Introducing more characters from upcoming paranormal novel

What say you -- are you ready to meet some more characters?

An earlier post introduced three major characters -- Millie, Rosie, and Emma -- at the beginning of their character arcs. Here are some additional characters, significant but not quite as central to the story and themes.

-- Janna and Jeri: Janna and Jeri are adolescent identical twins. Of the two, Janna is more levelheaded, Jeri more impulsive. Jeri suffered from anorexia. The girls played around with tarot cards, something they could do together even when Jeri was in the hospital. Jeri died not long before the book's beginning. Janna and her mother are both devastated, and Janna is angry. As spirits in the afterlife start trying to contact the living, the twins' bond provides one avenue.

-- Paul: This young man attends a crucial, revelatory séance only because an acquaintance dragged him along. He's self-employed in a technological field that gives him a flexible schedule, useful for the missions he gets landed with. He has some maturing to do. He'll be getting a chance to do it.

-- Sofia: Sofia is a kindly, maternal spirit who looks after Millie (see previous post) when Millie finds it difficult to cope. Millie's personal growth, in the course of the story, may require some adjustments to this relationship.

-- Daniel: a dignified, elegant gentleman, he is the first spirit to come to Millie and reveal that he too has met a victim of his own body. (For the confrontation in which Millie learned the same, see this previous post.)

That's all for now -- except today's preorder links. Besides Amazon, here's one for Bookshop.org, a great alternative for those who want paperbacks but would rather not get them from a giant corporation.

See you soon!

the Prologue

 My first excerpt from upcoming paranormal novel That the Dead May Rest skipped right over the Prologue, starting on the second page of Chapter 1. But I hope my readers don't follow that example. The Prologue clarifies a couple of points I consider important: (1) What kind of zombies are we talking about? (2) Where will the action take place? There's also an attempt to prevent the frustration that might afflict readers if they expect a certain revelation I chose not to provide.

So without further ado, here it is.

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the chronicler

The creeping peril, the quietly emerging plague, was not the sort of zombie epidemic pictured in late 20th and 21st century entertainment. Living humans did not, within seconds or minutes of being attacked, become the shambling undead. It was an older menace, one with ancient, mostly abandoned, and generally ineffectual remedies, that resurfaced. The bodies that now roamed to attack the living had been resting for days or months or years before some mysterious force drove them to emerge, like shoots of noisome growth, once more above ground. All those generations of mourners who loaded stones on the lids of coffins, laid sickles across the necks of corpses or drove iron rods through their cold chests — they knew what to fear.

As you read, do not divide your attention waiting to learn of a perpetrator or virus or other cause. I will tell you now that humanity has not yet learned why this occurred.

The terrestrial portion of what follows could be happening anywhere: Concord, or Wichita Falls, or a suburb of Boise. Picture somewhere you know, even somewhere you love. Picture its houses grand or modest, well maintained or run down; its lush greenery or desert shrubs; its asphalt or gardens; its uninterrupted flatness, or its hills that challenge the fitness of pedestrians. Picture home. 

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Release Day is October 17th, and every post until that date will include at least one preorder link. Today it's for Amazon, because Amazon makes it easy for authors to keep track of preorders. Many of most -- I'll guess most of us -- deal with some anxiety during this last stretch before Book Meets World, and it's soothing, heartening, to see preorders mount up. (The paperback is reasonably priced, but the ebook is a positive bargain. This would be a nice time to say, "What the heck!" and order a copy.)

three weeks to go -- time for some character teasers!

My paranormal novel That the Dead May Rest comes out in three weeks (heart skips, stomach flips). So this seems like a good time to introduce my readers/potential readers to some key characters. For now, I'm keeping these introductions short. I'll probably expand them in the coming days and weeks.

Let's start, as the book (after the Prologue) does, with Millie.

When we first meet Millie in the afterlife, she's quiet, timid, content with simple domestic comforts. We don't learn many specifics about her life, but she lived in a near-constant state of instability and fear. The afterlife has provided her with the relief of safety and peace, and she's deeply grateful.

Next, Rosie, still very much among the living. She's a professional medium calling herself Madame Rebecca, relying on costuming and a range of tricks to delude her clients into thinking she's in touch with The Beyond. She rarely allows herself to remember that as a teenager, she actually heard faint, tantalizing echoes of mysterious voices, and hoped they would grow louder and reveal their origins.

She has a surprise coming.

And finally (for today), there's Emma. Emma makes me think there should be a word like "widow" for a mother who has lost her child. Since her adult son Robert died, she's hidden in her house, doing little and enjoying less. Sometimes she writes a letter to Robert, as if he could receive it. She has no hope of that, or of anything else. 

Things are going to change for Emma -- for all three women. They're going to change a lot.

There are other important characters -- Paul, Janna, Daniel, Sofia, and more. We'll get to those another time.

Do any of these quick character sketches, or the excerpt already published here, interest you enough that you'd like to be one of the first to get hold of the book? Here are some preorder links.

-- Amazon (Kindle)

-- Amazon (paperback)

-- Bookshop.org (paperback)

-- Barnes & Noble (ebook)

-- Barnes & Noble (paperback)

-- Kobo (ebook)

And here's another look at the cover.

(I hope you like it. I do.)

A date with two meanings, and a peek at Chapter 1 of my next novel

 Today is September 17th, a date that echoes of the past and the future.

One month ago, August 17th, was my parents' anniversary. They were married almost seventy years, my father dying three months and one day before they would have reached that landmark. Here's a photo from their wedding day, in 1947.

I've always thought that my mother bore some resemblance to Olivia deHavilland.

As for the future, my next novel, That the Dead May Rest, comes out on October 17th. Here's the cover.

(I just opened a box of paperbacks, twenty in all, purchased for a book signing the day after the release -- and hurrah! Huzzah! They have no obvious defects preventing me from using them!)

I posted the teaser a few weeks ago (at this link), and it seems crass to post it again this soon -- so I'm doing something different. I usually wait until much closer to the release date before I post excerpts . . . but I don't usually have so long a wait between finishing a novel and releasing it. I did so this time because my daughter very sensibly suggested that with the subject matter and cover of this book, it might do better if released during Halloween month. That'll be my excuse for posting the following excerpt from Chapter 1. The point of view is that of Millie, a woman who died in middle age and is about to welcome a new arrival to the afterlife.

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Reception, where all the new arrivals came, transformed every time to reflect the arriving spirit’s conception of the most benign possible afterlife. As the welcomer helped the spirit understand what had happened to them, the surroundings would gradually shift to accommodate any details the conversation revealed about what would most deeply satisfy the spirit’s needs and hopes. Sometimes the result was quite different from what she’d expected. A man who arrived dressed in velvets and silks like a king (what he’d been buried in, perhaps) might turn out to cherish the thought of a sunny cottage with a ticking grandfather clock.

This time, Millie entered a spacious circular hall with pale marble columns dividing intricate mosaics, the tiles’ colors as bright and cheerful as a kindergarten crayon box. The tops and bases of the pillars had gilded trim, and the same trim framed the mosaics. The scene, though grand in its way, reminded her of the needlepoint tapestry one might expect in the living room of a very traditional American Christian family, especially since the mosaics featured winged cherubs and blue-robed Madonnas and a brown-haired bearded Jesus with his arms spread wide. She had seen such living rooms through house windows in her own town, and the pillars and mosaics might have been inspired by the most opulent of the town’s churches.

The man who sat on a cushioned bench along one wall looked as if he would normally carry himself with some degree of authority. A mayor, perhaps, or a councilman. He wore a suit, not closely tailored but fitting him well, though the buttons of the jacket strained slightly over his middle. She couldn’t see his features as she entered, and presumably he couldn’t see hers, but he started to stand with an air of polite deference, gentleman to lady. And then he froze, and staggered backward against the bench before scuttling around it and backing against the wall, arms raised, covering his face.

The man’s terror made her heart pound and her pulse race. Struggling to catch her breath, she told herself over and over: I’m safe here. I’m safe. Even if he wants to hurt me, even if he strikes out in his fear, he can’t hurt me here. No one can. I’m safe. He’s just scared. He’s scared. I know what that feels like. I have to find out why he’s so frightened, so I can help, so I can make him feel safe, so I can feel safe again.

Another member of the welcoming committee — Johnny, a large, quiet man whose voice had the warmth and depth of melted chocolate — had appeared and was now holding the man’s hands, speaking softly to him, coaxing him to sit. Millie moved quietly toward the wall and tried to remember how to blend into the background. It was a skill she’d been so happy to leave behind . . . .

Her efforts made no difference. The man had been calming down, but when he glanced her way he sat bolt upright and pointed a shaking hand at her. “You! What are you doing here? What is this place, if you’re here? Are you here to drive me crazy? Isn’t it enough that you killed me? That you, you — ” He turned and clutched Johnny by the arms, shook him, shouted: “She came at me, with her fingernails like claws, and her, her teeth, she clawed my face and she tore it with her teeth! And the smell, she smelled like rotting flesh and, and falling-down houses, I’d never smelled anything like it . . . .” He paused, as Millie stood with eyes wide and mouth open, staring at him, trying to find any sense in what he was saying, in any of this. “She . . . .” He took a slow step toward her. He spoke to her, this time. “You don’t smell like that anymore. And your clothes were rags, dripping with something like oil, or mold. And your eyes were, were dead eyes, you looked dead, like a corpse pulled out of the grave . . . .”

Millie shook her head, trembling. “It couldn’t be. None of this. I’ve been here, not there. I’ve been here for . . . .” Did she even know? What was time, here? But surely her life had ended months ago, or years. “I’ve been here. And I would never have done anything like that. It couldn’t have been me.” She gulped. “I’m so sorry that happened, that you died that way. No one should die that way. But it’s all over now, all different. You’ll be all right now. You’ll be safe.”

The man stared at her, his large hands opening and closing spasmodically. “How can I be safe here, if you’re here? You killed me, and now you’ve followed me here! Unless . . . .” His voice dropped to muttering. “Unless I’m supposed to kill you now, to make things right. But I’ve never killed anyone. Is that what I’m supposed to do? Is that what I’m here for?”

Johnny gripped the man’s shoulders and pulled him back toward the bench. He would find something to say, some way to make things better, but Millie wouldn’t stay to hear it. She backed out of the room.

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If I've been fortunate enough to intrigue you, you can visit the book's web page here. From there, one click will take you to three links (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and bookshop.org) for preordering.

I'll be back, probably next month, with more excerpts. In the meantime, I hope you're reading something you love!

the quest for reviews of my upcoming paranormal fantasy THAT THE DEAD MAY REST

 Well, I've done it again -- written a novel. And again, I've branched out into a new genre, or rather a new subgenre of fantasy, namely paranormal. To the surprise, not to say shock, of people who know me, it even involves zombies -- though it takes what I fondly hope is an unusual approach to the subject, as described below.

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After a life of peril and fear, Millie has reached the peace, beauty, and security of the afterlife. But one day, when she is performing her glad duty of welcoming a new spirit, that spirit recoils from her in horror—because her body had become a zombie, and had brutally killed him.

As more spirits make the same terrible discovery, they ask themselves, and each other: is this somehow my fault? When will it end? And finally: what can we do? Is there something we can do to stop this?

And are there people among the living who can help them to do it?

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That the Dead May Rest comes out on October 17, 2025, in time for Halloween. I fancy the cover is seasonally appropriate.

Now that the book is finished and formatted, I've begun the process of telling people about it and hunting for reviewers. Besides posting on Goodreads and contacting various book bloggers (and a magazine or two), I'm trying new approaches.

One is BookSirens. This site is a paid, but modestly priced way to get reviews. Visitors to their page can find books to review, while authors and others can direct people to a particular page -- like this book's. As I write this post, no one has "joined my review team" yet, but it's early days.

The other is Revvue. The Revvue site (link goes to my book's page) rewards authors for reviewing other authors' books. Reviews earn coins, in quantities dependent on the book, and amassing sufficient coins (an amount also depending on the book) allows one to request reviews. It also requires coins to pick a book to review. The author chooses whether to accept a more limited category of review, e.g. Amazon-verified reviews only, or to be less choosy. One lovely reader has already chosen my book for review.

When my publication date gets closer, close enough that it isn't long before reviews can go live on Amazon, I'll take one more step, a bigger one. You may have heard of NetGalley, a site where a great many authors and publishers make their books available prior to publication (and afterward). It isn't cheap to put one's book there, but there are ways to make it more affordable, including joining any of several author associations. I'm a member of the Alliance of Independent Authors, and through AIA and an associated group called BooksGoSocial, I can get a substantial discount.

Will all this help me get more reviews for my book? Maybe, and every one helps. 

Different ways of writing villains

I read quite a bit of historical romance, most of it set in Regency England (roughly, though not precisely, the early 19th century period when George III's son, also George, acted as his regent). These novels tend to come in series based on a particular extended family, so one can easily gobble them up in sequence. There are, of course, differences in how various authors treat the historical period, the characters, their romance arc, et cetera. One such difference that has struck me lately is how two authors in particular approach villains.

The villains in Grace Burrowes' novels can be vividly nasty, but sooner or later the reader is likely to learn something about how they got that way. They can (though not all do) even end up moving in the direction of being more sympathetic characters. Such surprising shifts can give the book added depth, with the reader given the chance to leave the book with a broader, more thoughtful perspective. On the other hand,  Mary Ballogh's villains tend to be utterly and consistently despicable. (In the only Ballogh book I've read so far where a villain is eventually characterized as more foolish and shallow than wicked, his father has no redeeming qualities whatsoever.) This makes it particularly satisfying when she provides a devastating comeuppance.

I've also written a villain or two. My sci-fi thriller Playback Effect features a sociopath, and wasn't he fun to write! (What that says about me is for you to decide. . . .) As for my historical romance series -- Cowbird Creek, set in latter 19th-century Nebraska -- there's a significant villain only in the fourth one, What Wakes the Heart. The book description mentions the heroine's "traumatic encounter with the president of her teacher's college," but that understates how persistent his villainy proves. Otherwise, all you'll find is a loudmouth bully here and a self-important, narrow-minded preacher there, along with the occasional family members who do harm by not understanding their relatives better or not being flexible enough to step outside their own world views.

How do you like  your villains? Do you prefer the "love to hate" kind, or the more nuanced?