Paranormal Suspense – Page 4

#AmReading

This week, two gay mystery romances (one in audio) and an absorbing fictionalisation of the story of the first Black women officers in the US army in WW2.

A satisfying story about a boy who disappeared fifteen years ago. Morgan can’t remember anything before he was eight and his memories of being passed from pillar to post in foster care are really messed up. Is he Sammy Calloway? Boyd was Sammy’s best friend and he doesn’t know either.

There’s angst, vulnerability and pushing people you’re falling in love with away before they can hurt you. There’s a rich backstory and cast of secondary characters and I like how some of the sub plots are left to spin themselves out in your head…you’ve got enough clues to work out what’s going on, but it’s not spoon fed to you. I recommend.

Sisters in Arms by Kaia Alderson

The story of the first Black women officers in the US army in WW2 through a fictionalised lens. An utterly absorbing story from the creation of the first Black unit in the WAAC, through recruitment, training and deployment to serving in France.

The women faced racism and sexism at every stage and came out triumphant. This book left me smiling– the two main characters are skilfully woven in among the historical figures of the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion and are sympathetic, flawed and very real. Just up my historical street and a joy to read–the writing is beautiful. Plus there’s a list of source material at the back which delighted my inner historical nerd.

P. S. I Spook You by S. E. Harmon (audio)

This is already a comfort re-read for me and the audio lived up to my expectations. If you like your detectives with a side-order of sass and talking to dead people, this is definitely worthwhile, however you read it.

The narrator, Noah Michael Levine, hit the same note for the characters that I had given them in my head and I was able to go along for the ride. I often find I pick up details in the audio that I miss reading on the page and this was the case here…description of surroundings and what people are wearing that add depth and colour to the plot that I sometimes don’t absorb, as I read fast. I’m looking forward to listening to the other two in the trilogy.

That’s the lot for this time!

Release Party Roundup!

No party is complete without a dissection of who was there, what they were wearing, who did what, and with whom. All these lovely authors dropped in to Lester Towers at the weekend and they are all very cool, nice people who write fantastic books. Here’s a round-up of their latest releases so you can check them out easily.

Thank you so much to everyone, readers and authors, who came along. It was my first facebook party and I had terrible nerves…you all made it good fun and I actually enjoyed myself, so I can see myself doing it again at some point!

The Best Corpse for the Job, Charlie Cochrane

Comes a Horseman by Ann Barwell — Comes a Horseman,
Ann Barwell

Soul Eater, Ofelia Grand — Soul Eater,
Ofelia Grand

There Will be Aliens, Holly Day — There Will be Aliens,
Holly Day

The Meet Cute Chronicles Box Set, Nell Iris — The Meet-Cute Chronicles, Nell Iris

When Are You? by Addison Albright — When Are You?
Addison Albright

More Than This, Alexa Milne — More Than This,
Alexa Milne

Stage Struck, Ellie Thomas — Stage Struck,
Ellie Thomas

Trench Warfare, Fiona Glass — Trench Warfare,
Fiona Glass

Magician, K. L. Noone — Magician,
K. L. Noone

A Poison Apple, C. L. Cleppit — A Poison Apple,
C. H. Cleppit

The Vampire Guard, Elizabeth Noble — Codename Jackrabbit,
Elizabeth Noble

Trapped by Greed, Kaje Harper — Trapped by Greed,
Kaje Harper

Club 669, Amy Spector — Club 669,
Amy Spector

The Fog of War, out today!

And…we’re off! The Fog of War is live today! I am so grateful to everyone who has reviewed and let me drop in to their blogs with posts and such-like. It’s a sapphic, historical, paranormal, romantic mystery set in rural England in 1920.

To celebrate today, I’m hosting a party at the Lester Towers facebook group with lots of friends dropping in to say hi and offer giveaways.

I’ve also got a Rafflecopter draw running from the 13th-17th of August with a chance to win a $10 Amazon gift-card if you fancy throwing your hat into the ring.

Finally, I’m doing a bit of a blog-tour talking about the characters, settings and the history behind it and you’ll be able to find the other posts listed on my website as they come out this week. I’ve already visited Anne Barwell’s blog to talk about the village of Bradfield, Elizabeth Noble’s blog to talk about where I’d go if I could time travel and The Sapphic Bookclub to talk about the women-led hospitals in WW1.

The Fog of War

Publisher: JMS Books LLC
Editor: Lourenza Adlem
Release date: 14 Aug 2014
Word Count: 50,000 words
Genre: Sapphic, found-family, historical, paranormal romantic mystery set in 1920s England.
Content Warning: Mention of domestic violence.

The quiet village of Bradfield should offer Dr Sylvia Marks the refuge she seeks when she returns home from her time in a field hospital in France in 1918. However, she is still haunted by the disappearance of her ambulance-driver lover two years previously ,and settling down as a village doctor is more difficult than she realised it would be after the excitement of front-line medicine. Then curious events at a local farm, mysterious lights and a hallucinating patient’s strange illness make her revisit her assessment of Anna’s death on the battlefield.

Lucille Hall-Bridges is at a loose end now her nursing work is finished. She felt useful as a nurse and now she really doesn’t know what to do with her life. She hopes going to stay with her friend Sylvia for a while will help her find a way forward. And if that involves staying at Bradfield with Sylvia…then that’s fine with her.

Will the arrival of Lucy at Bradfield be the catalyst that allows both women to lay their wartime stresses to rest? Can Sylvia move on from her love affair with Anna and find happiness with Lucy, or is she still too entwined in the unresolved endings of the past?

The first in the Bradfield trilogy, set in the Border Magic universe.

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Excerpt

It was a beautiful late August day when Sylvia motored down to Taunton to collect Lucy from the railway station. The sun shone through the trees as she followed the lane down the hill from the village and the sky above was a beautiful summer blue. She had left the all-weather hood of the Austin down and wore a scarf and gloves against the wind, topping her trouser outfit off with her new hat, which she pinned firmly to the neat coil of her long hair.

Walter had watched her fussing with her appearance in the hall mirror, stuffing his pipe. “Are you sweet on her?” he asked, somewhat acerbically.

“It’ll be cold with the hood down,” she said, crushingly.

“Yes, yes, so it will be.” He turned his attention back to his tobacco, face straight. “Be careful on the bends.”

“I will,” she said. “She’s a beast to drive, smooth on the straights and handles well on the corners, but I’ve no desire to end up in the ditch.”

The Fog of War. Historical, paranormal, 1920s England

She’d bought the big Austin coupe late last winter when she’d got fed up riding her motorcycle out to some of the more remote houses she was called to in the dreadful weather. It was huge, far bigger than she needed really, although the back seat was useful to transport a patient if she had to. She still preferred her ‘cycle, but it wasn’t exactly suitable as a doctor’s vehicle. Not very staid at all. The Austin wasn’t very staid either, in that it was huge and expensive; but one of the benefits of a private income was that she could afford it; and so why not be comfortable?

She pondered all this and more on the drive down to Taunton, mind floating along with no real purpose. She loved to drive and for some reason it calmed her thoughts and allowed them to drift.

It would be lovely to see Lucy again. As Walt had said, she was a sweet little thing. Although Sylvia didn’t want to revisit the grim minutiae of some of the worst times at Royaumont, it would be lovely to reminisce about some of their happier moments of camaraderie. It had been four years of extreme stress and grim terror lightened with moments of laughter and fun. Working with a team of competent women all pulling together for one purpose had been extraordinary. She’d never experienced anything like it before and she doubted she would again. She was delighted some of the staff had set up a regular newsletter so they could all stay connected.

And so what if Lucy was sweet on her. Sylvia wasn’t interested in that kind of complication anymore. She didn’t want to cause gossip in the village for a start…although she supposed people wouldn’t make any assumptions about two women living together these days after so many men hadn’t come home from France. But anyway, even if it wouldn’t cause gossip, she didn’t think about Lucy like that. And she doubted Lucy thought about Sylvia like that, despite Walter’s teasing. He was stirring the pot a little to see what bubbled up, that was all.

Those musings took her to the station.

The train was on time and was just pulling in as she got out of the car. She walked out onto the platform as the smoke was clearing and through the clouds, she made out Lucy.

She was beside the guard’s van, directing the guard and porters to what seemed like an unnecessarily large pile of luggage. Despite the clement August weather, she was wearing an extremely smart velvet coat with a fur collar over a beautiful travelling suit that hung to mid calf, topped with an extraordinary confection of a hat.

She looked competent and sophisticated and exceptionally beautiful. Not at all the slightly scapegrace young person of 1916 who had persuaded the hospital powers-that-be she was a suitable candidate for France, although she’d been only twenty-one and inexperienced as a nurse.

Well. Gosh.

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Why ‘The Fog of War’?

As I may have mentioned, just in passing, The Fog of War is out tomorrow. One or two people have pointed out that it’s a slightly peculiar title juxtaposed with the 1920s art-deco cover and what the heck is going on?

The Fog of War. Historical, paranormal, 1920s Englandl

I have a confession, then.

Mr AL named it.

I mean, of course I thought it was a good title and went with it, he didn’t elbow me out of the way to fill in the PUT TITLE HERE bit on the submission form or anything. But he came up with it. He did the same for a couple of my other stories, too–he seems to have a bit of a gift for it. He doesn’t read my books or beta for me or anything, we write in very different genres. But he does listen patiently as I whine about plot-holes and helps me tighten up my blurbs. I do the same for him and it works quite well, I think.

When he came up with it, just throwing potential titles out at me at lightening speed, it immediately struck home.

It’s an evocative phrase first used exactly in the 1890s, although fog, twilight, moonlight and similar concepts had been used earlier in the century by a chap called Carl Von Clausewitz. It describes the confusion of battle, how uncertainty about capability and action on the battlefield are a hindrance or can be used to ones advantage.

It immediately resonated for me because Sylvia and Lucy and their friends are drifting round trying to work out what happened to Anna without having enough information to understand the bigger picture. In retrospect I think it probably clashes terribly with the cartoon cover; but I love the title and I love the artwork, so here we are!

Remember tomorrow there’s a release-party in my facebook group to celebrate the book going live. Lots of author friends are popping in the say hi and both they and I have giveaways and games galore. Do pop in and join in! I also have a Rafflecopter draw going to win a $10 Amazon gift card that you can join today.

Why Paranormal?

Why do I set a lot of my stories in a paranormal universe, you ask? It’s a question I often grumble about to myself.

I am slightly resentful of my writing-subconscious, because it doesn’t want to make things easy for me. I love writing historical stories, the research, the social history, getting into how people thought at the time. I suppose I could be writing these stories without the paranormal element…and indeed, I have! But quite often I start off thinking that’s what I’m going to do and then boink, there we are with mysterious howling and people dissolving and what-not.

Obviously, I had to have some sort of ooops, we’ve slipped through time element at the very beginning of the Border Magic series to get Lew back to 1919 in Lost in Time. But initially that wasn’t really the focus of the book. I wanted to contrast the experiences and expectations of a man born in the 1880s with one born in the 1980s, and time-travel just seemed a really cool way to do that.

And the whole Border Magic Universe has snowballed a bit from there.

I am aiming less for Narnia—a world you can easily pop through a wardrobe door to get to that is magical of itself—and more for Lovecraft, where the magic is dangerous and inexplicable and has consequences for the humans who’s lives it touches. Each of the people in my books discovers and reacts to the magic in different ways and readers aren’t meant to have a whole picture of how it works, because the characters don’t. Sometimes they’ll know a bit more about what’s going on than the characters if they’ve read other books; but it shouldn’t make any difference to their enjoyment of the story if they haven’t.

Readers seem to either like the drip-drip of more information about the magical world or loathe it. As a writer it’s a bit of a cop-out because I don’t have a series-bible with all the rules and regulations of the magic written down in advance. This means I can whip a thing out of the hat to make the story more gruesome or coherent if I want to. My rule to myself is that I can’t change things I’ve already written about—so the magic is internally consistent from book to book and the magic system grows all the time. I know what the rules are, pretty much, but I don’t’ have them written down anywhere in a very formal sense. I should also admit I do subcontract out some of my gothic horror…Talking Child came up with the idea of the hollows in The Flowers of Time and is still smug about it however many years later.

Will I write a story set in the Outlands, so people can find out more about what’s going on behind the scenes? Honestly, I don’t know. At the moment I’d say no, I wouldn’t. But three years ago I’d have told you I’d never write contemporary stories or short stories; and I’m quite happily writing my Reworked Celtic Myths in just that format!

Here’s a deleted scene I posted earlier, Fenn in the Outlands with a bit more about the world.

Category: Paranormal Suspense