Sahara Foley Books and Book Reviews: Meet Sharon Delarose and her novel ALIEN NIGHTMARES

Meet Sharon Delarose and her novel ALIEN NIGHTMARES

Today, I’ll be interviewing Sharon Delarose. Thank you for taking time for this interview. Before we get started, I want to mention that I’ve already read and reviewed your book, and you can see my review HERE.
I’ve also had my share of close encounters, which no one in my family knows about. Actually, the only person I every told, was my husband, and he was also plagued with them. They continued while we were together. A lot of my dreams felt like tests, to see how I would respond to different, nightmarish scenarios.
Anyway, on with the questions.

If you were writing a book about your life, what would the title be?

Alien Nightmares: Screen Memories of UFO Alien Abductions.

What kind of research did you do for Alien Nightmares?

You wouldn't expect a true-life account of UFO abductions and extraterrestrial encounters to involve research, but the one thing that being touched by aliens does to you, is leave you with a lot of questions. Especially when your experiences appear on the surface to be different than other people's that you've heard about. They aren't unique, as I've since discovered, it just isn't in the mainstream media.

The first question was a simple one: During the most active period of "alien nightmares" that I experienced as a child, from about 1963-1969, did anybody witness UFOs over my city in Upstate New York? One of the recurring dreams that I had as a child did not involve an actual UFO sighting, it was of an entity‚ my childhood monster‚ that wasn't yet public knowledge, and it turned out to be the big-headed gray aliens.

I did not have a specific date to research for that, and I didn't expect to find anything, being so vague with the date. I was stunned at what I found out. Absolutely, and utterly stunned.

What surprised you the most to learn, and why?

I didn't find just one meager sighting to corroborate the childhood alien nightmares, I found WAVES of UFOs flying the skies over my state in the mid-1960s.

The year 1965 brought a massive power outage known as the Big Blackout which encompassed the entire states of New York, Vermont, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Connecticut, and portions of Canada. Just before the blackout, numerous UFO sightings were reported, including one over the Sir Adam Beck power plant in Ontario, Canada, and another over the Niagara Falls power station in New York. People reported UFOs, and military jets chasing those UFOs.

One month later, the incident known as the Kecksburg UFO crash, where an acorn-shaped craft streaked across the sky like a fireball, and then crashed near Kecksburg, Pennsylvania. Of course, officially it never happened, just like Roswell never happened.

The year 1966 offered several UFO reports, the closest being 7 miles from my house.

Then came the 1967-1968 wave of UFOs in Ithaca, New York, where for several months, people experienced crop circles, close encounters, and over a thousand reported UFO sightings.

If that wasn't enough of a shocker, discovering another wave of UFOs from 1987-1993 in the Southeastern United States, during my adult period of intense UFO activity, I literally stood open-mouthed staring at the computer screen after creating a map.

Atlanta, Georgia, where I was living, sat on the direct flight path between two major UFO waves: one in Virginia and one in Florida. I pinned the map and added a note to each pin, and the map is in the book, along with descriptions of the various UFO waves.

But the surprises didn't end there. I had a "dream" during the 1980s UFO wave, where I saw something travel across the sky. I was with two men, one of which had red hair, and we thought surely we must be seeing Santa Claus. I was in my mid-thirties when I had the dream.

Now this on the surface seems totally irrelevant, but I decided to research it. I was curious about the red-haired man because my biological father, whom I hadn't been in contact with since toddlerhood, allegedly had red hair. I did not reunite with him until I was in my forties, long after the Santa Claus dream.

I described the "dream" to him and asked if it rang a bell. He said, "Well yes! I remember that night perfectly! It happened in 1959 and you were two years old. You, me, and my best friend Pete went to Cobb's Hill, and we saw it‚ and it was all over the newspapers the next day.

He did not remember the specific date, only that it was the latter part of 1959. I found the incident just as he'd said, in the newspapers. It happened in December, so of course two men would point to an object in the sky and tell a two year old that it was Santa Claus.

So here I was, reliving childhood experiences in my dreams, in exact detail, decades after the events took place. And now I had corroboration. Even today, that gives me chills, considering the many other dreams that started with a UFO sighting that turned bizarre.

Is there anything specific you want readers to know about the book, Alien Nightmares: Screen Memories of UFO Alien Abductions?

Yes. Knowledge is power. I spent decades being scared out of my wits but not knowing why. Now that I know why, it no longer frightens me. The unknown is a lot scarier than the known.

Has the book already been published?

Yes. Alien Nightmares is available on all of the major eBook vendors: Kindle, Nook, Kobo, iTunes. It's also available in paperback, and audiobook. I chose to narrate the audiobook myself, so that you'd hear it straight from my own lips, as if I were sitting in the living room with you, telling you my extraterrestrial and UFO experiences.

What question have you always wanted to be asked in an interview? How would you answer that question?

The question? Why do you narrate under the name Allie Mars, instead of Sharon Delarose?

I gave the name a lot of thought. What if someone reads a book that I wrote, decides that they absolutely MUST read another of my books, and they look me up on Amazon only to find a long list of books by other authors that have nothing to do with me? All of those books would show up under Sharon Delarose if I used that name as a narrator. It would confuse my readers.

I was hoping to narrate other UFO-related books, so I opted to use Allie Mars even when narrating my own books. I haven't narrated another UFO book yet, although I have narrated quite a few others.

And yes, Allie Mars is a play on words :-) Just because you have extraterrestrial experiences, doesn't mean that you can't have a sense of humor about it.

Did the book, Alien Nightmares, play a role in you becoming an author?

No. I've always been an author, even as a child. Maybe not a PUBLISHED author, but the words have always hollered at me to let them out. Alien Nightmares: Screen Memories of UFO Alien Abductions is my sixth published book, of those published in both eBook and paperback.

How long did it take you to publish your first book, after you started trying?

Decades. One of the first books I wrote was The Cantor Dimension, which I copyrighted in 1993. It was typewritten, because computers, internet, and self-publishing were things of the future. I sent it to publishers and agents. I'm sure you know how that went ;-)

It wasn't until 2012 that the book was officially published, having been rewritten. Yankee Go Home suffered the same fate ‚ written decades ago, only to have the typewritten pages languish in a drawer.

What advice would you give to a new author?

Don't do what I did. The Cantor Dimension, Yankee Go Home, Bad Dog to Best Friend, Alien Nightmares‚ these are very different genres. Your odds of becoming a successful author are crippled when you spread yourself over too many genres. Marketing is a nightmare. Even deciding the aura of your website, when one book says Humor, but another says Serious Scientific Research, or Paranormal, or Nature, or Children's Books. I've got them all.

Pick one genre, and think SERIES. That way, if a reader enjoys your book, they have another book OF YOURS to move on to. To that end, I have two ancient alien books out as well, Ancient Aliens and the Age of Giants, and Ancient Aliens and the Lost Islands, both non-fiction.

Also, brand your book covers in each series. Make sure that the covers are visibly consistent with one another, so that with one glance, they are recognizable as a series.

Where can we buy Alien Nightmares: Screen Memories of UFO Alien Abductions?