Talking Reincarnation with Karenna Colcroft

REINCARNATION

Reincarnation is one of those subjects that people have widely varied opinions on. Some believe in it, some don’t. Some think it’s something you have to earn, some believe everyone reincarnates no matter what. In some religions, it’s taught that you might reincarnate as a human or an animal, depending on what sort of life you lived. Other belief systems teach that humans only reincarnate as humans.

Past lives are something often talked about. Actors have claimed to recover memories of their past lives through hypnosis or other means, and happily share the information they say they’ve gained. Past-life regressionists earn decent livings by hypnotically taking people back to their previous lives, whether or not they’re legitimate.

I do have personal beliefs about reincarnation, and I’m not going to go into them too deeply here because I’m not looking to start a debate. I believe that humans only reincarnate as humans, and that in each lifetime, we have lessons our soul has chosen to learn. Whatever occurs in our life is either an attempt to learn one of those lessons or an attempt to clear up something with someone else that occurred in a past life we shared with that person.

In my opinion, it is possible to recover memories of past lives. Some of our dreams may actually be those memories. However, I find it unlikely that every single person who claims to be reincarnated royalty actually is. If everyone lived past lives as royalty, where were all the peasants and commoners?

And at this point, you may be wondering why, on a blog devoted to reading, I’m talking about reincarnation. There is a connection, I promise!

In my new paranormal romance novel Eternal Love, Rhys Trevellian is a 935-year-old immortal man who has seen many changes in his life. He’s also been in love with the same woman for most of that time. However, she’s mortal—which is where reincarnation comes in.

When Rhys was a child and teen, before he learned of his immortality, he was in love with Gwen, a girl who lived near him in Wales. After he left his village, he learned that she had died. Decades later, he found a woman who turned out to be Gwen’s reincarnation. And then that woman was murdered, and a few decades after that Rhys found another reincarnation of Gwen.

Each time, he had to convince her that they’d shared a life together previously. Each time, his love was murdered by the Purists, fanatic immortals who believe mortals and immortals shouldn’t mingle. And each time, after a few decades, Rhys finds his love’s soul again, reincarnated into a different woman.

In the novel, he finds her ninth incarnation, a woman named Gwen Davies who has many reasons not to trust him or anyone else. However, something in Gwen recognizes Rhys immediately, and when he tells her about his past with her previous incarnations, she knows he’s telling the truth. Gradually, she remembers bits and pieces of some of her previous lives with him, and she comes to trust him.

And this time, she isn’t murdered.

Reincarnation and the theories I’ve learned about it play almost as large a role in Eternal Love as the characters themselves. Don’t get me wrong, the novel isn’t a lecture about reincarnation. It’s a fast-paced story with plenty of action, hot love scenes, and a romance that has endured through centuries. Reincarnation just happens to be one of the key points.

It’s a pretty important point, because without it, Rhys and Gwen wouldn’t be together.

Eternal Love is available now as an e-book from Pink Petal Books http://pinkpetalbooks.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=6&products_id=113&zenid=3cc1ef424b47c2638a308e7ee98334ee