Local books: Couple combines forces to conjure a paranormal romance

They thought they were writing a ghost story. In a way, they were, set on Scenic Road along the Carmel coast, in a cottage where she had lived as a little girl. Over the ensuing years, every time she and her own young family would come to visit during the holidays, they’d drive by the quaint cottage, which would conjure childhood memories and she would remember how wonderful it was.

Invariably, the house would have a “For Rent” sign out front and she would wonder why someone didn’t clamor to live in that Carmel cottage full-time, to sit by the sea and sip something from a stem, to watch children build sandcastles, dogs dart in and out of the surf and search for the “signature green flash” as the sun dipped into the horizon.

“It’s got to be because the house has become haunted,” she decided.

Courtesy photo

Surely there was a story there, and perhaps she and her husband should write it. From then on, Lizette Boyer and Gregory Meuers engaged in speculation on how this haunting had occurred, allowing their imaginations to drive the storyline. They read books by other mystery writers — “Writing Mysteries” by Sue Grafton (2002), and others by Sarah Addison Allen, Raymond Chandler, Brunonia Barry, William Kent Kruger, Tony Hillerman, and Alice Hoffman — and then felt ready to write their ghost story.

Except their editor, Joyce Krieg of Pacific Grove, clarified that the pair was writing, not a ghost story, but a “paranormal romance.” Unlike a ghost story, typically a work of fiction or drama that includes a ghost or the suggestion of its presence, a paranormal romance focuses on romantic love and includes elements beyond the norm or outside the range of scientific explanation. Hence the ultimate title of their book, “Cottage of Whispers and Reflections: A paranormal romance in Carmel-by-the-Sea.” (July 2024)

The story arc goes something like this: The protagonist is living a fairly normal life, until her husband dies in a tragic accident, curiously exposing her to a paranormal life. This introduces the tension in the story, when she is forced to deal with the alchemy of the normal and the paranormal, as her life is changing. The denouement arises once the protagonist is offered a second chance at love … or does it?

“The paranormal plays a part in how her relationship develops, as our heroine learns to live in a world of duality,” Boyer said. “The story explores a lot of key literary qualities, among them superstition, vision, the male-female dynamic, love lost and gained — perhaps it’s nothing new except for a twist.”

As they wrote, the couple discovered additional guiding ideas that helped them develop their particular plot, like consciousness, the entanglement of the past, present, and future, and the sense that all is one and everything has a spirit.

Boyer and Meuers worked well together as they generated ideas, established the plot and storyline, and began to develop their characters. Then they conjured up a fortuitous event in the middle of the story, built it to a climax and worked to resolve any issues or inconsistencies en route to a satisfying conclusion. Which can mean so many things.

“Issues were bound to arise,” said Meuers, “while juggling psychic phenomenon, addiction, rehabilitation, redemption, renewal, love, near-death experiences, vivid dreams, and free will. At times, ‘the muse’ would take its sweet time guiding us until the story took shape, and we were ready to refine it and draw our conclusion.”

Coming into the literary culture of Carmel

Lizette Boyer and Gregory Meuers met in Anchorage, Alaska in 1980, at a Memorial Day Party. Some 22 months later, the couple were married on the Monterey Peninsula, where her family lived, in the Sacred Heart Chapel at the Carmel Mission, on the only available day that season, Friday the 13th. The couple interpreted it as a positive sign for the life they would build together.

She held a job as a biologist for the Army Corps of Engineers, while he taught special education in Anchorage. Both jobs required a lot of writing, yet the only part that prepared them to eventually write a novel, she says, was having to choose their words wisely.

“We’ve always been avid readers across many genres,” said Boyer, “and, at one point, Gregory found joy in writing poetry and short stories. It was through this that he realized he was good at guiding an idea to fruition on the page.”

After raising two children, a son and a daughter, the couple retired, ultimately into a home in Seaside they had purchased as an investment in 1992.

“A lot of our story took shape as we walked along one beach or another,” Meuer said. “Lizette wanted the story to flow back and forth through time, so we used her parents’ lives in the 1960s as a starting point for our two characters. Looking into the history of Carmel-by-the-Sea, especially the Bohemians, gave us a lot of ideas, from its founding up to the 1960s.”

Designing their story was sort of like building a jigsaw puzzle, says Meuer, without a picture for a guide. Once they had their frame, they filled it in as ideas were turned into events, which were developed into storylines around their characters.

“Ultimately,” said Meuer, “we think our protagonist blossomed and had quite the adventure, becoming the agent of our exploration into the theme of romance, paired with our paranormal plot.”

“Cottage of Whispers and Reflections: A paranormal romance in Carmel-by-the-Sea” is available at River House Books at The Crossroads Carmel and via Amazon.