Monday, October 22, 2012

The Haunted House Down the Street


Please welcome guest blogger Lynn Cahoon to NN. We're so glad to have you Lynn!

When I was seven, my best friend, Zandy, lived one block over and three streets up. I could ride my bike to her house and, one more block up, a corner mom and pop grocery store that sold penny candy.   

The only problem is to get to both of these places, I had to ride past an old gray two story house with a flag pole in the middle of the weed filled yard.  No one had lived there for years.

Zandy’s brother said it was haunted by the ghost of a boy who’d slid down the greased flag pole and cut off his privates.  Okay, now, it sounds stupid, but give me a break, I was seven.  I didn’t even know what boy privates were.

Fast forward twenty years and my fiancĂ©’ owned a house said to be haunted by the ghost of a woman who committed suicide in the house.  When he rented the house to a young couple and we moved to another town to attend school, the checks stopped coming.  Come to find out, the husband had lost his job and had robbed a small grocery store, killing the owner for the money in the till.  

My penny candy grocery store.

Do ghosts haunt our physical neighborhoods? Was there an evil presence at the haunted house of my youth that affected the actions of a desperate husband and father?  Or are the connections only in my own mind?

I wonder.

Now, I live down the street from a more famous haunted house, The McPike Mansion.  My new, home town is considered ghost heavy and with Halloween coming up, tours of the hauntings will be a nightly occurrence. 

I haven’t signed up for a tour yet.  I’m not sure I want something following me home.  My heroine, Parris McCall, is kind of like that.  She knows she’s different, that weird stuff happens around her, but she doesn’t want to know, so she ignores the issue.  Until she can’t pretend any more.  
A Member of the Council releases on November 5th from Lyrical Press.

So, do you believe in ghosts?

Lynn Cahoon is a contemporary romance author with a love of hot, sexy men, real and imagined. Her alpha heroes range from rogue witch hunters to modern cowboys. And her heroines all have one thing in common, their strong need for independence. Or at least that’s what they think they want.  She blogs at her website, A Fairy Tale Life.

Blurb - A rogue hunter, a clueless witch and a mission to save an unknowing world.

Parris McCall, owner of the dive bar, The Alibi, has finally constructed a life where her little quirks don’t show or matter to anyone. As for her grandmother's warnings that she’s different, well, she'll cross that bridge if she comes to it.
But when Ty walks into her bar, both lives are instantly changed.

Ty Wallace loves his life. How could he not? He’s a powerful human lawyer by day and the Magic Council's rogue witch hunter by night. But after he agrees to substitute on his
secretary’s dart team, all hell breaks loose. Now Ty has to help Parris admit who she is before her long-lost relatives kill her.

A Lyrical Press Paranormal Romance

9 comments:

Lynn Cahoon said...

Thanks for having me here Tabitha!

Anonymous said...

I'm very intrigued by the premise of your book, Lynn. I love reading spooky tales, although I have no desire to encounter that kind of phenomena myself. It’s interesting too, what kids think. I grew up two doors away from a gothic-looking gray stone home that all the neighborhood kids said was haunted by witches. There was also a female ghost imprisoned on the second floor.

We knew that because her room had a beautiful stained glass window, LOL. One of the neighborhood boys did take a really nasty, scary fall there but we never saw any ghosts. Happy Halloween!

Shay Lacy said...

I don't want to live in any haunted house, just in case. Depending on what I'm writing is whether I believe in ghosts or not. Good luck on your new release, Lynn.

M.J. Schiller said...

Does every neighborhood have a "haunted house?" Growing up, we were all convinced two elderly sisters, who lived together up the street, were witches. One had an eye patch, which didn't help her cause any! I'm sure they were just a pair of sweet old ladies, but none of us were about to ring their doorbell on Halloween, that's for sure!

"A Member of the Council" sounds intriguing! Best of luck!

Lynn Cahoon said...

Mae - AMOTC was so fun to write. But the second book, Return of the Fae which I just contracted with Lyrical, was a wild ride. I think because I knew my characters and got to torture them just a tad more. The best thing is when the book surprises me.

So looking forward to writing the third, tenative title, Salem Showdown.

RT Wolfe said...

Creepy. So fun. Good luck, Lynn. You deserve it!
-R.T. Wolfe
www.rtwolfe.com

Lynn Cahoon said...

Shay, we were looking for a new house once, and stopped to look at this old farm house with a for sale sign. We knew it was empty, but all the doors were locked. Then one wasn't.

That night I had a dream the house was haunted. We didn't buy the place.

Lynn Cahoon said...

MJ - or maybe they were witches... If the third sister showed up, you'd have the fates.

Thanks for coming by.

Lynn Cahoon said...

Hugs RT!