About Cursed Ground

Cursed Ground is an interracial love story that succeeds beyond many physical and emotional obstacles.

Beatrice and Jonathan are thrown together in a remote location that won’t let them leave. And to make matters worse, Jonathan is changing into a vicious creature that destroys everything in its path.

At night, they are forced to deal with his ever increasing violent nature. By day, they come to terms with the unexpected love that transpires between them. Eventually this leads them to the unsettling realization… that one of them will likely kill the other.

It’s a love story that feeds on subtlety, angst and emotional turmoil. Fans of Jane Eyre, Beauty and the Beast and other classic fiction will appreciate the emotional undercurrent and occasional shock value of Cursed Ground.

The Color of Classic Fiction

Due to the history of blacks and slavery, black people rarely have an opportunity to play characters associated with classic fiction. Although it may not be evident through the pages offered on the site, Cursed Ground actually has a similar style to Jane Eyre. The exchange between Beatrice Sumner and Jonathan Baker can be compared to Jane Eyre and Edward Rochester.

However, please don’t get it in your head that the stories are too similar. They are but they aren’t. In truth, although it often feels like it to some extent, Cursed Ground is not technically a period piece. To make it clear without giving anything away… it’s of mixed genre.

When I wrote Cursed Ground, I created it with the idea that I wanted to give black women a character they could be proud of. I’ve always been fascinated with period pieces and stories such as Sense and Sensibility, Persuasion, David Copperfield and so forth. So, I wanted to give a little bit of that back to the best of my ability.

I wanted to create a woman that women of color could grow up appreciating. That way, perhaps, someday black women would have stories of that type of genre they could relate to as well.

If you’ve read the first 19 pages of Cursed Ground offered on the site, you may come to realize Beatrice Sumner is a black woman. If she wasn’t in fact described as a black woman, it would be my guess that most readers would automatically assume she was white.

Her name may also be considered a “white” name. And yes, that did occur to me when I gave her that name. I did it on purpose and have absolutely no regrets about it.

It should also be obvious that when I created Beatrice Sumner, my first intention was to remove as many labels from this woman as I possibly could. I wanted to create a woman that defied stereotypes, because quite often, most people are not the stereotypes that others label them to be.

For instance, take away the color of her skin, the black facial features and curly black hair… and she is just a woman.

And let’s do the same with Jonathan. Take away the color of his skin. Forget about his white facial features and straight black hair… and he is just a man.

So, in the end, she is just a woman that needs to be loved and he is just a man that wants to love her.