Kalayna Price, author of GRAVE WITCH, will be the featured author in our chat room next Thursday at 9pm ET. GRAVE WITCH is the first book in her Alex Craft urban fantasy series. Sounds like the perfect title for a Halloween chat party, right? Costumes aren't required, but you can definitely sign in to chat with a fun name. Vlad the Impaler, anyone? Great convo, trivia, prizes and more!
Here are the deets on GRAVE WITCH:
Grave witch Alex Craft can speak to the dead, but that doesn’t mean she likes what they have to say . . .
As a private investigator and consultant for the police, Alex Craft has seen a lot of dark magic. But even though she’s on good terms with Death himself—who happens to look fantastic in a pair of jeans—nothing has prepared her for her latest case. Alex is investigating a high profile murder when she’s attacked by the ‘shade’ she’s raising, which should be impossible. To top off her day, someone makes a serious attempt on her life, but Death saves her. Guess he likes having her around . . .
To solve this case Alex will have to team up with tough homicide detective Falin Andrews. Falin seems to be hiding something—though it’s certainly not his dislike of Alex—but Alex knows she needs his help to navigate the tangled webs of mortal and paranormal politics, and to track down a killer wielding a magic so malevolent, it may cost Alex her life . . . and her soul.
Finally the big day is here. Time for the goblins, fairies, witches and warlocks to take to the streets! Whether you’re a kid, or a kid-at-heart, there’s something magical about All Hallows’ Eve.
For TKA client Ron Kolek, founder and lead investigator of The New England Ghost Project (NEGP), and his partner, fifth generation psychic/trance-medium, Maureen Wood – today is particularly busy. Tonight the team will be featured in a Halloween special on Boston’s WCVB TV Channel 5. They’ll also be guests on WCAP’s Merrimack Magazine radio show in Lowell, Mass., at 4:00pm,. Later in the evening, from 8:00pm – 12:30am, the team will take a journey into the unknown for a special Ghost Hunt and Midnight Séance at a sprawling old colonial home dating back to 1739. Saturday, November 1st, the team will be at the Haunted Houghton Mansion from 1pm – 1am. So, if you’re in the area and looking for some Halloween activities – be sure to check out these spooky events!
Earlier this week, Marley Gibson talked about a workshop she took with NEGP entitled, “Ghost Hunting 101,” in her TKA guest blog. During that course, Marley said she was suddenly “struck with the entire arc and storyline,’ for her upcoming series, GHOST HUNTRESS. Well this week has certainly been a busy one for Miss Marley! Last night, she was featured on The Biography Channel’s MY GHOST STORY: HAUNTINGS REVEALED, and this morning CNN.com released an article profiling Marley and her new series!
"The first thing I thought when I got the e-mail through my website was this had to be a joke. Someone from CNN.com wanted to interview me?” Marley says. “But then I talked to the reporter and he was amazing! I've been watching CNN since it's been on the air and to be interviewed about my ghost hunting and research for my book was a true honor. For CNN.com to give credence to the paranormal field like this will help people who are looking for answers about the afterlife and also introduce people to my books and the television and radio shows that my friends have out there, as well."
We are so happy for Marley, and have had such fun with her and the other bloggers this week, including, Melissa Francis, author of the upcoming books BITE ME! and LOVE SUCKS! and agent Lucienne Diver, who jumped into the fray with “Confessions of a Scream Team.” We hope you have had a great time also, and from everyone at TKA:
The last Hallopalooza contest is here! Leave a comment below, and you could possibly win an assortment of vampire, demon and werewolf-themed books from The Knight Agency's mystery grab bag!
This contest is closed. The winner was Kristen Painter. Thank you for participating! Check back soon for more contests!
bjmuntainis the winner of our second Hallopalooza contest, "Caption This: Wonder Woman!" The winning comment was, "They said this would happen if I left Paradise Island." Thank you to everyone who participated!
bjmuntain, please email your physical address to info@knightagency.net.
Hallopalooza Day 4: Confessions of a Scream Queen by Lucienne Diver
I love Halloween—always have. In school, I was the geeky girl who dressed up every year, even when it wasn't cool. No store-bought costumes for me. I'd make my own, my sister's. It was part of the fun.
I met my husband working as an actor at a haunted house. My die-hard Roman Catholic family was tremendously relieved when we didn't get married there—though we did make them wear garb at our medieval wedding.
As a child, I frequently had trouble sleeping, exacerbated by the books I'd read—"True Tales" of this and that: hauntings, living death, unsolved mysteries. You name it. And the movies available on late, late night television: all of the Christopher Lee Dracula films, Locusts Eat Manhattan (okay, I may be misremembering this one), the Godzilla movies. It was a smorgasbord of schlocky and not-so-schlocky horror and science fiction films that scared the bejeebers out of me at the time, causing even more insomnia.
Horror of Dracula, starring Christopher Lee:
I've never lost my taste for dressing up or schlocky horror films. Bring on the cheesy—Halloweentown, Cheerleader Camp, Swamp Thing, whatever. I'm there. In fact, the cornier, the better. As I've gotten older, my empathy has developed to the point that really good horror is upsetting rather than entertaining. I know how horrific reality can be. I want no-holds-barred, schlocky, my-friends-would-be-embarrassed-to-know-me horror.
I'll take my dark fantasy in my books with some leavening humor. There I can take the point of view of a kick-ass hero or heroine who can handle anything that goes bump in the night. I can sit back and watch them kick butt, wincing with the blows and betrayals, but enjoying the heck out of watching them give as good as they get. Rachel Caine's Joanne Baldwin from the Weather Wardens series is fantastic about that, as is Marjorie M. Liu's Maxine Kiss from THE IRON HUNT and Kim Harrison's Rachel Morgan from DEAD WITCH WALKING, etc. I could go on all day.
My favorite novels are those where good can look evil in the eye without flinching. Where evil is intelligent enough that good uses brains as much as brawn to defeat it. And where I feel that we're winning the battle, or at least have a chance at it.
In short, in my fiction, I want it all. On the screen, I'm perfectly happy to bring on the popcorn.
Hallopalooza Day 3: Guest Blogger Melissa Francis Says "Fangs for the Memories"
I was an avid reader as a child. By junior high, I was reading adult books because I hated the condescending tone of most of the YA out there. I just wanted to be entertained. I wanted mystery, I wanted romance, and sometimes I wanted to be a little scared.
A friend of mine turned me on to Stephen King with The Talisman. I was intrigued by the 12-year-old protagonist, the concept of traveling between parallel worlds, and the size of the book. At 748 pages, it would be by far the largest book ever for me at that time.
I devoured that story. In less than 3 days I was begging my mom for more Stephen King. And so my new obsession started.
I read and read and read, never tiring of King’s tales. Carrie, The Stand, The Shining, Cujo, Christine, The Dead Zone…I couldn’t stop.
One day my friend handed me a King book I hadn’t read before: Salem’s Lot. My heart stopped when I read the title.
No, I hadn’t read Salem’s Lot, but, at 10 years old, I had tried to watch the miniseries. And it had scared the bejeezus out of me. Actually, I had to stop watching it after this scene:
But I was up for the challenge. I loved Stephen King books. Sure it would be scary, but so was The Shining, and I had read that one twice. Reading Salem’s Lot would be like eating cake.
I took the book and was immediately pulled into the story. Until the beginning of chapter 12...
"Something had awakened him. He lay still in the ticking dark, looking at the ceiling. A noise. Some noise. But the house was silent. There it was again. Scratching. Mark Petrie turned over in bed and looked through the window and Danny Glick was staring in at him through the glass, his skin grave-pale, his eyes reddish and feral. Some dark substance was smeared about his lips and chin, and when he saw Mark looking at him, he smiled and showed teeth grown hideously long and sharp. 'Let me in,' the voice whispered, and Mark was not sure if the words had crossed dark air or were only in his mind."
Now, the excerpt itself wasn't that scary. What had me freaking out was the scratching on my window.
Scritch, scritch, scritch
I tried to ignore it and read on but there it was again.
Scritch, scritch, scritch
I couldn't make myself get out of bed and look outside. I was sure it was the wind, but the scratching was so patterned, so deliberate there was only one explanation. Danny Glick was after me.
Immediately, I threw the book across the room. And here it is 25 years (give or take a year) later and I still haven't finished Salem's Lot.
The irony of all this? I write YA Vampire fiction. Oh yeah. It's true. I'm a glutton for self-inflicted punishment.
My YA debut BITE ME! will hit the shelves in time for Halloween 2009. I can't promise there won't be a few creepy moments, but I can promise you a snarky teenage vampire heroine who would rather worry about not kissing her ex-boyfriend turned step-brother than where she's gonna get her next dose of hemoglobin.
Hallopalooza Day 2! Guest Blogger Marley Gibson on "Things that go bump in the night"
In March 2006, my amazing agent, Deidre Knight, stepped off an airplane at Boston’s Logan Airport and said enthusiastically to me, “I have the title of your next series. ‘Divining Women.’ Now you just have to come up with an idea.”
Ummm. . . okay. Seeing how I write for teens, I thought “Divining Girls” would be a better title. But what would it be about? Girls on the farm looking for water sources? Huh?
Deidre was in town to attend the New England Romance Writers Conference, of which there was a workshop entitled “Ghost Hunting 101” by the New England Ghost Project. I remembered that one of the speakers, Maureen Wood, had spoken at the conference a couple of years before about dowsing. . . a form of divining. So, I started putting two and two together and showed up for their workshop. As they were showing pictures they’d captured in their ghost investigations, as well as sound recordings they’d gotten, I was suddenly struck with the entire arc and storyline for the book that would sell in November 2006 and be known as GHOST HUNTRESS: THE AWAKENING.
Aparently, these guys weren’t the only ones hunting ghost. There are groups all over the country—all over the world—doing this! How did I not know? What rock had I been under? Sure, I’d grown up loving Poltergeist and Ghostbusters, but I’d never given any credence to actually going ghost hunting.
This was in the main stream! In writing GHOST HUNTRESS: THE AWAKENING, my husband, Mike, and I began going out on investigations of our own. I’m the type of writer that really likes to get into the research and make sure I know as much as possible so I’m writing accurately. Just because it’s fiction doesn’t mean it can’t be realistic.
Here’s a picture of some sort of wispy image or vapor captured at the Buttonwoods Museum in Haverhill, Massachusetts. We were up in the attic where the spirit of a child named Molly supposedly lives.
Also, at the Buttonwoods Museum, we experienced a “cold spot.” It’s thought that entities use the energy in the air to try and interact, therefore, lowering the temperature. It was a 90+ degree August night in a two-hundred year old house with no central air conditioner and we got a thirty degree drop in the temperature with cold air swirling around out legs.
In March of 2007, we visited The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado. A stately manor on the side of the mountain, this place held many encounters and personal experiences like hearing a "hello" from no where. This is the exact same EVP gotten by the Ghost Hunters, Jason and Grant, when they investigated here. And by the way, here I am with them!
We also got to investigate Room 217 of The Stanley with famed demonologist John Zaffis in the room where Stephen King and his wife stayed when he got the idea for THE SHINING. In this room, we used a tool called a K2 meter to measure electro-magnetic energy in the air.
Also, at The Stanley, we investigated with TruTV’s Haunting Evidence star, Patrick Burns, using a device known as a “Shack Hack.” It a transistor radio from Radio Shack that has been “hacked” to stop the device from stopping on a station when searching up and down the dial. Patrick also offered to write a forward for my first GHOST HUNTRESS book. What a guy!
At Rolling Hills Sanitarium, we investigated with Chris Fleming from The Biography Channel's Dead Famous. Chris is a psychic/medium who uses channeling and his own psychic intuition to connect with spirits, as well as the latest technology.
The other night, we attended the New England Ghost Project’s Spectral Evidence event in Salem, Massachusetts and got some incredible EVPs in the Charter Street Cemetery. Got a cool shot of me ghost hunting...
And, back in July at the Waverly Hills Sanitarium, Mike and I ended up playing ball with what is believed to be the spirit of a child who had died there in the early 1900s from tuberculosis.
But the most compelling evidence of all had to have been the ball video itself. I hope you’ll tune in to The Biography Channel on Thursday, October 30th at 10:00 p.m. to watch footage of the ball moving during the premiere of My Ghost Story. The show will run again on the 31st, 1st and 2nd. Check your local listings.
I hope you’ve enjoyed reading about my evidence. It’s certainly been amazing collecting it and growing less and less skeptical. Do I believe there are spirits and angels around us? Yes, I do. Unequivocally. What do you think?
Hope you’ll pick up GHOST HUNTRESS: THE AWAKENING in May 2009. Look for GHOST HUNTRESS: THE GUIDANCE in October 2009 and GHOST HUNTRESS: THE REASON in May 2010.
Hallopalooza Time! It's Halloween Week on the TKA Blog!
Every time I walk by a pumpkin in the store, I get the urge. But when I think about all the slimy seeds and stringy innards I have to clean out for my masterpiece jack-o-lantern…it fades. I usually end up settling for a nice pumpkin-themed candy bowl for the kiddies – but living in a grown-up oriented apartment community doesn’t encourage much trick-or-treating. And then you know what happens – a story as old as time – single woman watching T.V. alone while ingesting gobs of baby-sized Almond Joys. So what’s a girl to do? How can I catch some Halloween spirit? I know! How about Halloween week on the TKA blog! What a marvelous idea! We can call it Hallopalooza, and have some of our creepiest clients…oops, I meant some of our most magical and delightful clients guest blog. To sweeten the boiling black cauldron we’ll include some great book giveaways in the process!
So here’s the deal, the indomitable Marley Gibson, author of the upcoming GHOST HUNTRESS series, (and who’s set to make her television debut on the Biography Channel's My Ghost Story, BTW) will be our guest blogger Tuesday; Mel Francis, author of the upcoming release BITE ME, is taking over Wednesday; agent Lucienne Diver has some scary treats for us on Thursday; and Friday we are spotlighting the investigative team, Ron Kolek and Maureen Wood, for the New England Ghost Project.
To start things off right, we have a “Caption This” contest below. The person who leaves the most creative, funny description of what’s happening in the picture wins a Steven JamesThriller Pack, including THE ROOK and THE PAWN. The winner will be announced tomorrow afternoon!
Hey, knowing all these fantastic authors are blogging this week is sending out some powerful Halloween vibes. I just might stop by the store and get that pumpkin ;).
CAPTION THIS: "Princess Leia"
THIS CONTEST ENDED OCT. 28TH AT 10AM ET. THE WINNER WILL BE ANNOUNCED THIS AFTERNOON.
Please check back tomorrow for a chance to enter our next "Hallopalooza Caption This Contest!" Thank you to everyone who participated!
Kalayna Price, author of GRAVE WITCH, will be the featured author in our chat room next Thursday at 9pm ET. GRAVE WITCH is the first book in her Alex Craft urban fantasy series. Sounds like the perfect title for a Halloween chat party, right? Costumes aren't required, but you can definitely sign in to chat with a fun name. Vlad the Impaler, anyone? Great convo, trivia, prizes and more! 
