CHILDREN OF THE FOG Delves into a Mother’s Worst Fears – Cheryl Kaye Tardif

CHILDREN OF THE FOG Delves into a Mother’s Worst Fears

by: Cheryl Kaye Tardif

Any good writer can plot a suspense novel, and take characters from danger to escape/happiness, but I like to dig a bit deeper with my characters. I like to delve into their deepest, darkest fears. Often, those fears mirror my own. For a mother, there is no worse fear than that something horrible will happen to your child.

I know this fear intimately. I experienced the death of my first baby, a son born after the most perfect pregnancy with no warning sign of what was to come. After sixteen hours of hard back labor, I gave birth to my first child and immediately knew something was wrong.

Fear gripped me like a noose around my throat and I couldn’t breathe. My heart raced and my mind soared into all those dark scenarios, ones that led to only one conclusion. I watched as a nurse lifted my son’s purplish leg a few inches from the table and then let it drop. He didn’t respond or move.

My son never cried. I did though. I knew in my heart that I was watching my son in his final hours, and even though I willed him to live, I knew he wouldn’t. I would have given anything, including my own life, to have him live. My baby…my firstborn…my little love. He died four hours later, a fluky brain stem stroke.

Yes, I know a mother’s fears. When my daughter was born a year later, I had survived 9 months of intense fear, but knew that the real terror was just beginning. As she grew, I fought those fears, determined not to be an overprotective mom. I think I did well, all things considered.

When the idea for CHILDREN OF THE FOG first came to me, it appeared as a thought. The thought went like this: What if someone broke into my house and kidnapped my daughter? That thought turned into: What if I confronted a kidnapper as he was trying to take her? What would I do? That thought evolved into: I’d fight, of course. I’d fight with all I had. But what if I couldn’t fight anymore?

Eventually, these thoughts became a plot idea, and the plot brought out my darkest fears. Could I let someone take my child if the only other choice I had was to watch her die in front of me? What a horrible choice that would be. What an unbelievably difficult decision to make. How would someone live with that decision?

And Sadie and Sam were born…

YOU HAVE 10 SECONDS TO MAKE A DECISION: Let A Kidnapper Take Your Child, Or Watch Your Son Die. Choose!

Sadie O’Connell is a bestselling author and a proud mother. But her life is about to spiral out of control. After her six-year-old son Sam is kidnapped by a serial abductor, she nearly goes insane. But it isn’t just the fear and grief that is ripping her apart. It’s the guilt. Sadie is the only person who knows what the kidnapper looks like. And she can’t tell a soul. For if she does, her son will be sent back to her in “little bloody pieces”…

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CHILDREN OF THE FOG is available at Amazon (Kindle ebook and trade paperback), Barnes & Noble (paperback), Createspace (paperback) and other paperback retailers.