Archive for the ‘News’ Category
Welcome to the July 2021 issue of my newsletter, “News from the Crypt,” and please visit Carter’s Crypt, devoted to my horror, fantasy, and paranormal romance work, especially focusing on vampires and shapeshifting beasties. If you have a particular fondness for vampires, check out the chronology of my series in the link labeled “Vanishing Breed Vampire Universe.” For my recommendations of “must read” classic and modern vampire fiction, explore the Realm of the Vampires:
Realm of the Vampires
Also, check out the multi-author Alien Romances Blog
The long-time distributor of THE VAMPIRE’S CRYPT has closed its website. If you would like to read any issue of this fanzine, which contains fiction, interviews, and a detailed book review column, e-mail me to request the desired issue, and I’ll send you a free PDF of it. My e-mail address is at the end of this newsletter. Find information about the contents of each issue on this page of my website:
A complete list of my available works, arranged roughly by genre, with purchase links (gradually being updated as the Amber Quill and Ellora’s Cave works are being republished):
For anyone who would like to read previous issues of this newsletter, they’re posted on my website here (starting from January 2018):
This is my Facebook author page. Please visit!
Facebook
Here’s my page in Barnes and Noble’s Nook store:
Barnes and Noble
Here’s the list of my Kindle books on Amazon. (The final page, however, includes some Ellora’s Cave anthologies in which I don’t have stories):
Carter Kindle Books
Here’s a shortcut URL to my author page on Amazon:
Amazon
The Fiction Database displays a comprehensive list of my books (although with a handful of fairy tales by a different Margaret Carter near the end):
My Goodreads page:
Goodreads
Please “Like” my author Facebook page (cited above) to see reminders when each monthly newsletter is uploaded. I’ve also noticed that I’m more likely to be shown posts from liked or friended sources in my Facebook feed when I’ve “Liked” some of their individual posts, so you might want to do that, too. Thanks!
My vampire romance with suspense and touches of humor, SEALED IN BLOOD, has been republished by Writers Exchange E-Publishing. I love the new cover, which seems to capture the SF-con milieu of the first couple of chapters.
Science fiction conventions attract some strange people, but Sherri Hudson never expected to spend a con weekend helping a sexy man in a cape steal photos of a winged alien. When the photographer is murdered and Nigel Jamison reveals to Sherri that the “alien” is actually his sister, the situation gets intriguingly complicated.
Unwillingly swept up in Nigel’s quest to rescue his sister, Sherri can’t help being fascinated with him. By the time she finds out he’s a vampire, the fascination has become mutual–and too strong to resist.
There’s an excerpt below. At the convention hotel, Sherri and Nigel are following the man who claims to have photos of Nigel’s sister. Sherri doesn’t yet know the truth about Nigel or why he’s pursuing this man.
This month’s interviewee is contemporary romance author Jennifer Wilck.
*****
Interview with Jennifer Wilck:
What inspired you to begin writing?
I’ve been writing my thoughts down and creating stories since I was a kid. As an adult, I kept hearing voices in my head and I thought I was going crazy. Turns out, after talking to other writers, this is fairly normal, and those voices were characters. When I started writing down what they were saying, the voices quieted and I started writing novels!
What genres do you work in?
I write contemporary romance. Some of my stories have Jewish characters, others are more mainstream. I’ve also started to dabble in women’s fiction, but I’m a long way away from publishing in that genre.
Do you outline, “wing it,” or something in between?
I basically wing it. Like I said, I start with the voices in my head and go where they take me. Sometimes I do need to plot out where I’m going, but if I write from an outline exclusively, the stories don’t flow. I actually tried it once and wrote an entire romance without any romance in it. Now I save my outlines for the editing process, which I find helpful for consistency, plot and character development, etc.
What have been the major influences on your writing (favorite authors, life experiences, or whatever)?
I’d have to say my critique partners have been life savers. I always have a favorite author or two, but they tend to come and go. My critique partners are essential for plotting help and just overall making my writing better.
When writing stories that take place in cities where you haven’t lived, how do you research the settings?
The Internet is my friend! I read articles, look at photos, and do a lot of research. Social media is also really helpful.
What is your latest or next-forthcoming book?
My latest release (June 11) is Better Together in Boston, a contemporary romance that is part of a multi-author series, Ticket to True Love. Here’s the blurb:
Do you believe in the legend of True Springs?
Mr. Right doesn’t exist…
Anna Levinson was raised by a single mother, who sacrificed her dreams to give her daughter a warm, loving home. Now a respected professor on the tenure track, Anna is driven to live the life she thinks her mother should have had. She’s long since come to terms with the understanding that “having it all” is impossible if she wants a successful career.
He’s been told he’s Mr. Wrong more times than he can count…
Despite being left at the altar twice, Ben Diamond still believes his soul mate is out there. He’s ready to marry and start a family of his own. He just clearly won’t recognize her when he does find her. And then he meets the maid of honor at his cousin’s wedding, and his world is thrown off kilter.
Settling down might be more than they bargained for.
A long-distance relationship isn’t what either of them has in mind, and Anna isn’t about to ruin another person’s dreams. However, giving each other up is harder than it looks. Can Ben convince Anna that she’s got him all wrong, and that he’s finally gotten it right?
Fall in love with Anna & Ben in this steamy contemporary romance.
Ticket to True Love is a steamy contemporary romance series about new beginnings, second chances, and finding true love in unexpected places. Fall in love all over the world with bestselling and award-winning authors JB Schroeder, Savannah Kade, Moni Boyce, Shirley Hailstock, Holland Rae, Julie Strauss, & Jennifer Wilck. Start your next romance with Better Together in Boston now!
What are you working on now?
I’m currently writing a women’s fiction story about four female friends who play mah jongg together, and the lives that they lead.
What advice would you give to aspiring writers?
Don’t give up. Keep plugging away, improve your craft, and talk to people.
What is the URL of your website? What about other internet presence?
Author Website
Facebook
Newsletter
Twitter
Instagram
BookBub
*****
Some Books I’ve Read Lately:
THE HUMMING ROOM, by Ellen Potter. This YA novel from 2012 reimagines THE SECRET GARDEN in the present day on an island in the St. Lawrence River. The site of the mansion, Cough Rock Island, bears that name because the house originated as a sanitarium for children with tuberculosis. Twelve-year-old Roo, like Mary in the classic novel, loses her parents in a traumatic event. Roo’s father and his girlfriend, however, were drug dealers, murdered while Roo crouched in her hiding place under their trailer. Ms. Valentine, an employee of her father’s wealthy brother, takes Roo to live with the uncle of whose existence she was unaware. A half-feral loner who bonds with animals rather than people, she enjoys the fact that most of the time the servants in the mansion seem to forget her existence. She likes the house’s nooks and crannies and the island’s hiding places, especially when she wants to escape from the private tutor forced upon her. Like Mary in the original, she reluctantly develops a friendship with a no-nonsense staff member, in Roo’s case a young woman named Violet from whom she learns scraps of information about the island and her uncle’s family. Roo, of course, eventually discovers the dormant garden—in this novel, a neglected greenhouse built for her uncle’s late South American wife—and her cousin, Phillip, a sickly boy subject to uncontrollable fits of rage. The collection of animal skeletons he has assembled adds an interesting wrinkle to his character. On the river, a strange boy named Jack, half-seriously rumored to be actually a water spirit, befriends Roo, introduces her to the wildlife of the area, and eventually helps her restore the garden. In short, the story unfolds parallel to the plot of THE SECRET GARDEN, with characters in similar roles. Yet the wild setting of the St. Lawrence islands and the haunting past of the mansion engender their own unique atmosphere. The novel includes tenuous hints of magic realism in the ambiguity of Jack’s nature as human boy or water spirit and the preternaturally rapid flourishing of the replanted garden.
THE DIRT ON CLEAN, by Katherine Ashenburg. Published in 2007, this nonfiction book fascinatingly surveys attitudes toward cleanliness and methods of keeping clean from antiquity to the contemporary era. The introduction lays out the theme continually reverted to throughout the book, that the definition of proper hygiene varies widely among different times and places. To each society, its own attitudes and customs in this area seem normal, while other cultural practices are either self-evidently over-fastidious or (more often) offensively dirty. As the author puts it, “hygiene has always been a convenient stick with which to beat other peoples, who never seem to get it right.” For example, few cultures in the past (and not all in the present) have shared our conviction that body odor is inherently disgusting. She focuses on Europe and America and sometimes the Middle East, with only occasional references to other regions of the world by way of comparison and contrast. The chapters cover, successively, ancient Greece and Rome, late antiquity up to the year 1000, the Middle Ages, 1550 to 1750 (whose uncleanness might surprise many readers), 1750 to 1815 (labeled “The Return of Water”), two chapters on 1815 to 1900 because Europe and America changed at different rates and embraced different levels of fastidiousness, 1900 to 1950, and finally 1900 to the present with emphasis on contemporary obsession with absolute cleanliness as essential to both health and beauty. Ashenburg debunks common misconceptions such as the idea of the Middle Ages in Europe as a nadir of filth, while in fact it was the self-styled Enlightenment period that rejected bathing. Through most of the history covered in this book, however, it’s true that immersing the body in hot water was regarded as a procedure to be undertaken with caution, for heat opened the pores and allowed harmful effluvia into the body. Also, hot and warm baths were often disdained as signs of hedonism, with bracing cold immersions recommended. Only in the nineteenth century and after did medical authorities proclaim the benefits of open pores, a doctrine that encouraged frequent bathing. The author writes in a lively style, in depth and in detail, exploring the shifting philosophies behind the customs as well as supplying factoids that both entertain and inform. Numerous sidebars expand on particular topics, and later chapters include advertisements from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that illustrate the intersections among popular beliefs, medical recommendations, and commercial exploitation of anxieties about dirt. In addition to bathing and washing the body or its parts, the text touches on oral hygiene but devotes little space to the primary use of the chamber Americans call the “bathroom.” (I suppose including the topic of toilet habits would have doubled the length of the book, at the very least.) My only reservation is a feeling that Ashenburg exaggerates the depth and extent of obsessive-compulsiveness about dirt and odors (especially among women) from the mid-twentieth century to the present. Yes, as amply demonstrated, advertisers want us to think that way, but how many of us have ever fully bought into that obsession?
THE PARASITE AND OTHER TALES OF TERROR, by Arthur Conan Doyle. This handsome, inexpensive trade paperback is the latest in a series of public-domain horror classics re-published by the Horror Writers Association, with introductions and footnotes. The dramatic phrase “Tales of Terror” isn’t applicable to all the contents of this collection. Two are humorous, one is a mystery without much fear involved, and not all have supernatural or paranormal elements. All make enjoyable reading anyway, and most will probably be new even to devoted Sherlock Holmes fans, if they haven’t delved into the rest of Doyle’s works. I had read “The Parasite,” of course, a classic psychic vampire novella, plus a couple of the others, but I encountered several for the first time in this volume. The title story, presented as the journal of Professor Gilroy, a physiologist, narrates his harrowing experience with Miss Penclosa, a mesmerist who exerts a terrible power over him despite his initial skepticism about the reality of psychic talents. “The Mystery of Sasassa Valley,” set in South Africa, deals with a supposedly haunted location that holds treasure but nothing truly supernatural. “J. Habakuk Jephson’s Statement” offers an ingenious and frightful, although non-paranormal, explanation for the mystery of the Marie Celeste (a real-life ship found derelict and inexplicably deserted in 1872). “The Captain of the Pole-Star” is a chilling (both literally and emotionally) yet poignant ghost story set aboard a whaling ship in the Arctic. “In the Great Keinplatz Experiment,” one of the comic tales, an exercise in astral projection through mesmerism goes wrong, causing a professor and his student assistant to switch bodies. “The Ring of Thoth” features an immortal Egyptian mystic lurking in a museum that holds the mummy of his lost beloved. Another ghost story, “The Bully of Brocas Court,” presents a match on a lonely road between a boxing champion and a deceased fighter from a previous era. “Selecting a Ghost: The Ghosts of Goresthorpe Grange,” another humorous piece, is told in the first person by a rich man whose pretensions to an ancient bloodline won’t be complete, he thinks, until he finds a ghost to haunt the medieval mansion he has bought; hiring an alleged spiritualist expert to fulfill that wish ends in disaster. “How It Happened,” a brief tale with little plot beyond the easily anticipated “surprise” ending, simply records a dead man’s experience of his own death as revealed through the pen of a spirit medium. Fans of Doyle’s detective stories and of Victorian supernatural fiction in general would enjoy this collection.
WENDY, DARLING, by A. C. Wise. One of the two darkest novels derived from PETER PAN I’ve ever read. (The other was THE CHILD THIEF, by Brom.) In Wise’s sequel to Barrie’s original tale, Wendy, now grown up and married, must find her way to Neverland to rescue her preteen daughter, Jane, when Peter Pan kidnaps the girl. The story begins as Wendy hears a sound from Jane’s room and realizes Peter has finally returned. After sneering at Wendy for growing up, he flies away with Jane, whom he persists in calling Wendy throughout the book. To him, apparently, all “Wendys” are interchangeable. This version of Peter is not only “heartless,” as in Barrie’s text, but outright cruel. Jane witnesses his capricious treatment of the Lost Boys, randomly either playful or bullying. She befriends a small, timid child named Timothy, who has only fragmentary, fleeting memories of a life before Neverland. Since her mother has never told her about Peter Pan, Jane has to figure out the situation on her own. Resisting the tendency to lapse into a dreamlike state where she accepts Peter’s fantasy world and even forgets her own name, she fights to hold onto her true self. With no desire to play “mother” to a group of strange boys or live on cauldrons of leaves, twigs, and stones magically transformed into soup (or the illusion of soup), she persuades Timothy, who hates Peter’s violent games such as boar-hunting, to sneak away with her. Meanwhile, Wendy reclaims her childhood power of flight and crosses into Neverland, a realm where even the stars are different. There she fully comprehends the truth she didn’t grasp as a child, that everything in Neverland is created by Peter, reflecting his idea of pirates, mermaids, and “injuns” on a paradisial island. Although the Lost Boys are apparently real people, there’s a chilling hint (during one of Jane’s viewpoint scenes) that at least some of them are actually dead. Wendy speculates on the horrifying possibility that Captain Hook may have been a real man trapped in a self-absorbed boy’s fantasy world. The mermaids’ bones lie in shallow water, and the pirates have vanished, leaving behind Hook’s wrecked ship. The one element I missed from the original was the pixies. What, no fairies? Even Tinkerbell isn’t mentioned. When Wendy encounters her dear friend Tiger Lily, the “Indian” princess has begun to wither like a mummy. Yet Wendy clings to the hope that Tiger Lily, at least, has a reality beyond Peter’s magical constructs. As Wendy searches for Jane, interspersed flashbacks reveal what happened after the return of Wendy, John, and Michael from Neverland. While her brothers quickly forgot the reality of the adventure, dismissing it as mere fantasy, Wendy refused to deny the truth she knew. Finally, as a young woman, she was committed by John to an insane asylum. During her ordeal there, she met Mary, a half-Native woman from Canada, who became a lifelong friend. In the present, Wendy, Tiger Lily, Jane, and Timothy must descend into the core of the island to discover the dark secret of Peter’s true nature. This deeply unsettling novel has a bittersweet ending that leaves both Wendy and Jane permanently changed.
*****
Excerpt from SEALED IN BLOOD:
In the next hallway Brewster went into a conference room from whose open door guitar music emanated. At the entrance he paused to glance back at the thinning ranks of strollers that included Sherri and Nigel.
Instantly Nigel grabbed Sherri, backed her against the wall, and kissed her on the mouth. She bunched her arms between their chests, trying to push him away. She might as well have shoved the wall itself. He responded to her struggle to free her mouth by matching her every move, with firm but not grinding pressure. In spite of herself, her lips parted to admit his tongue. At that point she gave up the fight and switched to aggressive cooperation. Wrapping her arms around his neck, she teased his tongue with hers. In contrast to his hands, cool on the flesh exposed by the scoop neck of her dress, his mouth felt feverishly hot. She was just beginning to enjoy the duel when he released her so abruptly she staggered.
Sherri’s hands flew to her disheveled hair. “What was all that about?” Luckily anger–or so she chose to label it–choked her so that she couldn’t yell at him. “Don’t say uncontrollable passion, because I won’t buy it.”
“I didn’t want him to get a good look at our faces.”
Nigel stepped into the conference room and lounged by the door. Sherri peeked around him until he waved her back into the hall. The table had been moved to one side, leaving a circle of chairs occupied by ten or twelve people, Brewster among them, his back to the entrance. A filksing. The guitar player strummed a chord, and the group began a thumping chorus of “What do you do with a drunken hobbit?”
Nigel faded into the hall. Sherri saw him wince as the volume of the singing rose a few more decibels. “Sometimes having perfect pitch is a liability. How long would you expect that to go on?” he asked.
“At least a couple of hours. That’s why I like to get a room in the hotel. Who wants to drive home after a post-midnight singing marathon?”
“Oh, do you call it singing?” Nigel offered a wry smile. “I’m glad you don’t have to rush off, because I want to ask you a somewhat complicated favor. Will you join me for a drink in my room?”
Could all this rigmarole be an inventive plot to lure her into bed? Not likely–she didn’t consider herself irresistible enough to be worth so much trouble. Besides, these days a professional man, acutely health-conscious, would be no more likely to make that move on a first meeting than a sensible woman would. Well, she could learn what he really wanted only by listening to him. And what could he do to her in a crowded hotel, anyway?
“All right, I’ll accompany you to your lair.”
“Just a temporary lair,” said Nigel as he guided her to the elevator. “You should see the castle in the Carpathians, the one with the rat-infested dungeons and the hundred-foot tower.”
“Which location do you keep the captive maidens in?”
“Depends on their behavior. The ones who please me get immured in the tower, with the door bricked up.”
“And you visit them by magic,” said Sherri.
“Of course.”
-end of excerpt-
*****
My Publishers:
Writers Exchange E-Publishing: Writers Exchange
Harlequin: Harlequin
Whiskey Creek: Whiskey Creek
Wild Rose Press: Wild Rose Press
You can contact me at: MLCVamp@aol.com
“Beast” wishes until next time—
Margaret L. Carter
Welcome to the June 2021 issue of my newsletter, “News from the Crypt,” and please visit Carter’s Crypt, devoted to my horror, fantasy, and paranormal romance work, especially focusing on vampires and shapeshifting beasties. If you have a particular fondness for vampires, check out the chronology of my series in the link labeled “Vanishing Breed Vampire Universe.” For my recommendations of “must read” classic and modern vampire fiction, explore the Realm of the Vampires:
Realm of the Vampires
Also, check out the multi-author Alien Romances Blog
The long-time distributor of THE VAMPIRE’S CRYPT has closed its website. If you would like to read any issue of this fanzine, which contains fiction, interviews, and a detailed book review column, e-mail me to request the desired issue, and I’ll send you a free PDF of it. My e-mail address is at the end of this newsletter. Find information about the contents of each issue on this page of my website:
A complete list of my available works, arranged roughly by genre, with purchase links (gradually being updated as the Amber Quill and Ellora’s Cave works are being republished):
For anyone who would like to read previous issues of this newsletter, they’re posted on my website here (starting from January 2018):
This is my Facebook author page. Please visit!
Facebook
Here’s my page in Barnes and Noble’s Nook store:
Barnes and Noble
Here’s the list of my Kindle books on Amazon. (The final page, however, includes some Ellora’s Cave anthologies in which I don’t have stories):
Carter Kindle Books
Here’s a shortcut URL to my author page on Amazon:
Amazon
The Fiction Database displays a comprehensive list of my books (although with a handful of fairy tales by a different Margaret Carter near the end):
My Goodreads page:
Goodreads
Please “Like” my author Facebook page (cited above) to see reminders when each monthly newsletter is uploaded. I’ve also noticed that I’m more likely to be shown posts from liked or friended sources in my Facebook feed when I’ve “Liked” some of their individual posts, so you might want to do that, too. Thanks!
Below is another excerpt from my forthcoming light paranormal romance novella KAPPA COMPANION, which now has an official release date—August 4 of this year. Heidi is a widow who has recently bought an old house. Adam is her seven-year-old son, “Zashi” is his possibly imaginary friend, and Ebony is the cat.
This month’s interview guest is multi-genre romance author Liz Crowe.
*****
Interview with Liz Crowe:
What inspired you to begin writing?
The very idea that I could create entire worlds and characters that I’d want to read, and hope that others might too.
What genres do you work in?
Mostly contemporary romance, some rom coms and mainstream fiction with romantic elements. I’m currently working on my first mystery/thriller.
Do you outline, “wing it,” or something in between?
I am a total pantser. Or as the manuscript developer I’m working with on my mystery/thriller calls me: total chaotic pantser. I’m being forced into outlines for that book and I’ll admit that it’s teaching me new skills.
What about series works? In each case, did you know in advance that the novels were going to be part of a series and plan accordingly?
I’ve done a bit of both—planning out books in a series (like the Love Brothers, for instance where each brother has his own novel) and winging it for series that grew in my brain a bit more organically (like The Stewart Realty series, which runs through two generations of characters).
What have been the major influences on your writing (favorite authors, life experiences, or whatever)?
I bring a fair bit of life experience to my books, at least in terms of settings. I read across almost all genres so I also take a lot from my favorite authors like Margaret Atwood, Stephen King, Lee Child, Barbara Kingsolver, and Lianne Moriarty just to name a few.
How have you incorporated your experience in real estate and beer brewery into your books?
I use them as settings and bring the sort of veracity that I sometimes find lacking in books. I’ve worked for years in both industries and know a lot about how they both work so I try to make it (the setting) almost as interesting as a character each time.
What is your latest or next-forthcoming book?
I’ll be releasing a second chance romance July 13 called Backup Offer. It will be the final book in my best selling Stewart Realty series but is a stand alone, a sort of 10-years-later look at a couple who were teenagers in the book before it. My hope is that it snags new readers for this series who will then go back and read the 8-book backstory. Or if not, that they’ll enjoy the story of a couple in their early thirties who were a mess as teenagers but now have their acts together alone—and they reunite.
What are you working on now?
I’m finalizing edits for Backup Offer and also am starting book 4 of The Detroit Sports Network series, called SMASH. It’s an enemies/rivals to lovers story in the series about a fictional TV sports network/website run by women. I’m also still outlining the mystery /thriller and look forward to being in a place where I can actually begin writing it soon.
What advice would you give to aspiring writers?
Never turn down the opportunity for a good, honest critique or editing session but don’t take it personally. The book is not your baby. It might be really bad and need a lot of work. Most first drafts are terrible and always need work. Keep working at it to make it better!
What is the URL of your website? What about other internet presence?
Here are all of my links:
TWITTER: Twitter
FACEBOOK: Facebook
FACEBOOK CHAT ROOM: Chat Room
INSTAGRAM: Instagram
TIKTOK: TikTok
BOOKBUB: BookBub
AMAZON AUTHOR PAGE: Amazon Page
GOODREADS PAGE: Goodreads
WEBSITE: Liz Crowe
SIGN UP FOR THE LIZ NEWSLETTER; GET A FREE BOOK: Newsletter
*****
Some Books I’ve Read Lately:
THE LIGHT OF THE MIDNIGHT STARS, by Rena Rossner. An unusual fantasy novel set in the late Middle Ages in Eastern Europe. In a Hungarian village, Rabbi Isaac (who sometimes rides a cloud dragon) and his three daughters preserve the sacred magic inherited from their illustrious ancestor, King Solomon himself. Steady, bookish Hannah has gifts for growing plants and healing. Volatile, rebellious Sarah has power over fire that she can’t control. Shy Levana, at first a less strongly defined character (to me, at least), is fascinated by the secrets of the stars. Summoned to heal the mysterious illness of a Gentile noblewoman, Hannah falls in love with Jakob, the lady’s son. The rabbi agrees on the conditions that they wait until Hannah comes of age and that Jakob convert to Judaism. Around the same time, the Black Mist creeps over the land, inflicting blight on plants and sickness on people and animals. Although Levana secretly fears the worst, having seen ominous portents in the night sky, Hannah’s engagement proceeds as planned. The happiness of the wedding, however, is tragically shattered when Jakob faces execution as a heretic for abandoning his family’s religion. Meanwhile, Sarah, painfully aware that her parents consider her difficult and disappointing, covertly forms an attachment to Guvriel, a fox shapeshifter who teaches her to channel her powers. In the second half of the novel, the family, forced to flee from their home, starts afresh under a new identity. There Levana has a love affair with a man who’s actually a fallen star in human form, while her sisters are courted by young men of the local prince’s entourage. What will happen when the family’s Jewish heritage comes to light? And what about the Black Mist (which the author’s afterword describes as a combination of the medieval Black Death and biblical leprosy, used as “a metaphor for antisemitism”)? Several different voices tell the story. Interludes by an omniscient narrator, in the past tense, supply background information and an overview from a historical or legendary perspective. Sections narrated by the three daughters are in present tense (for no particular reason I can see, but I got used to it). Toward the end of the book, Levana’s words are framed as free verse rather than prose. The intertwined plot threads culminate in a bittersweet ending reminiscent of the darker type of fairy tale. Rossner’s afterword discusses the history, family memories, fairy tales, and legends she combined and modified to create the story.
SPARROW HILL ROAD, by Seanan McGuire. Opening novel of a trilogy narrated in first person (aside from a few short inserts from fictional documentary sources about contemporary folklore) by a hitchhiking ghost, Rose Marshall. I don’t find its present-tense narrative as obtrusive as usual; the device seems to fit this story, especially given the achronic order of the chapters in this opening volume. As Rose explains in a later book, ghosts don’t experience time the same way the living do but exist in a sort of perpetual present. As a sixteen-year-old girl from a poor family in a small town in Michigan, she died in 1952 on what would have been the night of her prom. Urban legends call her the Girl in the Green Silk Gown, the Phantom Prom Date, and many other names. Her car crashed when she was deliberately run off the road by Bobby Cross, a James-Dean-type actor who disappeared into the desert, presumed dead. He isn’t dead, though. He made a bargain at a crossroads for perpetual life and youth, provided he fuels his car with the souls of people he kills with that vehicle. Thus his weakness is that he’s bound to the car and the road. Rose, as the one who got away, becoming a “hitcher” instead of a sacrifice to his immortality, obsesses him. SPARROW HILL ROAD originated as a series of short stories, and some of the chapters could still stand on their own. The episodes skip around in time and place, with the location and year at the head of each. Rose serves as a psychopomp, helping people who die in traffic accidents move on to their destiny. A few stay in the “twilight” between life and the final destination, whatever that may be, rising as hitchers, phantom riders, or spirits trying in vain to go home. At truck stops and diners on the twilight level, Rose encounters other spirits and routewitches, still-living people who work their magic while traveling the roads, ruled by a Queen named Apple, a young-looking Japanese-American woman. Rose often stops at the Last Dance Diner, run by a bean sidhe named Emma. These are only a few examples of characters and settings from McGuire’s extensive mythology, borrowed from both traditional folklore and urban legends. Not surprisingly, many contradictory tales have attached themselves to Rose. Some stories accuse her of killing drivers who offer her rides, while in fact she does her best to prevent accidents she foresees. In one episode, she witnesses the death of a boy, Tommy, in a drag race; he and his car rise together, and he becomes a phantom rider. Decades later, his girlfriend, Laura, a college professor who has devoted her career to studying contemporary ghosts, tries to get revenge on Rose for supposedly killing her one true love. (People my age will recognize the popular song origin of Tommy and Laura.) Rose also runs into one of her few surviving relatives, who has an ulterior agenda. She later finds her way to the deathbed of her boyfriend, now a very old man, who has never stopped loving her. Throughout the book, Bobby Cross pops up, forever striving to complete the sacrifice he started by killing Rose. Sometimes she temporarily defeats him, while on other occasions she barely escapes. The two subsequent volumes in the trilogy, THE GIRL IN THE GREEN SILK GOWN and ANGEL OF THE OVERPASS, have more conventionally linear novel plots, focused on the escalating conflict between Rose and Bobby. Each book includes a glossary of supernatural entities; the first volume also contains lyrics of associated songs written by McGuire. Rose is a sympathetic character who can seldom resist helping those who need it, despite her tough-gal façade and sometimes abrasive personality (and her habitual use of obscene language, which she must have picked up after death, because innocent girls in the 1950s seldom talked that way). Most fans of ghost stories and especially urban legends will find this trilogy enthralling.
THE MAP OF TINY PERFECT THINGS, by Lev Grossman. An e-published novelette by the author of THE MAGICIANS. A movie of this story is available on Amazon Prime Video. The teenage narrator, Mark, is caught in a “Groundhog Day” loop. Grossman doesn’t waste space on a setup. As the story begins, Mark has already relived August fourth numerous times. On the whole, this situation is okay with him. He’s in the midst of reading through the entire science fiction and fantasy section of the public library, although at this point he’s still in the A shelves. He has considered devoting his apparently endless free time to discovering a cure for cancer, but he realizes he doesn’t have the background or resources for such an endeavor, not to mention the problem that any records he tries to keep will have disappeared each morning when he wakes up in bed again. So, to the best of his ability, he relaxes and enjoys his unique position. As becomes clear later, however, he does suffer from an increased sense of disconnection, starting to think of all the people he encounters as mere automata, fated to repeat the same actions over and over in perpetuity. Then he meets Margaret, a girl who shares his awareness of the time loop. As they explore their bubble existence together, he begins to fall in love with her but doesn’t know whether she returns the attraction. She has secrets, exemplified by her disappearing without explanation for several hours each day, which he doesn’t feel free to pry into. Both of them rejoice in the “tiny perfect things” of the title, moments of wonder that repeat at the same time and place on every recurring August fourth. They record those incidents on a map, even though they have to re-draw it from memory every morning. When they try to find out whether the temporal anomaly covers the rest of the planet or only their town, the result serves as a catalyst for Mark to investigate Margaret’s activities while they’re apart. The revelation that follows impressed me as a surprising and poignant climax. Before reading much of the e-book, I watched the beginning of the Amazon Prime video but found it less engaging than I’d hoped. Mark’s intelligent, articulate narrative voice in the story doesn’t come across in the portion of the movie I viewed. Now that I know how the plot unfolds, though, I’ll probably give the rest of the video another chance.
*****
Excerpt from KAPPA COMPANION:
Heidi woke to a bloodcurdling yowl. Heart pounding, she sat up in bed. After a second, she realized the noise wasn’t a remnant of a monster in a nightmare, but a cry from the cat. She’d never heard Ebony make a sound like that before. Maybe she’s protecting us from a wild, fierce mouse. She hoped not. The pre-sale home inspection hadn’t reported any pests. The caterwauling receded along the hall and down the stairs, then stopped.
Heidi lay back and closed her eyes, waiting for her breath and pulse to slow to normal. Now that Ebony had fallen silent, though, a different sound wafted from the hallway. Singing.
Sitting up again, Heidi strained her ears. A child’s soprano voice sang in a language she didn’t recognize. “Adam?” No answer. The voice grew fainter and faded away.
She extracted a flashlight from the nightstand and crept to the closed bedroom door. Leaning against it, she didn’t hear anything. She stepped into the hall and switched on the flashlight, not wanting to wake Adam with the overhead light if he’d slept through the cat’s cries and the song, assuming he hadn’t done the latter himself.
Tiptoeing toward his room, she glanced at the floor, which showed traces of water at regular intervals. At first sight, they looked like child-size wet footprints. Had Adam made the tracks after his bath? Surely she would have noticed them before, though, and anyway they would have dried by now. She nudged his partly open bedroom door farther ajar and peeked in. In the faint glow of the night light, he lay sprawled on his side, breathing deeply and evenly, with no sign of faking sleep. Also, when she thought to check the floor inside his room, that space showed no wet marks. Withdrawing into the hall, she found the tracks already drying.
After going downstairs to check all the doors, which were locked the way she’d left them, she returned to her own bed, shaking her head in bewilderment. If he wasn’t singing, what did I hear? The TV? She didn’t think she’d become so absent-minded at the age of thirty-four that she would leave the set on and forget doing it. Maybe the cat had stepped on the remote control in the living room just long enough to switch the TV on and off. And if she’d been pawing in her water bowl and then taken a stroll upstairs, that could explain the wet spots. Sure, blame it all on the cat. Considering the hypothetical identification of “Zashi” as the name of a ghost child, she emphatically preferred blaming the cat over suspecting a mischievous spirit.
She’d poured every dollar she could spare into the house. What would she do if it was actually haunted? Sue the home inspector for missing that problem? Abandoning her investment like a hysterical heroine in a horror movie wasn’t an option. She dismissed the whole idea with a shaky laugh. This place is our fresh start. There can’t be anything wrong with it. No way would I accept that—even if I did believe in ghosts, which I don’t.
-end of excerpt-
*****
My Publishers:
Writers Exchange E-Publishing: Writers Exchange
Harlequin: Harlequin
Whiskey Creek: Whiskey Creek
Wild Rose Press: Wild Rose Press
You can contact me at: MLCVamp@aol.com
“Beast” wishes until next time—
Margaret L. Carter
Welcome to the May 2021 issue of my newsletter, “News from the Crypt,” and please visit Carter’s Crypt, devoted to my horror, fantasy, and paranormal romance work, especially focusing on vampires and shapeshifting beasties. If you have a particular fondness for vampires, check out the chronology of my series in the link labeled “Vanishing Breed Vampire Universe.” For my recommendations of “must read” classic and modern vampire fiction, explore the Realm of the Vampires:
Realm of the Vampires
Also, check out the multi-author Alien Romances Blog
The long-time distributor of THE VAMPIRE’S CRYPT has closed its website. If you would like to read any issue of this fanzine, which contains fiction, interviews, and a detailed book review column, e-mail me to request the desired issue, and I’ll send you a free PDF of it. My e-mail address is at the end of this newsletter. Find information about the contents of each issue on this page of my website:
A complete list of my available works, arranged roughly by genre, with purchase links (gradually being updated as the Amber Quill and Ellora’s Cave works are being republished):
For anyone who would like to read previous issues of this newsletter, they’re posted on my website here (starting from January 2018):
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Carter Kindle Books
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The Wild Rose Press has accepted my light paranormal romance novella KAPPA COMPANION, a loose sequel to YOKAI MAGIC and KITSUNE ENCHANTMENT. Objects mysteriously moving in the house, a turtle creature trespassing in the yard—Heidi’s and her son’s new home would be perfect if not for the supernatural denizens left behind by former tenants. There’s an excerpt below. (Adam is the seven-year-old son of Heidi, the widowed heroine.)
This month’s interview features multi-genre romance writer Emma Kaye, another of my fellow Wild Rose Press authors who had a story with me in the SWEET SCOOPS ice cream theme anthology, which is here:
*****
Interview with Emma Kaye:
Hello everyone. Thanks so much for inviting me for this interview, Margaret!
What inspired you to begin writing?
I began writing when my kids were little. I needed something to occupy my mind other than diapers and cartoons. I would read when I could and was always searching for time travel romances. I had a story in my head and couldn’t find it on the shelves. One day my husband and I were talking, and I mentioned the crazy idea of writing the story myself. To my surprise, he said it was a great idea. Not long after that conversation he gave me a beautiful leather journal to write my first draft. I haven’t stopped since.
What genres do you work in?
Time travel, Regency, small town magic, and fantasy – all romance.
Do you outline, “wing it,” or something in between?
Something in between, and each book is different. The shorter the story, the more I outline. If I’m writing a full-length novel, I usually have a vague idea of the major events and the ending, but I don’t outline scene by scene as I do for a novella or short story.
What have been the major influences on your writing (favorite authors, life experiences, or whatever)?
I love being swept away by my reading and hope to do the same for others when I write. Some of my favorite authors are Frank Herbert (Dune is one of my earliest favorites that sparked my love of reading), Mercedes Lackey, Victoria Alexander, Kristen Painter, Diana Gabaldon, JK Rowling, Georgette Heyer… I could go on forever, I think. There are so many great writers out there. My dream is to make someone else’s favorite list someday.
What kinds of research do you do for your historical and time-travel romances?
It depends on what I need for the story. I look up the information I need – books, websites, classes. If I’m not sure of a bit of history as I’m writing, I’ll make a comment in my draft and look it up later. Sometimes, I’ll be doing some general research before I start to write and come across something that changes the direction of what I originally planned. That can be fun (and frustrating!)
For years, I was a member of The Beau Monde group at RWA just to soak up all the knowledge on the email loop. (The Beau Monde focuses on all things Regency.) I learned the answers to questions I’d never even thought to ask. They’re a great bunch, very knowledgeable. They offer online classes all the time and I try to take the ones that might be useful whenever I can.
I love the bargain section at B&N. I’ve picked up tons of books just on the idea that maybe someday… I have books on weapons, fashion, major battles, etc. I never know what might spark the idea for the next book.
Please tell us about the background and development of the Havenport series.
The Havenport series began as an anthology written with my critique partners—Ruth A. Casie, Lita Harris, and Nicole S. Patrick. We introduced Havenport in our fifth Timeless series book, Timeless Moments. I don’t think we realized how much we would enjoy our little town, but we certainly did. And we didn’t want to leave! So, we changed Timeless Moments to Christmas in Havenport and it became number one in a new series. All of our stories in each anthology were connected in some way, whether we all attended the big Fourth of July parade in Welcome to Havenport or took shelter from the winter snowstorm in Snowbound in Havenport. Our stories were interwoven. We had to spend a lot of time brainstorming and going over each other’s stories to make it work, but that was what we all loved most about our little town.
We all write in different genres though, so eventually we decided it would be better to release our books separately. Since all my characters belonged to the local coven, I named my series the Witches of Havenport. Ruth writes Havenport Romance (romantic suspense), Lita writes Women of Havenport (women’s fiction), and Nicole writes Heroes of Havenport (military heroes.)
What is your latest or next-forthcoming book?
The last story I published was Waffle Cone Magic, my contribution to the Sweet Scoops anthology. That was such a fun story to write, and I was thrilled to be included in the anthology with Margaret, Marilyn, Fran, and Jael. I enjoy writing for The Wild Rose Press’s submission calls—Waffle Cone Magic is my third. I also have stories in the Lobster Cove and Candy Hearts series. It’s a fun challenge to pick up someone else’s writing prompt and come up with something that fits the call but also stays true to what I love to write.
What are you working on now?
I’m working on a short Regency Christmas story called A Letter for Miss Brixton. It’s about two people who corresponded for years, fell in love, but never met. Until now. It will release in October/November this year in an anthology with several other Regency authors. This will be my third year participating in this anthology.
What advice would you give to aspiring writers?
Everyone’s writing journey is different and you don’t know what’s going on in someone else’s life, so don’t judge yourself based on how you view someone else’s career.
What is the URL of your website? What about other internet presence?
Emma Kaye Website
Facebook
Twitter
Goodreads
*****
Some Books I’ve Read Lately:
MEXICAN GOTHIC, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. This horror novel hits all the classic notes for a Gothic story. It takes place in an old mansion haunted by dark family secrets and features a young woman in mysterious danger, possibly from her own husband. The protagonist, Noemi, the daughter of an upper-class family in Mexico City in the 1950s, leads a life of socializing, shopping, and partying while trying to settle on a college major. She has only one serious long-term interest, playing the piano. When her father receives an alarming letter from her recently married cousin, Catalina, he sends Noemi to investigate. Catalina married into an English family who have lived in their home, High Place, for several generations, since becoming wealthy from a now-defunct silver mine. In her letter, she claims her husband, Virgil, may be trying to poison her, the house is “sick with rot,” and she hears voices in the walls. Noemi’s father thinks Catalina may need psychiatric treatment and directs Noemi to find out what’s going on, especially since Virgil’s communication on the subject has been reserved and uncooperative. Noemi reluctantly undertakes the trip to the remote village adjacent to Virgil’s isolated house. There she meets his cousin Francis, the only member of the household who seems to welcome her. The needs of Virgil’s father, an infirm old man who spends most of his time in his room, place restrictions on the household such as silence during meals, because sounds carry through the building and disturb him. Francis’s mother autocratically announces the other rules of the house to Noemi, going so far as to severely limit Noemi’s contact with Catalina. Catalina is supposedly recovering from tuberculosis, but would that condition cause her apparently deranged fears? Virgil’s father is obsessed with eugenics, with “superior” and “inferior” races. The mansion is opulent yet poorly maintained, infested with mold and fungus, reminiscent of the House of Usher. The isolation, with Noemi’s access to transportation into town restricted, exacerbates the atmosphere of creeping dread. Are supernatural phenomena happening, or is the structure contaminated by some kind of toxin that causes surreal nightmares and Catalina’s alleged voices? Can Noemi trust anyone, even Francis? The story builds slowly, like a traditional Gothic romance, but the truth about the house and the family’s sinister history provides a satisfying payoff. Without spoilers, I can reveal that the danger looming over Noemi and her cousin is not imaginary, and the source of the threat isn’t quite like any other horror premise I’ve read before. In a unique way, house and family mutually feed off each other, again analogous to Poe’s Usher clan.
LOST IN THE NEVER WOODS, by Aiden Thomas. This YA novel is a sequel to PETER PAN set in the present day. It clearly takes place in a slightly different universe, one in which James Barrie’s play and stories about Peter Pan don’t exist, for the backstory of this novel retells the original classic in a small town in modern Oregon. Thomas’s Wendy Darling has gone through experiences similar to those of Barrie’s heroine. After hearing tales about Peter Pan from their mother, Wendy and her two brothers, John and Michael, disappeared from their home years earlier. Five years ago, Wendy returned alone. Unlike Barrie’s Wendy, she has no memory of spending time in Neverland with mermaids and pirates. Nor does she remember what happened to her brothers. Now children have begun vanishing, and the police probe to find out whether Wendy has recalled anything about her ordeal. Her only trace of memory expresses itself in compulsive drawing. Often without realizing she’s doing it, she sketches pictures of Peter Pan and scribbles images of an ominous-looking tree. When Peter himself shows up, Wendy has to accept that something paranormal happened to her when she went missing. As in Barrie’s play, Peter is looking for his lost shadow, but this loss has much more sinister implications than in the original classic. The shadow has a mind of its own, being a malevolent entity responsible for the disappearance of the child victims. Meanwhile, Peter starts to grow, maturing over a few days from a preadolescent boy into a teenager apparently Wendy’s age or older. In the process, he becomes weaker and begins to lose his magic. Together, he and Wendy search for the tree that may hold the answer to the current kidnappings as well as the fate of John and Michael. The quest reveals a darker aspect of Neverland that Peter has been hiding from Wendy. In the midst of the fairy-tale crisis, Wendy faces the realistic problems of dealing with the police, explaining Peter to her parents and friends, and suffering the consequences of sneaking into the forbidden woods. The climactic horrifying revelations when Peter and Wendy find the tree and confront the shadow lead to an appropriately bittersweet conclusion. While the traumatic experiences change her, Peter, regaining his magic, reverts to his true nature as the boy who never grows up. Even so, he’s far more humanly sympathetic than Barrie’s amoral hero incapable of deep attachments or long-term memory. My one significant complaint about the novel is that the connection between the woods adjacent to Wendy’s home town and Neverland remains vague. The forest has a solid, mundane reality; people can freely walk in and out of it. Peter takes lost children, as he once took Wendy, to an enchanted tropical island of pirates, native tribes, and mermaids. Exactly how they got from the Oregon woods to that other-dimensional realm, however, isn’t specified.
THE BLUE GIRL, by Charles de Lint. I’d previously overlooked this YA novel from 2004. While I’ve liked everything I’ve read by this distinguished author, I haven’t read anywhere near all of his work. The characters in his fiction often inhabit a space where urban fantasy and fairy tales overlap. THE BLUE GIRL, like many of de Lint’s stories, takes place in his invented Canadian city of Newford, where Imogene, her brother, Jared, and their single mother have recently moved. Chapters are narrated in the first person by Imogene; her new best friend, Maxine; and Adrian, a boy who hangs around Imogene at their high school. Present-day scenes are labeled “Now” and written in the present tense. Past events, marked “Then,” are in past tense, so, with the name of the narrator in the heading of each chapter, the reader has no trouble keeping track of person and time. We soon learn Adrian is a ghost, who died by jumping off the school roof a few years earlier. He’s interested in Imogene partly because of the way she stands up to bullies, a byproduct of her association with a rough crowd at her previous school, and he’s grateful that she’s willing to meet and talk with him. In life, he was a stereotypical nerd with no friends, until he got acquainted with the school’s resident fairies. Not sparkly, gauze-winged pixies, but tricksters who look like grotesque little men, for whom “hob” or “brownie” is a more suitable name. Even for people they befriend, they’re not completely safe to associate with. Adrian has also become aware of beings he calls “angels,” who try to persuade ghosts to move on to whatever lies beyond this world. In addition, he has to beware of dark entities that devour the souls of ghosts and people with the power to see into the spirit realm. At first Imogene doubts Adrian’s claims about fairies, because the only supernatural creatures she can see are Adrian himself and her half-forgotten childhood “imaginary” friend, Pelly. When she comes to terms with the reality of the other entities, she has to acknowledge the threat from the soul-eaters, too. Supported by advice from a folklore expert Maxine contacts on the internet, she, Imogene, Jared, and Adrian, along with Pelly and the ambiguous fairies, face the soul-eaters in deadly combat. In the process, Imogene matures and her relationship with her brother changes, while both she and Maxine forge deeper understandings with their respective mothers. By the end, Adrian has to confront the decision he has evaded since his death, whether to leave behind his mostly safe but limited in-between state for an unknown higher plane. The characters are three-dimensional and sympathetic, and the story is all one would expect from a Charles de Lint fantasy.
THE WRITING LIFE, by Jeff Strand. Strand, best known for his humorous horror novels, served as MC at several award banquets presented by EPIC (a now-defunct organization for e-book authors and publishers), an unforgettable experience for those who witnessed his hilarious routines. THE WRITING LIFE is not a writing craft manual. It doesn’t focus on information about the publishing industry and marketing advice for authors, although readers may pick up tips on those topics along the way. It’s not a memoir, although it comprises mainly anecdotes from Strand’s firsthand experiences. His introduction cautions the reader not to expect any of those things, although he does have a chapter on the “creative process.” The first chapter’s title announces the overarching theme of the book, “My Journey Through the Changing World of Publishing.” At the beginning of his career, e-books were new, regarded with suspicion and often disdain, a format resorted to if an author couldn’t get her or his work published as a “real book,” to be abandoned as soon as feasible. Self-publishing was for losers, and self-published works received no respect. Strand built his writing resume through “baby steps” rather than breakout bestsellers, in the process publishing in just about every available format and marketing model. Topics include rejection, negative feedback, critique groups, agents, imposter syndrome, networking, collaboration, day jobs, “Squandered Opportunities,” “Near-Misses,” “A Trio of Early Disasters,” and many others. In his characteristic style, Strand makes humorous reading of even the most painful episodes. While warning the aspiring author against making similar mistakes, he also reassures us that a diligent writer can navigate those rocky roads and still achieve success (however one personally defines success). The book’s subtitle, “Recollections, Reflections, and a Lot of Cursing,” forewarned me of what to expect, so when the numerous words that used to be labeled “unprintable” popped up, I gritted my teeth and mentally bleeped over them. One example of Strand’s irresistible humor, on the very first page, as he responds to the assertion that writing is the hardest job in the world: “This is, of course, total b—s–. There’s plenty of stuff that’s harder than writing. . . . I very much doubt that somebody working retail, in the thick of the psychotic Black Friday crowds, is thinking, ‘Well, at least I’m not writing a novel!’” If that style appeals to you, and you have any aspirations to a writing career, don’t miss this book.
*****
Excerpt from KAPPA COMPANION:
Heidi opened the door, and they stepped inside with Adam in the lead. She stopped short in the foyer and gaped at the living room couch. The throw pillows she’d left in a neat row that morning lay on the floor and the coffee table. “What in the world?”
Shannon looked around at the otherwise tidy space. “I gather it’s not usually like this.”
“Ha, ha.” Heidi strode into the center of the room and picked up one of the cushions. “I wonder if Ebony knocked them off somehow. She’s never done that before, though.” The sleek, all-black cat was nowhere in sight.
Joining her to help straighten up the couch, Shannon said, “Would a cat even be strong enough? Maybe it was an earthquake.”
Heidi answered the joking remark half seriously. “Earthquakes happen in this area, but less than once in a blue moon. Besides, we would’ve felt it at school. Also, things would be knocked off shelves, too.”
“Speaking of shelves, the cat or a quake couldn’t do that, could they?” Shannon pointed to the bookcase beside the television cabinet.
A cushion lay on top of the bookcase, where Heidi herself could barely reach while standing on the floor. Her stomach knotted as she retrieved the misplaced object. What kind of craziness is going on here? Only one halfway plausible notion occurred to her. “For weeks I’ve been running around like a decapitated chicken between getting ready for the fall term and unpacking. Maybe I did it without thinking.”
“Unless you’ve got a poltergeist.” Shannon punctuated the suggestion with a laugh.
Adam spoke up. “I bet Zashi did it.”
“Who’s Zashi?” Heidi asked as she stepped over to the far wall to turn on the central air conditioning.
“She’s my new friend who plays with me in the yard.”
Recalling “Window” and “Tomorrow,” Heidi asked, “Are you sure that’s her name?” Not that offhand she could come up with a real name “Zashi” resembled.
“I think so.”
“Well, there’s no way she could have gotten into the house while we were gone. Is she a friend from school?”
“No, she hangs around here. She can be anywhere. She’s magic. May I take my dinosaurs outside to show her?”
“I guess so.” As soon as he headed for the stairs, an alarming idea struck her. “Oh, no, what if somebody did get into the house?” Her heartbeat surged into overdrive. Followed by Shannon, she checked the living room windows, then hurried along the hall with a detour into the dining room. Ending up in the kitchen, they found no broken or open windows on the way. Both outside doors in the kitchen were locked and deadbolted. Nothing aside from the couch cushions looked disturbed. Heidi leaned on the kitchen counter to catch her breath.
“There you are,” Shannon said. “Cat, poltergeist, or Zashi, whoever she is. Maybe she’s an imaginary friend like the turtle boy. If he is imaginary.”
-end of excerpt-
*****
My Publishers:
Writers Exchange E-Publishing: Writers Exchange
Harlequin: Harlequin
Whiskey Creek: Whiskey Creek
Wild Rose Press: Wild Rose Press
You can contact me at: MLCVamp@aol.com
“Beast” wishes until next time—
Margaret L. Carter