Ghosts

Do you believe in ghosts?

I don't know how to answer that one. I'm not sure yet.

But the whole concept fascinates me. I'm not scared of ghosts so much although I may be if I see one, but I just wonder why a spirit would hover around and haunt. What is it up to? That's if they are real. One of the series I'm into at the moment is Ghost Whisperer. I love the concept of the main character helping the dead people find closure or healing so that they are ready to move onto the next life. A series I've been reading by Joya Fields features ghosts and a similar concept - that they don't feel ready to move on yet. It just calls for fascinating reading. You can find it here: Hauntings at Inner Harbor Series

I've also been reading a few physic  / non-fiction books. I'm a total sceptic, but I love reading about people's real-life experiences with ghosts. I don't think I could handle seeing them myself, but I think it's interesting reading about other people's happenings.

Anyway, I had to bring ghosts into one of my books. It's a new release which came out a couple of weeks ago. The blurb doesn't mention a ghost, but as you read on, you will discover the ghost at play in the story.

Romance Writer in Training...

Joanie wants to get her romances published but can't seem to get things right with her writing. She buys an antique bureau which the shopkeeper says has magic working through it. While using her new bureau, she begins to talk to the hero in her book, asking his advice on writing, all the while thinking it's her own imagination. She promises he can live in her home, eat at her table and sleep in her bed, if he helps her with her writing. She doesn't think he will actually knock on her door and insist she keep her promise.

He's made a wish...

Theo has also bought a magic chest of drawers that brings him into Joanie's life. He wants to settle down with one woman, tired of shallow relationships, and Joanie seems like the perfect candidate if it weren't for her insistence on getting rid of him.

Against her will...

The magic keeps on forcing them to live together and Joanie's not happy. This is her first year alone and she's been craving time to herself after looking after her younger siblings and an ailing aunt. Theo's presence in her home, although unwanted, stirs up needs she's suppressed for years. When they start to discover things about the magic and why it's bringing them together, will Joanie recognize another type of magic at work? Will she succumb to the charm of Theo or will her need for breathing space pull them apart?



Buy on Amazon

#Review of A Red, Red Rose by Susan Coryell from Barbara Edwards

Susan Coryell’s A Red, Red Rose quickly drew me into the slightly gothic atmosphere of a Southern mansion with a ghost and a hidden history. Ashby, a modern girl, misses her cell phone and internet access as she takes on caring for her nephew for the summer at the family home she’s never visited. The explanations for the estrangement increase the suspense page by page just as the romance between Ashby and Luke grows stronger.

Ashby is intrigued by the family secrets and the ghostly spirit that seems to be protecting her. despite the reluctance of everyone to share what they know, Ashby persists. The revelation result in a violent and surprising end.

I really enjoyed reading A Red, Red Rose and will be looking for the next story by Susan.

buy link for A Red, Red Rose by Susan Coryell

Link: http://amzn.com/B00GVKMG0K

5 dragons

A short biography of Susan Coryell:

A career educator, I have taught students from 7^th grade through college-level. I have a BA degree in English from Carson-Newman College and a Masters from George Mason University. I am listed in several different volumes of Who’s Who in Education and Who’s Who in Teaching.  I belong to Author’s Guild, Virginia Writers, and Lake Writers. I love to talk with budding writers at schools, writers’ conferences and workshops.

I have long been interested in Southern concerns about culture and society, as hard-felt, long-held feelings battle with modern ideas. The ghosts slipped in, to my surprise, while writing cozy mystery/Southern Gothic A Red, Red Rose and its sequel Beneath the Stones. 

My first published work was the award-winning young adult novel Eaglebait. I live at Smith Mountain Lake, Virginia.

When not writing, I enjoy boating, kayaking, golf and yoga. My husband and I love to travel, especially when any of our seven grandchildren are involved.

Excerpt: 

Please visit my website: www.susancoryellauthor.com and my blog: www.susancoryellauthor.blogspot.com. I am on Facebook and Twitter: @scoryellauthor. 

VISITING PARANORMAL PLACES

I love the paranormal/supernatural in my writing, reading and personal life.  Cue the family vacation.

I'm always dragging, er, surprising them with tours of somewhere 'haunted' where ever we happen to visit.

We've been to Alacatraz twice. When the kids were small we did the day tour. Our second trip to San Fran, they were older so a night tour was in order. The fog and creep factor were high and it was one of the spookiest places we've ever been. Such an interesting history, too.

We've been to the Winchester Mystery House, in San Jose, California. The haunted cemetery tour of New Orleans, a haunted castle in Ireland from the  year 800 AD and rode in the back of hearse for a Spooky Austin, TX Tour.

Our spooky travels are adventurous and we've had plenty. Our most recent excursion was this past November when my husband and I went to London and Paris for our anniversary.

In Paris we went deep underground to the Catacombs and there was something extraordinary about spending time deep under the city with millions of human bones and remains.

Long story, short.
Les Innocents, Paris' oldest and largest cemetery became overcrowded leading to improper burials and corpses rising up from the graves. The citizens complained about the stench and disease spreading.

In 1780, a wall around Les Innocents collapsed after an unusually rainy spring, spilling the rotten corpses all over. It was then action was finally taken.

The church blessed and consecrated all the bones and transferred them to a network of tunnels already under the city. It took two years to move all the remains and for the next few decades other cemeteries had their remains removed and relocated to the Catacombs.

These are my personal pictures so I apologize for the darkness.

             Staircase:

You have to walk down 83 small, steep and narrow spiral steps to enter and up 138 of the same to leave.

There are miles and miles of tunnels, it's dark and damp. There's no way out but up the exiting staircase, there are no restrooms and only so many people are allowed down there at one time. You're literally trapped until you can make
it to the exiting staircase.

A picture of the tunnel that gets you to the final resting place of many Parisians, including those who lost their lives in the French  Revolution.

Most of the bones are stacked along the walls with the skulls on top. The workers seemed to take care in stacking them, some even got a little creative.

My husband wasn't as excited to be down there as I was!

Some people thought it creepy and morbid and couldn't wait to leave. I thought it was quite peaceful and wished I could stay longer. I felt these poor souls finally had a home, visitors,
some one to care for them (the Catacombs is considered a Paris Museum) and will no longer be disturbed.

They keep you on a certain path of tunnels, although it would be easy to wonder off and search on your own, and people have. Many of them have gotten lost and died.

It's said to be haunted. With that many remains and history, I would imagine there would be a ghost or two roaming around with us, but I didn't see any.

It's by far one the coolest places I've been.

***

Debbie Christiana writes paranormal romance, dark romantic fiction and dark short fiction

www.debbiechristiana.com
Twitter: @DebChristiana
FB: Debbie Christiana, Author

What Is Paranormal?

What do you consider paranormal? One free online dictionary defines paranormal as: Something very strange and not able to be explained by what scientists know about nature and the world. Another definition is: Not scientifically explainable or supernatural.

When we think about it, things we deem paranormal are pretty much anything that isn’t what the majority of humans would consider “normal”. If that’s the case, why do so many of us "normal people" love to read stories and watch T.V. or movies about something so strange?

Is it because our minds are constantly in some weird state of flux? Are we constantly and\or subconsciously working on the problems that are unique to the characters who interest us?

Maybe it has something to do with the characters’ sometimes over-the-top supernatural powers or do we just enjoy reading about people who can do all the things we would secretly like to be able to do ourselves? 

I tend to think that perhaps, it’s just that we enjoy reading stories about people who are just a little more screwed up than we are.

Over the years I’ve seen vampires and werewolves, zombies and aliens, to name a few. Each of these paranormal entities have cycled through our books and T.V. shows not to mention the big screen. After their few hours of fame, we fickle readers and viewers move along to another sub genre, almost tirelessly searching for something new, better or possibly even stranger than the last.

The best way I have ever seen the word paranormal described was in a dictionary I read long ago. It defined paranormal as: Anything other than normal. If that’s the case, my dear readers, welcome to the dark side because normal is overrated.

To see more from this author please visit www.tiannaxander.com, Twitter.com @TiannaXander, www.tiannaxander.blogspot.com, and  https://www.facebook.com/TiannaXander

Present your Ghosts

I had a lot of cool ideas for an article (they were cool in my mind!) but after a scintillating conversation with a fellow colleague here, I was advised to write them all (lol, one at a time) and write what I know best. The title came as a joke, but it fits.
It has come to my  attention that because I'm from Romania, I could be somewhat called "Street Wise" in the paranormal. Hahaha, Yes, no. But in a way, I guess I am. But I always thought everyone was the same, you see.
Were you expecting I'll talk about vampires after saying I'm from Romania? Huh, Bram Stoker never visited Romania and had no clue what we have around here in Eastern Europe. Though Romania apparently is close to being in Central Europe but now I'm getting into political issues...
Yes, I did say what we have around here.
As a writer of paranormal MM it came easy to me to immerse in a paranormal/ supernatural world because I saw signs of one existing from when I was a little girl growing up in rural Romania.

In the photo  you see Castelul Corvinilor. A nice place, do visit. Ring me if you do, you can maybe stay in my nearby childhood house if I'm back home.

And I'm not kidding you. My grandma knew to dodeochi spells, that cured you of the Evil Eye (I may know too...), my mother dreamt stuff before it happened (really, she knew my father had broken his leg before we got the phone call) and I accidentally did a tarot reading that predicted the death of my best friend's grandfather. Creepy stuff. Great for writing inspiration. Those are stories that I have yet to tell. Soon.

But I digress.
Real life experience and stories of strange experiences were my first contact with the paranormal genre. Then there were the books. Not science fiction (well, there were those too) but books about the most strange places on Earth, weirdest archaeological discoveries, weird photos and events, etc. I liked the ones with scientific facts not stories to put children to sleep. Btw, If you ever go to Romania, never visit Forest Baciu, near Cluj after dark. Trust me on that.


At first I didn't even have a TV, And this was happening in the '90 folks. Then we didn't have a lot of TV channels (Romania had been under the Iron Curtain until '89). Finally, the movies came. I watched probably all that I came across that had a hint of supernatural or mystery. I name here Roswell, Tales from the Crypt, Poltergeist;The Legacy, The Outer Limits, Ripley's Believe it or Not, Millennium, Medium, Highlander, Xena and Hercules, Twin Peaks, Twilight Zone, Doctor Who, The X-Files, Star Trek, Stargate oh my! I saw a lot. I fell in love with the bad boy of Charmed, though Leo and Chris were not that bad either. Then came the golden age. Supernatural and Ian Somerhalder. Now while I love Dean Winchester (go team Dean!) and I adore the show, Ian is hot, hot, hot too. Pity I cannot stand the show. And to repeat something Dean said, please do not remind me of Twilight!

 If I had space here I would post a lot of hotties that had come to my attention lately but the internet waves would blush and the blog taken down for inducing drool seizures. Alright two more!

Ichigo from Bleach, a Japanese Anime
(he's not even the hottest in that anime.
 And yes! I'm a geek and proud!) .
Now I want to post Keanu Reeves in
 Constantine too.
LOL. Next time.

After and during the sudden invasion of supernatural movies I stumbled across manga and anime. Great stories, amazing art, original ideas. I learned a lot and discovered new variations of local myths and legends. I wonder if every country has them- you know the same legends only told differently. For Romania there were the strigoi- troubled souls of the dead rising from the grave. Some strigoi can be living people with certain magical properties. Some of the properties of the strigoi include: the ability to transform into an animal, invisibility, and the propensity to drain the vitality of victims via blood loss. These are our vampires one may say- vampire ghosts. I could bore you with actual facts about their existence and proofs but that is my private research, you'll need to do your own :). 

Then there are the vârcolac or pricolici- let's call them man-wolves. And the zmeii and our own leprechauns and fairies. 
There's a lot to tell, but you can read a bit about it here Wikipedia. Especially in the links at the bottom of the Wikipedia article.




By the time I got into anime/manga and the latest movies,  I was writing paranormal but not publishing yet. I was writing from the age of nine but English language came a bit later. I had already a ton of material that could be used and too little time. The situation remains unchanged. I managed last year to get two books out, one this year and have currently one more finished,one sci fi story coming out next month, two WIPs half-done and a notebook full of half-planned novels. I think I'm at #78 with the ideas written there.  


What was it that attracted you to the paranormal genre? I will not talk about what attracted me to writing Gay Romance, that's a topic for another day. 
For me it was always there and I got attracted to it even more when I realised it's something special that not everyone has naturally in their lives. Plus it makes reality more interesting, doesn't it? I want to share that feeling of knowing that there is more than the eye can see or than the mind can understand. I have a lot of "ghosts" and other fantastical beings in my mind, some inspired from real life some because of too much coffee and too little sleep. What about you? Why do you read/write paranormal?

And just because I can and maybe I've made you curious (if you managed to finish reading all the verbal diarrhea until now) I'm posting here my book links. I promise to get better! I have some creepy ghost stories on the way! 

Return of Originals Series- Bookstrand
Hard to Kill, Book 1- Amazon.com
The Lost One, Book 2 - Amazon.com
His Imperfect Mate, Book 3- Amazon.com
Somewhere Out There Anthology- Pre-Order

And my try at regular romance
Good for Me, Book 1- Amazon.com

WARNING- I write Gay Erotica/Romance. Explicit, with hot guy on guy action.

Welcome to the Paranormal Love Features page!

By Debbie Christiana

As a writer and an avid reader, the setting of a story is important. In a romance you might choose a beach at sunset or a picnic in front of a crackling fire. A haunted mansion, cemeteries, insane asylums are great spots for a darker story.

But what if the setting was an unusual place? A place seldom visited by star crossed lovers or the shifter/vampire couple.

One the best short stories I ever read (In a writing class I was taking about writing villains, description and setting) was an untitled paranormal romance submitted to class by a woman. The reason was the uncommon location of vampire’s liar.

The NEON MUESUM of Las Vegas.

The writer lived in Las Vegas and this very real place was common knowledge to her, but not to the rest of us, which made it so much more creepy and fun!

I remember the vamp wooing his lover behind the Wedding Chapel sign...

And taking care of some unpleasant business near the old and battered Golden Nugget sign Mafia style.

I was so impressed with the story, her vivid descriptions of the old 'graveyard' from the heated neon brightness to the sounds of Las Vegas nightlife in the background, that a year later when my husband I went to Las Vegas, I looked it up. 

You can visit, but the hours are limited. It’s a guided tour because it can be dangerous to walk around there alone. Unfortunately, we went in July when it was 110 in the shade and the museum had shorter hours in the heat of summer, so it didn’t fit into our schedule. But next time!

Is there a story you’ve read that stuck with you because it took place somewhere different and exciting?

I write paranormal romance and short dark fiction. TWIN FLAMES a PNR about reincarnation, soul mates and…a ghost, is set in a vineyard in northwest Connecticut, where I live. Not all that unusual, but today (FEB 21) is the last day it's on sale for $0.99 on Amazon at  http://amzn.to/1wNciLW

Happy Reading and Writing!

www.debbiechristiana.com
Twitter: @DebChristiana
FB: Debbie Christiana, Author

Expert Advice On How To Deal With A Ghost From A Warrior Angel

I love the tv show Supernatural...

Dean Winchester-A Hunter (left) Castiel- AnAngel (right)

If you are friends with me on Facebook or have read some of the posts on my personal blog you'd know that to the Nth degree.  But when I can say when you give me an hour of three muscle bound guys with intense expressions while one of them wears a trench coat, I'm hooked.  

I have to admit, when it first came out I was not its biggest fan.  Mostly because I thought it skewed too much toward a young audience for my taste.  Besides it didn't help that it was on the WB (when it first came out ) along side Dawson's Creek and Smallville, two shows I'm still trying to find a taste for.  Then when it moved to CW, it sort of disappeared off of my radar. 

TBS picked it up and that changed everything.  One day, while watching tv in a waiting room at a doctor's office, I was forced to watch it because I had read every Highlights magazine in the room along with all of the two year old issues of Hour Detroit magazine.  To be honest, I have no idea what the episode was about, but the guys were hot and more importantly it was funny and not stupid. So I was intrigued.

I said intrigued. Not in love. That didn't happen until I stumbled upon it again (on TBS of course) when they were airing an episode entitled 'Sex and Violence.'  The title notwithstanding, I don't think the two should go together, that episode made me a Supernatural junkie forever. If you would like to read why, click here.

Castiel (Ange) kissing Meg (Demon) a long cool reason.

So there, I'm fan of all things Supernatural, the tv show of course not the other stuff...:ahem: but I digress. Misha Collins who portrays Castiel, an Angel assigned to protect Dean and Sam Winchester, is the sober faced one of the three also known as Team Free Will....an inside joke.  And when I say sober faced- that is saying a lot since Sam and Dean have spent most of their lives looking Death in the face. No really they have! It's some British sounding dude with Black Hair who loves fried pickles.... He has a thing for it... Never mind.  

Anyways, Misha when not portraying Castiel is a pretty light hearted fellow with an intriguing past and a hilarious often naughty since of humor.  (Meaning he is nothing like the character he plays, now that is acting!)  

On Buzzfeed, he was asked on 'How to deal with a ghost that is haunting your house.' Here a few of his answers...

"BF- You wake up and there's a ghost hovering over your bed. What do you do?"

"Misha- Call my mother."

"BF- What does the ghost look like and what is its name?"

"Misha- The ghost's name is William Shatner and it's name is Robot Heat."

"BF- What do you take with you to protect against a ghost?"

"Misha- A condom."

On that note-- if you would like to read more visit the cool interview to see Misha's wacky answers here...

My Paranormal Menage Romance 'Blood Bond- The Ferae' is available at Amazon and other E-book retailers.