Sara Daniel's Blog, page 57

Tuesday Toolbox - What Makes Cozy Mysteries So Popular?

Guest Post by Sam Cheever

What is it about cozy mysteries that makes them so much fun? To answer that question, I guess you need to start with the basic elements of a cozy. When one thinks of a cozy, one might think Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple or maybe Angela Lansbury’s character, Jessica Fletcher, of Murder She Writes fame. The traditional cozy is set in a specific, confined area, such as a bunch of people stranded in a remote location with a killer in their midst, a.k.a Clue (Best. Movie. Ever). Many contemporary cozies are in small town settings, with quirky characters and the challenges and opportunities inherent in small town living. A cozy generally revolves around a murder, but the murder is usually off screen and/or not overly violent.

Cozy mysteries feature amateur sleuths of all kinds. For example, some of the most popular contemporary cozy series feature flower shop owners, chefs, caterers, accountants, book store owners, writers, and dog trainers. These unlikely sleuths find themselves repeatedly embroiled in murder most foul and struggling to figure out whodunit. The mystery is made more interesting by the quirkiness of the people involved, their tendency to lie and cover, and the misconceptions that come from knowing someone for years. It’s a fun formula fraught with opportunities for both the reader and the sleuth to go awry and lose their way.

Which brings me to the reason I love a good cozy mystery. I love the challenge and journey of figuring out whodunit in a light, fun environment. No guts, no gore, no over-the-top sensuality. Just a big, fun puzzle.

My own cozy mystery series is centered on an antiques store owner and has an additional fun twist. Filled with lots of great, old things, Yesterday’s Antiques is a hotbed of paranormal activity, giving Yesterday Mysteries a paranormal edge. This aspect adds an extra element of fun to the already enjoyable mystery. Anna Yesterday is a kind, attractive young woman trying to make a living doing what she loves in a small town in Southern Indiana. When Anna opened Yesterday’s Antiques, she inherited two spirits, who are tied to objects that were once buried under the store.

Joss is a cowboy from pre-Civil war times, whose gun belt and holster were uncovered behind the store when Anna was having some improvements made. Joss is sexy, protective, and obviously in love with Anna, and she feels pretty much the same about him. The second specter, Bess was a saloon girl who sometimes cleaned the floors in the inn that was located where Yesterday’s now exists. She lived in the mid to late 1800s and Anna isn’t sure what her transference object is. Bess and Anna butt heads on a regular basis, mostly due to the fact that Bess is jealous of Anna’s relationship with Joss, but also because…well…Bess is kind of a crank. #:0)

To make things even more interesting, Anna has a sexy, flesh and blood assistant who’s an ex-cop to help her with her sleuthing. Her growing feelings for Pratt are confusing and cause no end of tension between the two men in her life. All in all, it’s a fun series with likeable characters and I’m really enjoying being on the creation side of the cozy mystery genre for a change! I hope you’ll check these books out.
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Antiques can be a dangerous business. Especially when you’re dealing with a desperate politician, a sexy ex-cop, and a couple of “spirited” companions.

Anna Yesterday owns Yesterday’s Antiques in small town USA. When she finds an old newspaper clipping lining the drawer of an antique dresser, she realizes she’s never heard the ugly story of rape and suicide detailed on the yellowed newsprint. So she starts to dig, and her sleuthing exposes an ugly cover-up that casts the residents of Crocker, Indiana into danger and intrigue, and leaves them with a corpse.

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A deadly secret is tangled up in Yesterday’s Threads, and Anna is racing the clock to get it unraveled.

In 1859, Elisabeth Margaret Nelson traveled to Crocker, Indiana to meet her new husband and start a new life. Her family never saw her again. The story of her death and a heartbroken husband who grieves his entire life is a sad tale for sure. But is it true?

When Anna Yesterday receives some vintage dresses from the local museum, she’s excited about highlighting them at Crocker’s annual Apple Blossom Festival. But someone wants the dresses back, and they’ll apparently stop at nothing to get them—leaving a trail of murder and destruction in their wake.

As Anna and Pratt work to uncover the deadly intrigue behind the vintage dresses, interference of another kind is working its way to the surface. All too soon, Anna and Pratt find themselves neck deep in trouble from more than one dimension—and wondering which will get them first!

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Friday Friends - Real Place, Fake People by Holley Trent

Real Place, Fake People
by Holley Trent

Love by Premonition is a paranormal-themed book that I wanted to set in a realistic environment, so I constructed a world out of my ancestors’ stomping grounds. The rural setting and deep family roots of North Carolina’s Halifax County make the place ripe for some stranger-than-fiction scenarios. I like strange, so I ran with it! Now, just because a book is fiction (especially campy paranormal romance fiction) doesn’t mean the author didn’t do research. I’ve been studying Enfield’s families for more than a decade trying to unravel my family tree, so I know a bit about the history. Furthermore, I’m a North Carolinian so I know the culture.

Here are few “real” nuggets from the novel.

1 – Surnames. The names I gave my supporting characters are typical of Eastern North Carolina, and Halifax County specifically. The Silvers? Braswells? Bryants? The area is bursting with them. Although the characters aren’t modeled after any specific people, I felt like I couldn’t ignore those famous families. (And by famous, I mean “really freaking big.” If you have ancestry from that area that doesn’t overlap with one of those families, I’d be shocked. [For you genealogists stumbling onto this via Google, let’s chat, huh?])

2 – Overly dramatic locals. That’s not to say everyone in Halifax County are emotionally erratic, but in such a rural place that folks are just more comfortable putting their quirks on display. (You should see my private Facebook stream. Y’ALL. OMG. I see everything from weapon brandishing to communicated threats [e.g. “When you see my car in your yard tomorrow, come on outside and get your beat-down.”] on a daily basis.)

So, brazen tramp showing up at the mayor’s wake with a bogus will? Same audacious hussy being walloped in the street by mayor’s widow? Wish I could say I conjured that sub-plot out of thin air. (That particular subplot is actually a combination of my own family experience and, again, unbelievable Facebook shenanigans.)

3 – Rampant miscegenation. My protagonist—Marcia—explains some local history, including the ripe conditions in Enfield for creation of a tri-racial isolate. That’s a real thing. I swear. It’s a historically accurate inclusion, but the locals may not know it by that fancy phrase. They call that “skeletons in the closet.” More accurately, “skeletons in the family tree.”

4 – Hinky supernatural stuff. Hang with a born Southerner of a certain age long enough, and you’ll hear the stories. You may even start to witness some pretty wild stuff yourself. I have personally been anointed with holy oil (in my sleep) as a defense against demons. (Ahem.) So…Marcia’s grandma Sophia? I didn’t just conjure her from thin air.

Here's a brief intro of my just released novel for you;

The psychic didn't go looking for love, but she should have seen it coming.

Marcia Andrews is a freelance psychic consultant. Sick of living hand to mouth, she accepts a contract with Raleigh Police. A new gang called The Cardinals is terrorizing The Triangle, and Marcia gives the department an edge in tracking them. Help that she is, one cop isn’t so keen on her involvement, and makes sure she knows it.

Detective Nat McCoy would rather see Marcia in his bedroom than the bullpen. The gorgeous Scotsman isn’t the typical chauvinist pig, though. He’s keeping a secret that even the psychic doesn’t anticipate.

A close encounter with a Cardinal’s bullet knocks Marcia off her game when the police need her most. She loses hours to trances and ghosts haunt her sleep. She can hardly function, and everything she thought she knew about playboy McCoy suddenly seems questionable. McCoy thinks he knows the cure for what ails her—him. But can she trust him?

Love by Premonition is available for purchase now at the Musa store and also at third-party vendors such as Amazon.com and All Romance eBooks.

If you’d like to stay up to date on my progress with its spin-off, visit me on my blog or follow me on Twitter .

Holley Trent is the author of Executive Decision, Mrs. Roth’s Merry Christmas, and Her Resident Jester – all available now from Musa Publishing's Calliope Romance Line.

To see all of Holley Trent's Musa Publishing books, please click HERE .

Sinful Sirens Blog Hop Giveaway!

Haley is the most sinful siren I've written about to date. She's brazen. She knows what she wants sexually, and she's not afraid to demand it. But don't take my word for it. I'm offering her story FREE  on Amazon for five days from May 16 through May 20, 2013.  Please be aware:  Haley's Man  is a steamy erotic romance with very explicit love scenes.

Everyone who downloads a copy and leaves a comment below telling me how you helped spread the word on Facebook and Twitter about the Haley's Man free promotion, I'll award one random winner a copy of Zane's Art , which was given 4 starts by Fern from Long and Short Reviews who had this to say: "With a smoking hot sex scene you might not want to share with your grandma..."

Now that's a Sinful Siren!


 Haley’s Man
Free May 16, 2013 - May 20, 2013 only from Amazon

When Haley Miller posts on a sexual fantasies forum that she wants to have an orgasm while surrounded by her friends, one reply stands out. Intrigued and desperately aroused, Haley prepares for the orgasm of her dreams. But when she arrives at her friend’s house, she learns that the man of her dreams, Seth Gardner, is back in town. Now she must decide if she wants to go through with her plans for public pleasure or go after her dream date with Seth, or risk losing them both.

Tuesday Toolbox – Going Free with Haley's Man

I’ve talked about the powerful promotional tool of giving away free books via blog hops and on Goodreads. I’ve also talked about the promotional tool of giving away free short storiesto allow readers to sample your work. 

For self-published authors, offering a book for free through one of the multiple e-reader platforms has the potential to get your book in the hands of more readers and create awareness of your author name than any of these other giveaways. Offering a book for free can be done in different ways. If the book is on Smashwords, you can generate a coupon code that customers can enter. Some authors, such as Marie Force, have had great success in making their book free on other platforms and getting Amazon to price match, effectively making it free on a near-permanent basis.
I’ve decided to offer my self-published book free by enrolling in Amazon’s KPD Select program. In exchange for giving Amazon exclusive distribution of my book for 90 days, I can do a five day free promotion. The thinking is that the more books I give away, more readers will discover me, love my writing and pay real money for my other books. The other hope is that the free book will sell at a higher rate after the promotion than it did before because it’s now been noticed and has a boost in ranking.
Some people have had phenomenal luck with this type of promotion. Unfortunately, I wasn’t one of them when I tried it with my children’s chapter books. So why am I trying it again? This time my book is situated in a genre (erotic romance) where readers are more accustomed to discovering new authors digitally. I have a big backlist of titles to capitalize on. I contacted nearly two dozen web and social media sites that alert their followers to free e-reads to enlist help in spreading the word. And finally, I have nothing to lose. If the promotion doesn’t work, I’m no worse off than I was before.
Haley’s Man will be free on Amazon for five days from May 16 through May 20, 2013. I’m asking for everyone who is willing (and comfortable with it) to download a copy and help me spread the word. Please be aware: This is a steamy erotic romance with very explicit love scenes.
I’ll report back in a future toolbox on the success of the promotion.


 Haley’s ManContemporary Erotic Romance Novella
Free May 16, 2013 - May 20, 2013 only from Amazon

When Haley Miller posts on a sexual fantasies forum that she wants to have an orgasm while surrounded by her friends, one reply stands out. Intrigued and desperately aroused, Haley prepares for the orgasm of her dreams. But when she arrives at her friend’s house, she learns that the man of her dreams, Seth Gardner, is back in town. Now she must decide if she wants to go through with her plans for public pleasure or go after her dream date with Seth, or risk losing them both.

Embrace Your Steamy Side

I wrote the original version of Haley’s Man for a super-hot publishing line that subsequently quadrupled their word count requirements. The story developed into such a fun sexy fantasy that I couldn't bear to keep it hidden on my hard drive. This is the steamiest book I've ever written and will never receive my grandmother's prim-and-proper seal of approval. I'm okay with that. I enjoy writing the occasional erotic fantasy to compliment my less spicy romance novels. If you're looking for white-hot heat in your reading material and/or in the bedroom, Haley’s Man will deliver.
Haley’s Man will be free on Amazon for five days from May 16 through May 20, 2013. Download a copy and help me spread the word. Please be aware: This is a steamy erotic romance with very explicit love scenes.
 Haley’s Manby Sara Daniel
Contemporary Erotic Romance Novella
Free May 16, 2013 - May 20, 2013 only from Amazon

When Haley Miller posts on a sexual fantasies forum that she wants to have an orgasm while surrounded by her friends, one reply stands out. Intrigued and desperately aroused, Haley prepares for the orgasm of her dreams. But when she arrives at her friend’s house, she learns that the man of her dreams, Seth Gardner, is back in town. Now she must decide if she wants to go through with her plans for public pleasure or go after her dream date with Seth, or risk losing them both.


Bio: Sara Daniel writes what she loves to read—irresistible romance, from sweet to erotic and everything in between. On the personal side, Sara is a frazzled chauffeur, chef, personal assistant and slave to her children. She's crazy about country music and the drama of NASCAR. She has her own happily-ever-after romance with her hero husband. She is the author of nearly a dozen romance novels, novellas and short stories. For a complete list of titles, visit her website: www.SaraDaniel.com

Friday Friends - Marci Boudreaux serves Homemade Pancakes

by Marci Boudreaux

Widow Carrie Gable, the heroine in Unforgettable You, has taken over the role of caregiver for her ailing mother-in-law Doreen. Determined the keep the woman in her family home for as long as possible, Carrie has agreed to board several movie stars who are filming in her small town. Though resentful of the demands placed upon her, Carrie does her best to abide by the wishes of her guests, even when she finds them over the top.

When health conscious starlet Juliet Ramirez insists that her hostess stop tempting her with fried meat and eggs at breakfast, Carrie agrees but refuses to remove her signature pancakes off the menu because, as she insists, serving breakfast without pancakes goes against everything she’s ever learned about being a good hostess.

Carrie’s Best Ever Homemade Pancakes

Dry Ingredients:
2 cup white flour
1 cup wheat flour
5 tsp. baking powder
2 tbsp. sugar
1 ½ tsp. salt
½ tsp. cinnamon

Liquid Ingredients:
2 ½ cups milk
2 ½ tsp. white vinegar
2 eggs
6 tbsp. melted butter
2 tsp. vanilla extract

Fresh fruit can be added if desired. Frozen fruit can change the texture of the batter, fresh is better.

Mix vinegar and milk together and set aside for five minutes to sour. (2 ½ C buttermilk can be used in place of soured milk.)

Whisk dry ingredients together into large bowl.

In separate bowl, mix eggs, soured milk, and vanilla. Slowly mix in cooled melted butter.

Add liquid mixture to dry mixture and whisk until combined. Fold in fruit if desired.

Pour ¼ cup portions onto hot griddle lightly coated with cooking spray. Flip with spatula once edges brown.

Serve hot with your favorite syrup.

Here's a little from Unforgettable You for your reading pleasure.

Is their love strong enough to survive their real lives?

Desperate to keep her ailing mother-in-law Doreen in the family home, Carrie Gable agrees to board a few of Hollywood’s elite actors. Despite her resentment of their demands, she can’t stop her attraction to actor Will Walker.

Will, out to save his failing career, agrees to a project that bores him. The more time he spends with his egotistical co-stars, the more drawn he is to their hostess. Long nights talking with Carrie make him realize he wants a simpler life, but his ties to L.A. refuse to let him go.

The temptation to regain stardom pulls Will in one direction while the obligation to family tugs Carrie in another. Against all odds, the couple struggles for a solution to save their new found happiness.

To read an excerpt from Unforgettable You, please click HERE .

Check out the trailer for Unforgettable You HERE .

Learn more about Marci Boudreaux on her website. Stay connected on Facebook and Twitter .

Tuesday Toolbox - Bad Words Your Mother Never Told You Not to Say

Did your mother ever threaten to wash your mouth out with soap for saying naughty words? I remember watching my brother get his mouth washed out with soap. The terrible, naughty word he dared to speak was…“shut up.”
You can make a safe assumption that I never heard the words most people consider bad enough to be offensive—well, until I started riding the school bus, but that’s another story! I certainly wouldn’t have said them. Imagine my surprise when I started getting edits that were color-coded with all the bad words I needed to take out, words that I used every day in front of my mother!
Actually. Just. That. Completely. Even.
Actually, when I’m just writing the draft, these are words that seem completely justified, even necessary. For the most part, however, my writing becomes stronger when I remove them.
Speaking of stronger, I needed to obliterate passive voice from my writing.
Seem/seemed. Feel/felt. Made/make. Thought. Believed. These are filtering words that I blogged about here. They need to go. http://saradanielromance.blogspot.com/2013/03/tuesday-toolbox-lose-filter.html
Was.This passive verb, along with his buddies hadand could, takes over my drafts and leaves me with the unpleasant soap residue in my mouth. Here’s an example from my latest manuscript:
Draft: He was treating her with the same polite distance…Revised: He spoke to her with the same polite distance…
The revised version not only shows the hero performing an action. It also gives the reader a more concrete impression of his previously vague treatment.
I don’t pretend to have all the answers. Eradicating overused words and passive sentence construction is something I struggle with during each book. But I now recognize my weakness words, and I use Microsoft Word to search for and highlight each one. I look forward to the day when I address them all before they reach my editor’s desk and I save myself from a thorough mouth-washing.

Reading Romances Challenge - May

May's theme was Summer Loving or Nurse Back to Health. I decided to read the second choice where the hero/heroine is injured near death and the other saves his/her life by nursing her back to health. Over the Edge by Mary Connealy is historical inspirational romance, in other words about as far from my normal reading material as possible while still belonging to the romance genre.
Seth Kincaid survived a fire in a cave, but he's never been the same. He was always a reckless youth, but now he's gone over the edge. He ran off to the Civil War and came back crazier than ever.
After the war, nearly dead from his injuries, it appears Seth got married. Oh, he's got a lot of excuses, but his wife isn't happy to find out Seth doesn't remember her. Callie has searched, prayed, and worried. Now she's come to the Kincaid family's ranch in Colorado to find her lost husband.
Callie isn't a long-suffering woman. Once she knows her husband is alive, she wants to kill him. She's not even close to forgiving him for abandoning her.
Then more trouble shows up in the form of a secret Seth's pa kept for years. The Kincaid brothers might lose their ranch if they can't sort things out. It's enough to drive a man insane--but somehow it's all making Seth see things more clearly. And now that he knows what he wants, no one better stand in his way.
This book would definitely qualify for an amnesia themed romance, which gave it a great hook: "Seth Kincaid remembers everything...except getting married!" The heroine is about the toughest frontier woman you can imagine, but after holding off outlaws who tried to rob the stagecoach she is riding in, she is near death and has to rely on the husband who married her, abandoned her, and can't remember her to nurse her back to health. So, it fits this month's theme too.
Trust me, it's a good thing for him that she's near death because otherwise she'd have shot him dead along with the outlaws! I really liked the spunky heroine, and the Kincaids have a good family saga going. The paternalistic, condescending attitude toward women grated on my nerves, which is probably why I don't normally read this genre.

Friday Friends - Holley Trent Talks Science and Fiction, but Not Combined

Science and Fiction, but Not Combined
by Holley Trent

Truth: a lot of what I know about the setting of my upcoming paranormal romance Love by Premonition —Enfield, North Carolina—is based on my own family tree research. I grew up a couple of counties east, but my maternal grandfather, Frank, was born in Halifax County and left as soon as he could.

I know that sounds bad, but he was a man with a Big-Fish-Small-Pond type of personality. He was also prone to telling tall tales, and I could never tell which of his stories were truth and which were fiction. He was particularly mystifying when it came to his ethnic background. Kinda like Marcia, my LbP heroine. But, unlike Gramps, Marcia is capable of itemizing her heritage. She had a little supernatural help at it. Gramps could only guess based on best available information.

Because miscegenation was illegal around the time Gramp’s grand- and great-grandparents were doing it, there’s very little legal evidence that can be used to establish several of his ancestors’ paternities. Death records may list a father, but depending on who provided the information, those reports may be false. Gramps may have been told the names of his mysterious grandfathers, but he likely didn’t know much about them.

And that’s how I came to setting a book in contemporary Enfield. The more I researched my holey family tree, the more befuddled and intrigued I became about the citizens. I’ve even toyed around with the idea of writing a historical romance set there, but I can’t come up with single darned plot that would have a happily-ever-after ending. (Maybe Gramp’s Enfield sentiments rub off on me in that way.)

My sister and I always thought it’d be a hoot to take one of those ancestry composition tests so we could have a better idea of which of Gramp’s “facts” were grounded in reality. I had forgotten all about that until I got a letter in the mail from the national blood marrow donor registry. In it, they told me I have an uncommon HLA type. (That happens when your components are like fruit punch—melded together and unidentifiable.) Means I’ll probably never be a marrow match for anyone.

Anyhow, that letter reminded me about that test and a couple of weeks ago I sent a spit sample to the lab. They’re gonna analyze my DNA and tell me what I am…more or less. There may be enough information there to separate Gramp’s facts from rumors, or the results may raise even more questions. I know where, more or less, my father’s parents came from, so any wildcards will come from Enfield Gramps.

I’m supposed to get results in 4-6 weeks—just in time for Love by Premonition’s debut. Marcia knows exactly what she is ’cause that’s the way I made her, but I’ve got to rely on science for the same info about myself.

It’ll be interesting to see how similar I am to a fictional character of my own creation.

Holley Trent is the author of Executive Decision, Mrs. Roth’s Merry Christmas, and Her Resident Jester – all available now from Calliope Romance. Marcia’s story Love by Premonition will be available May 3.

To see all of Holley Trent's Musa Publishing books, please click HERE .

If you want to learn the results of Holley’s 23 and Me test and how far off her guess they were, check her blog in late April or early May.

Tuesday Toolbox - Think You Want to Write Paranormal?

WRITING THE PARANORMAL
Guest Post by Clarissa Johal

People often ask me how I began writing in the genre of paranormal. I’m not brooding or scary or running off to join the latest séance, which I think is what they expect. And my silly sense of humor oftentimes gets me into trouble, especially with my two daughters.

The topic of paranormal has always interested me because I moved around so much as a kid. It seemed we were always living in an older place and with those older places, came a ghost or two. Now, before you chuckle and roll your eyes (or not) let me tell you, I walk the line between skeptic and 100% believer. On the surface, I may be rolling my eyes with you, but inside, I believe in a plethora of things I won’t even begin to discuss until I’ve known someone a very long time. I know what I’ve experienced, and I know what my rational mind tells me. Believe me, there’s a lot of arguing in my head over those two things. We are a collection of what we’ve experienced in our lifetime, and since I’m as old as the hills, I’ve experienced plenty.

When I was 10-years-old, we moved to an island and lived for several months in a 30-year-old house. I’m an insomniac and have been since I was a kid. Consequently, being awake while the rest of my family slept was nothing new, though my mom would get quite irritated because I would roam the house at night and wake her up. One evening, and after hours of tossing and turning, I decided to stroll. While I sat on the couch trying to figure out what to do with myself, I heard singing in my ear. It was as if a woman was sitting right next to me singing, “Time in a Bottle.” I liked the song, it was popular at the time (and yes, that dates me) but I didn’t know the words. At that point, I did what any kid would do if they weren’t compelled to run away screaming, I politely sat and listened until she finished. Afterwards, I went back to bed and proceeded to have the worst nightmare. I dreamt that I walked into our bathroom and found a naked, young woman wrapped up in a shower curtain in our bathtub. She was blonde, had a bullet hole in her head, and was quite dead. It was a graphic nightmare for a 10-year-old; I never watched television and rarely had nightmares. I had it for weeks until we finally moved. Each time, it became more intense—it had gotten to the point where she was clawing her way out of the tub and trying to speak to me through the shower curtain. Needless to say, I was a bit of a wreck by the time we moved. Years later, I remember finding out from my parents that there was indeed, a murder at that house. They didn’t elaborate, but I always wondered of the details. Parents, tell your kids these things ahead of time, because if they ever experience anything, they will always wonder.

I was 13-years-old when my parents took a house by the ocean. They were able to rent it cheap and I was more than a little sad when we moved a year later. It had a garden, a tree-house, a large yard to do cartwheels in; everything a kid could want. It also had ghosts. I would lay awake for hours and watch a white cat walk through my bedroom wall. Over and over again. No explanation for that, it just was. I remember constantly seeing an old lady out of the corner of my eye. She would follow me down the stairs to the basement and back up again. She would follow me down the hallway to my bedroom. Sometimes, I would see her sitting in my mom’s rocking chair in the living room. I wasn’t afraid; she was just a presence I came to accept. It wasn’t until we moved from that place that I overheard my parents discussing the house and the fact they had both seen the shadow of an old lady there. They thought it might have been the lady that died in the house before we bought it. Well, that was news to me (and unfortunately, taught me the joys of eavesdropping).

So, back to the genre of paranormal. I began writing fiction when my kiddos were younger. While writing the second installment to my Pradee series, I was interrupted by two characters that truly didn’t fit. I kept setting them aside, but they would return, stronger than ever. Finally, I gave up on my young adult title and began Between, a story of the paranormal. While my young adult fantasy, took me ten years to complete, I had the rough draft of Between finished in several months and a year after that, the full novel was complete. Six weeks after I submitted, Musa Publishing offered me a contract.

The novel I’m working on now is also in the genre of paranormal. I have to say, I’m hooked. I like the freedom of writing for adults and I love presenting the paranormal in a new and interesting ways. Now, I know what you’re probably going to ask me. Do I write of my experiences or make stuff up? I’m a writer, I write fiction, and I know the difference between fiction and real life. I have to, I have kids. However, the best fiction is when writers “write what they know” and a little of what I know creeps into my novels from time to time. I hope you will enjoy reading them.


How far would you go to redeem yourself?
Since Lucinda was a young girl, she's been able to see spirits, a gift that didn't come without its problems. Now, a dedicated, young veterinarian, she is committed to the idea that everything can be saved.

When Lucinda is involved in a car accident that kills her fiancé, she is devastated and moves to a small town to live a life of self-imposed exile. There, she meets a newcomer and feels an immediate connection with him. However, there is another mysterious stranger to the small town, one that stirs within her a mixture of unease and desire.

The spiritual activity around her intensifies as Lucinda is increasingly haunted by memories of the accident. As she is drawn into a bitter tug-a-war from the forces around her, she is likewise pulled into a dangerous twist of past and present events. Forced to make difficult choices, she surprisingly finds that the two men are locked in not only a battle for her life...but a battle for their salvation.

Learn more about Clarissa Johal on her website and blog . Stay connected on Facebook and Twitter .