Dead Voices

 So it's only been about six months since my last post. Sue me! Actually, I don't mean to be rude. I admire people who blog regularly. I can't seem to get the hang of it for longer than a couple months at a stretch, if I'm lucky. Still, it's not that I don't think about blogging. I just somehow never make it there.

Today I am here because: 1) I am between jobs that require me to leave the house. 2) My grandson is home sick so I need to be home. 3) Said grandson is also asleep so I get to be on the computer instead of checking on him while he watches Angry Birds videos, and 4) I am avoiding doing the breakfast dishes.

Mostly I came to say, to any reader who may happen upon this, that I know my follow up book is taking far too long and there are any number of reasons for this. But here's the primary one. (Readers who have emailed me and gotten a response -which should be most of them- will already know this story, but please bear with me.)

When I launched the Bridgeton Park Cemetery series, the only continuing character I intended to have was Bridgeton Park Cemetery itself. I don't tend to think of my work in terms of book series, and believe it or not, the ending to Haunted was the ending I intended. Anything after Steve's last statement would mean the beginning of Steve's story and the end of Cassie's and Michael's. So I stopped there and went on to the next, a work entitled Ghostwalk that involves an entirely different group of people. And the same cemetery.

While I was working on that, some interesting things happened with Haunted. Buddy and very wonderful and successful writer Terri Reid gave Haunted a review and a hell of a boost. The good news is that I picked up some of her readers and they wrote reviews for me, so my sales left me flabbergasted. The other hit-me-with-a-brick news? Everyone seemed to think there was a sequel coming with Cassie and Michael in it. I even had readers writing me to ask when that would be available. The technical term for how I felt when I read these messages is "freaked out." Here I was, chapters into the new work, and readers were asking for a completely different story with characters I had already bade a fond farewell to.*

After a LOT of moaning and groaning, I started work on a new Cassie and Michael story, Dead Voices. How's that going? Slowly. I'm just not as fast as Terri Reid! But please bear with me. I hope to finish this thing ASAP because I think some of the scenes coming into my head belong in book three already.

Sigh. Yes. I am now writing a CassieValentine/Michael Penfield series under the catch-all name of Bridgeton Park Cemetery. I never would have seen this coming, but here it is. Thank you to everyone who offered me an opinion, even those who let me know in no uncertain terms how much Haunted displeased them. I guess that qualifies me as a real writer! In the meantime, I hope to do better with this blog. Next week I'll try again for a scary topic, and from time to time I'll let you know what's up with the next book. See you next week!

* Read an article recently that said it is not always incorrect to end a sentence with a preposition. Don't know if everyone will buy that, but I thought I'd give it a try!

Calling Forth the Restless

In my newest book, Haunted, there is a scene in which one of the characters remarks that reading or talking about ghosts will attract them to you. I hadn't been thinking about that consciously when May Parrish, my character, opened up her mouth and made that particular proclamation, but since it wound up on paper the thought must have been in me somewhere. I didn't give that specific bit of dialogue much attention until quite a bit later. And now I wonder what I was trying to tell myself.

Nonbelievers will assure me that the reason I hear more things happening in other parts of my house when I'm the only one home is that I am focusing more than usual on hearing creaks, thuds, thumps, and other disturbances. So of course, they explain, I will hear every single one of those noises, though I might not have noticed them otherwise. I suppose that is as good an explanation as any. Maybe it explains why, when I am tucked away in my office writing a ghost story, I always hear random rustlings, squeaks, and assorted sounds that pop off spontaneously and sporadically as I work. Some of these can be quite obnoxious: a heavy thud like someone dropping a cinder block in the other room, or maybe a series of creaks that suggest someone is approaching me from the other end of the house. Most of the time, if I'm working on a story, I try to ignore it. Most of the time, though, because I am working on a story, I wind up looking away from my monitor and glancing out the office door. There is never anyone there, but frequently the noises continue. And then I'll yell something like "Knock it off!" and things will quite down.

When I did newspaper writing some years ago, I had the happy annual assignment of collecting and writing up true ghost stories for the Halloween issue of the paper. I only worked on those stories during the day (while the kids were in school), and I have never forgotten the afternoon I was typing away merrily only to hear a loud bang against the inner wall of the garage, which was connected to our house. It was loud and violent enough to shake the shelf in the adjacent powder room and make the little items on it vibrate against the glass. Naturally when I got up to check, nothing had fallen over or tumbled down anywhere in the garage or in the house. I stopped writing immediately and finished the article when the whole family was home again, and the heck with the kids being in school while I worked.

This whole topic got me thinking: are there certain things that do invite restless spirits? I have a daughter who has always been uneasy around wind chimes because when she was a child she believed -and shared with me- that they attract ghosts. I have always loved wind chimes myself, but I must admit that since she told me that, I always hear an undercurrent of loss or sadness or something even more unsettling coasting along on the pleasant tinkling of the small metal chimes that I have hanging just outside my front door. If my daughter is correct, I must be a bit insane to hang these things so close to the entrance of my house.

And what about music? I know music inspires a whole range of emotions in me and I wonder sometimes if music can't attract a ghost or two. It's so tightly wound into the fabric of an era, surely a Benny Goodman album or some Scott Joplin ragtime could conjure up a nostalgic spirit.

I am writing this in broad daylight with a Depeche Mode song playing on the radio and the sunlight shining on the trees outside my window, but I know later I'm going to go home and transcribe this onto my blog. I wonder how I'll feel about the topic tonight when my grandson has gone to sleep and I'm alone because Jim is out of town again? For the sake of a sleeping child, a sharp Knock it off! is probably preferable than a scream, don't you think?

Haunted Lecture

 A few months ago, I wrote about the possibility of individual things being haunted, as opposed to actually having a haunted house. And I think I mentioned the name John Zaffis.

John Zaffis has a TV show on SyFy, for those who aren't familiar with his name, and it's called "The Haunted Collector." The show is about Mr. Zaffis's travels around the country to help people who are having, for want of a better phrase, paranormal problems. Mr. Zaffis and his team of investigators will go to the person's residence or place of business and try to determine if the problems his client is experiencing are related to items within the location. To date, he and his colleagues have rooted out weapons used to commit murder, jewelry that still had the spirit attached to it, animal bones, and at least one cursed object. And that's just a short list. Once a disturbed/disturbing object is identified, Mr. Zaffis will usually remove it and bring it back to his haunted museum, where it will be safely stored in a sort of privately owned Warehouse 13, speaking of the SyFy channel.

A few weeks ago, while life was truly insane, my husband and I took an evening off to go see Mr. Zaffis lecture at a local community college. What an engaging evening! First of all, it was a chance to see a noted paranormal investigator tell his stories in person. Secondly, what an audience! But first things first. Mr. Zaffis had an entire PowerPoint slide show with topics like ghosts and spirits, or demonology. For a supernatural fanatic like me, this was hitting the mother lode. Toward the end of his presentation, though, just when he got to the topic of demonic possession, the computer went berserk and zipped through the remaining pictures like a cheetah on steroids -but with less grace and more disturbing images- terminating the slide show in a most unceremonious fashion until the process stopped at his icon-filled desktop. Mr. Zaffis seemed about as startled as the rest of us and asked if the college had a ghost. I suppose this might have been staged, but anyone who could see the bewildered expression on the gentleman's face, and I could, would say otherwise. So the bad news was that we never got to see the whole show.

The good news is that he then devoted himself to a solid hour of Q & A from the audience. Did I say something about the audience earlier? There were any number of ghost hunters and paranormal investigators sitting in that lecture center, and all of them had a question. Quite a few people seemed to be looking for personal help. And then there were all the questions about the TV show itself. Mr. Zaffis explained the difference between what he really does and what is allowed on the television screen. He has his frustrations ("They won't let me show the kind of precautions I take whenever I remove one of those objects and store it away") but he is also happy to share his knowledge to those interested in picking his brain.

I don't get to see his program as often as I would like anymore, but I was thrilled to have a chance to see the man in real life. He's funny and down-to-earth, and I did find myself lying awake later that night, mulling over some of his more frightening tales. A bit afraid to open my eyes in the dark? Check. Very uneasy about wandering down the hall to use the bathroom at two in the morning? Check. Sleep a long time coming with all those weird noises originating in a spot just left and a little behind my side of the bed? Check. I must have had a great time!

Well, Where Have I Been???

And I was doing so well! I actually had a weekly post up for several months in a row and then life happened.

First, I accidentally got an almost full-time job as a medical assistant. Seeing as how I spent two-plus years of my life attending classes for this, not to mention getting certified in the field as well as in phlebotomy, getting a job as a medical assistant seemed like a good idea. But it sure takes up a lot of time.

Then there was the whole book thing. After lots and lots of discussion, coaching, advising, and more discussion with friends, with writers experienced at this, with my hubby, with anyone walking down the street willing to listen to a somewhat neurotic writer, I finally decided to self-publish my work. Hence, the picture at the top of this post. It's currently available as an e-book at Amazon. I soon hope to have it available in print, as well. Anyone who doesn't think self-publishing a book for the first time is not a lot of effort or doesn't take very long has clearly never tried it. Or is about twenty times more technically-minded than I am. I have hope for my own learning curve the next time around, and if not, there's always hubby.

That said, most writers I know who are self-publishing their work follow a fairly grueling schedule when it comes to output. Terri Reid puts these things out about every three or four months. I opted for every six months. Since I write ghost stories for the most part, releasing one around Halloween seemed like a good idea. And six months from that is April or thereabouts. I am currently trying not to panic.

At any event, thank you to everyone who has stopped by. This is an unusual post for me: most of the time I try to throw something paranormal into this space and hope to do so for next week's edition. So happy you came by to read this, though, and hope to see you next week with something more in line with a blog titled "Ubiquitous Ghosts"!

Thank You, Peggy!

Thank God for fellow author Peggy Tibbetts (Letters from Juniper, Pvt. Liberty Striker). Those of us on this blog know who she is, and I was lucky enough to get her to review Saving Jake for me. Then I got even luckier when she read my next manuscript. She actually liked it, even though it needed all kinds of work, and offered to publish it at Sisterhood Publications, her current literary home. I was astonished. At the time I was in the depths of the I-have-no-talent and writing-is-just-a-pipe-dream nightmare I seem to subject myself to on a fairly routine basis. I don't know why, but this particular bout was the worst I've suffered in years. Enter Peggy.

She took the time to do an in-depth critique of my manuscript. (I admit it: I didn't look at it for weeks because I was terrified to find out what she really thought of it. I'm a coward!) And when I finally got past all of my own angst, I took her words to heart and made all sorts of corrections and revisions to get a final draft.

And then I flew in the face of all logic and decided to try self-publishing this thing myself on Amazon. Insane, or what? I had a legitimate offer from a fellow writer and here I was turning it down. One reason is that my fiction and Peggy's are not exactly cut from the same bolt of cloth. We both write YA and that's about it. I went onto the Sisterhood Publications website and was awed by the subject matter they house. They call it "edgy" fiction and it certainly is. Anyone who has read Pvt. Liberty Striker will know exactly what I mean.

Like Peggy, I will glean subject matter from current headlines, but then I go away and fabricate a ghost story out of it. My work reflects the way I see the world. I like to think it's scary when I need it to be, but it is not edgy. Not like the work I saw at Sisterhood. So I decided to give e-books a try independently. And Peggy, being the very gracious lady she is, gave me a huge hug by e-mail and wished me the best. (Talk about your class acts.)

So I hope to launch my newest novel very soon. The title is Haunted, it is a ghost story/murder mystery, and I hope people who read it will like it. I followed a lot of Peggy's suggestions and stubbornly left other areas untouched, but the book is all the stronger for her input, that's for sure. My goal is to upload it some time next week, just in time for the Halloween season, but life has gotten in the way yet again and I might be a bit delayed. But I learned something else from Peggy: don't give up (ya big wimp). Yes, the little aside is mine, but it was probably on her mind, too!

So thank you, Peggy. Let's see what happens next.

For this blog piece, I'm trying something new. I'm starting from a picture and seeing what happens when I look at it and start composing. 

This being the start of autumn, the picture being black and white, my chosen creative genre being what it is, I would say the road could easily look haunted. Dense trees on either side. A curve that blinds the driver or hiker from clearly seeing what is up ahead. The possibility of strange rustlings in the underbrush -surely small animals or even a deer, but maybe other noises that are not so easily explained? The muted light could suggest either thick forest foliage or perhaps a day drawing to a close and the onset of twilight: that time of shadows and the slow hushing of day. A time when the total dark of night is approaching. 

I could let my imagination really fly and add a cemetery to the right just at the bend, an old one with weather-eroded headstones, full of gothic carvings like full-body angels with sightless eyes, or granite cherubs that seem to shift as they perch at the top of a mausoleum.

But that would draw away from the road itself, and roads are on my mind today. Who doesn't have an affinity for starting off on a personal adventure, packing up the car and hitting the road on some five-state journey to a known destination, but with a gazillion points unknown in between?

 J. R. R. Tolkien wrote, "The road goes ever, ever on."  David Byrne wrote (and sang) "We're on the road to nowhere." Robert Frost wrote about "The Road Not Taken." Jack Kerouac wrote "On the Road." Above is a picture, taken by the very talented photographer and artist Carmen Elliott, of one of my all-time favorite roads way up in Gills Rock, Door County, Wisconsin. She shot it in color, too, but I really like this black and white version. It lends to the mystery. And the art.

But back to the roads themselves. They offer escape, they offer mystery and adventure, sometimes they even symbolize the close of one of life's chapters, as in reaching the end of the road. 

Roads in general seem to be embedded into human consciousness as both mystery and solution. I love my road up in Door County. Going there mentally, even for a short while, is a solution to the pressures of my day. But I also have a hankering for the haunted roads, too. Maybe more on that later.

Little Psychics, Little Seers

 Last week, I wrote about ghostly children and how frightening they can be. This week, I decided to concentrate on equally frightening children: the ones who are very much alive and can see things that most of us adults can't.

There is a reality show that runs on A & E TV called "Psychic Kids." It follows two or three youngsters, anywhere from age 11 through 17, over the course of a weekend as they try to come to grips with their ability to see dead people. They work with a professional psychic, a certified counselor, and with their parents, to learn about what they are seeing, why, and how to control it so that they no longer need to fear running into all the spirits who are hanging about. The ones that most of us do not see.

The majority of people I know would dismiss the topic of this show as so much nonsense: ghosts don't exist, all these kids have over-active imaginations, I can't see it so there must be nothing to see, there is a reasonable explanation for everything that happens to these children.

And that's a really easy attitude to have until you find yourself in the company of a child who does see something, who will not be talked out of what he or she can see, who is too young to make up some of the details that come up -or even understand them, who tells the same story consistently over and over again.

I know a little guy, three years old when this first started happening, who would flee to the nearest grown-up in terror, saying over and over again that "the big boy is coming." I never found out who or what "the big boy" was, but this child was clearly panicked whenever he saw this entity. I was there for some of these events and it always brought goose-bumps up on my arms and the back of my neck. Were there any frightening "big boys" on the children's shows he was watching? His regimen at the time was Sesame Street and Super Why, so I don't think so. Could he have been bullied at day care? Also possible, but he was in a class made up exclusively of three-year old children, none of whom were much bigger than he was, if at all, so I don't think that was the root of this. This was a child who, from babyhood, would smile and babble at something just above and behind me when I changed his diaper, who once corrected me for not saying good-night to "the boy by the [rocking] horse," who had an entire conversation with an empty chair at my mother's one afternoon, ending with "Do you want a kiss?" and kissing the side of the chair before making his way back to his toys.

I have no doubt, when I look into those great, big, beautiful blue eyes that he is talking to someone he sees as clearly as he sees me. I also do not correct him, or tell him no one is there, or make him feel as if I don't believe him. I think he has a gift and far be it from me to be the one to destroy it. 

Already, some months later and now four years old, he has stopped fearing the Big Boy. But I do catch him, sometimes, clearly listening to someone I can't see or hear. But I don't disturb him. Interrupting conversations is just rude.