Dear Reader
Today's Guest Author is KL Cerra. As a licensed marriage and family therapist, K. L. uses her writing to explore the complexities--and the darker sides--of relationships. She lives with her husband in a small beach town outside of Los Angeles. When not writing or seeing clients, K. L. is likely walking her Boston terrier or exploring the local botanical gardens.
KL's sophomore novel, Under Her Spell, is a gothic suspense novel following a young woman, Liv, who returns to her small New England hometown to investigate her childhood friend's disappearance. In the process, Liv becomes entangled with her friend's roommates: the witchy owners of a bridal boutique who have their own dark definition of "happily ever after."
Reach out to KL at: [email protected]
Please welcome author KL Cerra to the book club.
As a kid, I had a thing for bugs. Not all bugs, mind you--it was the praying mantis that had me enchanted. I doodled praying mantis heads and collected mantis figurines. I spent my weekends camped out in the backyard collecting mantises and "training" them: having them climb up and down my arms (and ignoring the nips of pincers when they inevitably came).
I'm not sure what it was about the praying mantis that got me. Admittedly, there's a certain majesty to that alien-like, triangular head that moves on a swivel, those intense globular eyes. In any case, when Halloween rolled around, I convinced my mother to make me a praying mantis costume, complete with papier-mâché pincers, iridescent wings, and a rather creepy-looking mask featuring our best approximation of a mantis's grasping mouthparts made out of pipe-cleaners. I got some strange looks while trick-or-treating ("Oh! You're...an alien?") but I don't remember being fazed.
Back at home, I'd taped a handwritten sign to my bedroom door: "Entomologist at Work." I decided I wanted to study to become a proper bug-scientist when I grew up. But then, something disturbing happened. As I grew older, my interest faded, as I'm sure often happens to kids formerly into something like dinosaurs or space. I went many years without seeing a praying mantis in the wild. And when I finally spotted one in a courtyard of my college dorm, I was alarmed to feel something akin to...fear.
What had happened to me? I used to scoop these creatures into my hands and let them crawl all over me, and now, as a nineteen-year-old, I was recoiling from the strange-looking insect. It made me sad to think that repugnance had snuck in to replace that sense of wonder: I was afraid of something that had become so unfamiliar. Then again, maybe that just comes with the territory of growing up.
My husband and I are expecting our son in September, and as I write this, I catch myself wondering what it might be like if he were into bugs. Not that I'm excited by the prospect of my kid bringing handfuls of cockroaches into our condo--please, no--but maybe it'd be cool to see insects through a child's eyes again, to relearn how to feel awe instead of reflexively reaching for a fly-swatter. And if he really wanted a papier-mâché roach costume for Halloween...well, I think I could come around to that.
-- KL Cerra
* I hope you enjoyed reading today's guest column. Start writing, because your story could be featured in one of Suzanne's daily columns, if you're a winner or Honorable Mention in this year's Write a DearReader contest. Cash prizes, rules and deadlines, along with last year's winning entries, read all about them at: https://www.dearreader.com/contest2024/index.html
Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.
Suzanne Beecher
[email protected]
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