’s life I feel like I actually know her. Side note: I love her!

The books are Gothics and the first one- Mary Shelley’s League of Supernatural Hunters – follows the story of how Frankenstein was written as well as following the story of Frankenstein as written by Mary Shelley. It’s a blend. The real life of Mary Shelley blended with the story of Frankenstein into a new work of fiction where the two are as one.

I’ve read the initial version of Frankenstein (1818) and then the later version with Mary Shelley’s introduction and explanation of how she was inspired to write the novel.

I hope people enjoy it regardless of what they know of Mary Shelley or the novel Frankenstein. I tried to make it as original as possible with my own take on why Mary did the things she did and how she actually met Frankenstein, the creature who she named Adam.

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Most people know who Mary Shelley is or at least they’ve heard of her book – Frankenstein. But, fewer people know who she actually was. She was an amazing woman who had so many hardships in her life.  She was a real-life heroine who did so many things most women would never have even imagined back in the early 1800s.

Researching Mary Shelley I’ve found so many interesting things about her life. She was a pregnant teenage runaway who fell in love with married man. She lost three children in her lifetime, all of whom were with that same married man – Percy Shelley.

Mary retained Percy’s calcified heart in brown wrap paper until the day she died.

Mary helped a couple, a transgender married couple, escape persecution.

She was romantically interested in Washington Irving (Sleep Hollow author),

She overcame tragedy and adversity holding strong to her convictions. All of that is true.

Making her a monster hunter wasn’t actually much of a stretch.

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