Salt Lake Comic Con FanX

Pictures from Comic Con Part 2! Please note that I am super pregnant and did my best to make it all the way around the whole expo. 

Even pregnant people can feel small next to Hagrid. This was one of my favorite costumes there. 

Iron Man. How do they make these costumes?!

Middle-earth battles happening mid expo. 

My view from the Disney panel where Cruella De Vil posed perfectly right before the panel started. 

I had to search everywhere, but I finally found the mermaids! Biggest compliment ever: they said I had mermaid hair. 

And red coat (Allison?) from Pretty Little Liars! She was absolutely terrifying and I had to keep checking over my shoulder after bumping into her. Beware of red coat!

Until next time Salt Lake Comic Con! 

Sirens and Mermaids

Because it's Siren Week, I decided to post some of the coolest mermaid, siren, and water nymph pictures I could find. Sirens and mermaids are absolutely fascinating to me, and I had so much fun introducing them into my sequel. I hope you think they're just as magical as I do and that you enjoy Siren Week!

Thanks for sharing this one, Tausha! 

This comic is from mermaidspiration.tumblr.com, which has tons of amazing siren and mermaid pictures. 

These are the mermaids of Weeki Wachee Springs in Florida. I would LOVE to go there and see them perform!

My friend Valerie is a real mermaid. She makes beautiful mermaid jewelry and I absolutely adore my pink fishing lure earrings! You can see her other jewelry here and here.

Thanks for swimming by! 

Mermaids and such

I’ve always been spellbound with the idea of mermaids, water nymphs, and sirens. Something about magical human creatures surviving underwater seems so powerful and mysterious. In older mythology mermaids were represented as evil, vicious, and always dragging men to their deaths (this sounds a little biased. Maybe sailors were just being melodramatic…). However, I feel that stories such as Han’s Christian The Little Mermaid and recent media have changed that negative connotation. Quite often mermaids are portrayed as curious, kind, and loving creatures.

One of the characters in my novel is a water nymph named Sierra. She’s not a mermaid, but has kin who are, and once she realizes what she is, Sierra finds other students who share her same gift. I liked the idea of a water nymph or mermaid being able to choose whether they want to live on land or sea. Sierra lives on land, but can stay underwater for incredulous amounts of time.

There were a lot of mermaids featured in the most recent Pirates of the Caribbean movie. Most of the mermaids were malevolent, although the movie did focus on one who wasn’t. I became so enthralled with this mermaid’s story that I stopped worrying about what Jack Sparrow was doing. When it ended, I was only curious about what would become of the mermaid and her love interest. Did they both survive? How would their relationship work if they were from two different worlds?

I think a lot of girls also have some sort of memory of mermaids from their childhood. When the Submarine ride first opened in Disneyland in the ‘50’s, they hired woman to dress up as mermaids and lay out on the rocks on the lagoon. My mom still remembers seeing those mermaids when she was little, and how mesmerizing they were.


I have a lot of good memories about dressing up like Ariel when I was younger, or laying out on big rocks and pretending they were seashells. Recently I found a necklace with a mermaid on the front and I couldn’t help but get it. It reminded me of all my mermaid adventures when I as younger (also it was sparkly, I can’t often pass up things that are sparkly).

I felt a little push to write this blog post because of a recent show on the Travel Channel (is it embarrassing to admit I watch that?). They featured this travel destination in Florida called Weeki Wachee. Here in this aqua theater visitors get to watch a mermaid show from underwater. It actually looks incredible. Not only do these girls wear fins and dance underwater, they don’t come up for air for the whole show (there are underwater air tubes they can use for a quick breath). When I saw this, I had a sudden urge to go to Weeki Wachee and possibly steal a mermaid costume backstage before plunging into the lagoon.

Whether mermaids are portrayed as evil monsters wishing to do harm, or beautiful water princesses of the sea, I always find the idea fascinating. What is your favorite mermaid in literature or film? Do you have any memories of mermaids when you were younger?