Good news on Goodreads & Wattpad

 Edie's Posts  6 Responses »
Oct 302011
 

I’m interrupting the ghost story blogs to share fun news. I found out both of these by accident. Cattitude is #13 on an Indie Books – Paranormal Fiction list of favorites. It’s the first story I put up, and it’s still one of my favs. I’m glad other people feel the same way. Yay, for cat lovers! (Though I’ve gotten emails and reviews by readers who say they aren’t crazy about cats but they loved Cattitude book.)

I found out about Wattpad a couple months ago from author Trish McCallan, who writes hot  romantic suspense. Wattpad is a huge, online community where you can share your stories as you write them. Or, in my case, after I publish them. I’m posting 3 scenes a week. Before Trish published Forged in Fire, she posted excerpts on Wattpad and built up a following who were eager to buy the book when it came out. I finally joined a couple of weeks ago, putting up Galaxy Girls first and then Dead People. I found out that Galaxy Girls has been on the Hot list for paranormal-> science fiction stories since I posted the first scene. Right now, it’s #2 on the list. This is a happy surprise.

 

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Clenna Emory has reason to believe in ghosts…

 Ghost stories  No Responses »
Oct 282011
 

Thanks to Clenna Emory for sending this double ghost story. This is the kind of ghost contact I’d love to have.

I definitely believe in ghosts/spirits. My Mother visits me all the time – electrical things come on, wall hangings get tilted, and I sense her.

I was told once by a medium that my father was an animal caregiver in the spirit world. I was taking pictures of my 3-year-old granddaughter and my 5-year-old Golden Retriever, when I felt the hair on my arms stand up. I looked around and saw an older gentleman (like in his 80′s) but dismissed it. Later when I looked back at the pictures, I saw the older gentleman sitting in the background. He looked just like my dad, who passed 23 years ago.

Do you have a ghost story? Send it to edieramerbooks@gmail.com. I’m giving a free ecopy of Dead People (Haunted Hearts) to everyone whose ghost story I post.

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Kate Sterling and the Apartment Ghost

 Ghost stories  9 Responses »
Oct 272011
 

Kate Sterling sent me her story. She writes great books and novellas. She also tells a good ghost story. Enjoy!

I’ve had a few strange encounters, but the most recent ones have taken place during the past three years that I’ve lived in my current apartment. The living room and kitchen seem to be this ghost’s favorite places.

In the living room, we’ve had numerous experiences of the TV going on and off by itself, and the volume being turned up without our intervention as well – the sound blasts while the green volume bars suddenly go across the screen when no one is touching the remote. A couple of the lamps in there also go off by themselves from time to time – and the bulbs aren’t burned out – I have to get up and turn the lamps back on.

In the kitchen, I was sitting at the table and suddenly a door stop began moving rapidly back and forth, even though there was no air on, and no one was near it. I was looking at it when it began to move, so I knew nothing had passed by it to make it move, but because my rational mind was having trouble processing this, I asked my daughter where the cat was. She said sleeping with her and had been for a while. Another incident in the kitchen – one that makes me think this is a friendly ghost – is when my daughter came into my room and thanked me for turning off the stove and moving her soup. I asked what she was talking about because I hadn’t done it. She said she fell asleep with soup on the stove, but when she got up in a panic to check on it, the stove was turned off and the pan had been moved to a different spot. I hadn’t touched it and neither had she – and we were the only two home. It was weird, but at least whoever/whatever moved it was looking out for our best interests.

~~

Like more ghost stuff? I’m at Coffee Table Reviews today, one of my favorite places. Cassie, my heroine from Dead People, is interviewing her best friend, Joe the former cop, who also happens to be a ghost. There are 2 giveaways!

Do you have a ghost story? Send it to edieramerbooks@gmail.com. I’m giving a free ecopy of Dead People (Haunted Hearts) to everyone whose story I post.

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Bonnie Dodge & Kris Phillips have ghost stories

 Ghost stories  7 Responses »
Oct 262011
 

I found four ghost stories in my gmail. The first two are shortish, so I’m sharing both. The first is from a fellow writer, Bonnie Dodge. Enjoy!

I’ve never had an encounter with a ghost, but the curator of our county museum has had several. The old building housing the county’s historical collections used to be a school. When you walk through the door, it’s like walking back in time as old books, old clothes, desks, and pictures greet you. Mychel loves her job there and says there is a ghost in the museum. After work each night, Mychel follows the same routine as she turns off lights, locks doors, and sets out the CLOSED sign. One morning when Mychel arrived to open the museum, she saw a row of lights on inside the building. The CLOSED sign that normally hung on a hook in the wall was crooked and hanging on a rounded projection instead of its regular hook. Thinking the president of the historical society, the only other person to have a key to the museum, had been in the building, Mychel called him only to find out that he had not entered the building, turned on the lights or moved the sign. Another time, a volunteer was in the basement when she heard a young man’s voice calling from upstairs. Once upstairs, she could find no one; the place was empty. Another time, tempted by the piano in the museum, a friend of Mychel’s sat down to play a few songs. While playing, she heard a man whisper, “Hi. I’m Mr. Braun.” Mychel’s friend stopped playing the piano and asked Mychel, “Who is Mr. Braun?” Mychel pointed to a picture on the wall. “That is Mr. Braun. He was a musician.”

Mychel says her ghost is not harmful, just playful. She starts every day saying hello to the ghost. She also tells him goodbye as she locks the door every night.

Thanks to Kris Phillips for this bonus story:

When I was about 6-years old I encountered a spirit in my sister’s room. I was sleeping in my sister’s room with her one night when I woke up to the sound of my dog barking staring into the corner of her room. I looked over at the corner where he was barking and there was nothing there. He whined and walked out of the room. I laid my head back down on the pillow to try to go back to sleep when I felt the bed shake. I sat up and there was a ghostly figure of a boy laughing and jumping on my bed. It scared me to death and I started screaming. My mother ran in and said I just had a nightmare and to go back to sleep. I know I was wide awake and not dreaming, but she did not believe me. My sister never saw anything. She slept through the whole thing. I never saw the little ghost boy again.

Do you have a ghost story? Send it to edieramerbooks@gmail.com. I’m giving a free ecopy of Dead People (Haunted Hearts) to everyone whose ghost story I post.

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Cindy Carroll: Growing up with a ghost

 Ghost stories  9 Responses »
Oct 252011
 

Thanks to the talented Cindy Carroll for sending this ghost story that’s on the sweet side. I think Cindy could use this for a future book. I’m already wondering why the ghost remained in the house instead of enjoying its afterlife.

For 17 years I lived in a house with a ghost. We didn’t know her name or anything about her. We were pretty sure it was a girl though, because my make up would go missing. But that’s not what convinced us it was a girl. I had some friends over and I had gone upstairs to get something. My friends were in the kitchen. When I came downstairs and went into the kitchen one of my friends asked me to repeat what I had said. They’d been having a conversation with “someone” but it wasn’t me.

When I had my wisdom teeth out my boyfriend at the time drove me there and took me back home. He stayed with me because I was on powerful pain killers. He went to the basement to get something and the ghost talked to him when he picked up the phone. We were the only two people in the house and I was knocked out on meds. He ran up the stairs and said he would never go in the basement alone again. :)

I also remember coming home around midnight to find my cousin sitting on a lawn chair in the middle of the sidewalk. When I asked why she wasn’t inside (she lived with us) she said the ghost was typing up a storm in the top room. She didn’t want to go back into the house until other people were home.

The one that freaked me out the most was when I had a sunburn. I was the only person home. I was lying on my stomach on my bed and I heard footsteps walking back and forth in front of my room. But there was no one there. And she liked to wake me out of a sound sleep by yelling my name in my ear in the middle of the night.

Still, I always felt safe knowing she was there. When we moved I missed that extra presence in the house.

Do you have a ghost story? Send it to edieramerbooks@gmail.com. I’m giving a free ecopy of Dead People (Haunted Hearts) to everyone whose ghost story I post.

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Dale Mayer and her ghost – a personal connection

 Ghost stories  2 Responses »
Oct 242011
 

Dale Mayer is a friend and an indie writer of YA and adult paranormal books. Here’s her real-life ghost story that sounds as if it could be in one of her books:

I was working on the second floor of the house I rented when in College. I was facing a huge kitchen window but had my head down studying. I looked up aimlessly, thoughts on the work at hand, when I saw a man walk in through a door reflected in the window. I could see him so large and so clear. He wore jeans and a light green plaid shirt. He was also rolling up his right sleeve as if planning to wash his hands.

I spun around sure there was a stranger in the house only to realize that behind me, the only place the reflection could have shown, was the fridge and stove. No wall. No man. No sink, even. I freaked. I searched the house, top to bottom, checking closets and under the beds to make sure and intruder hadn’t snuck in. Then I called my mother.

Her voice was odd on the phone after I explained what had happened and she suggested I come home for lunch the next day – being a Saturday. While at home, she brought out a picture. It was the same man, dressed in the same plaid shirt, caught in the act of rolling up the right sleeve of his shirt. I stared, and my mother explained that it was her favorite photo of my father who passed away when I was six months old.

Doesn’t that give you shivers? In a good way. Do you have a ghost story? Send it to me at edieramerbooks@gmail.com. I’m giving a free ecopy of Dead People (Haunted Hearts) to everyone whose ghost story I post here

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Jody Allen: what her father saw

 Ghost stories  No Responses »
Oct 232011
 

Thanks to Jody Allen, a historical copy and research editor, for letting me share her story. 

A couple of weeks after my brother was born back in the ’50s, we were having his Christening party, which was a big family picnic. My dad went into the house to get something for my mom and when he came back he was completely white. Seems he met his mother waiting in the kitchen. But my grandmother had died a month earlier. She apparently told my dad she couldn’t pass over until she knew my baby brother was ok.

My sister has the same sort of ability to be attuned to otheworldly things. She used to work in Whitnall Park in Milwaukee, and she would say that she was being watched early in the mornings. She said she glimpsed ghosts of indians near some of the  pools.

I didn’t get that attribute.

I emailed Jody and asked if she’d like that attribute. For myself, I don’t want to see random ghosts, as does my heroine in Dead People. But I would love to hear from a few relatives who’ve passed. I thought Jody’s reply was profound, so I’m including it:

Not really but having done family research for about twenty years I would love to have met my 2x great grandparents and ask them when and where they were married. I can get records back to 1600 but for some reason I can’t find their marriage record from 1850′s.

By attribute, I meant that I didn’t get the gift, though I am not sure it would be a gift.  I love all the ghost shows bcause I believe that that there is a another plane of conscious and I like to believe in reincarnation. That maybe we come back as another person within the same family. It might explain my obession with Scotland.

I believe in reincarnation, too, though I don’t have an obsession with anything except words and chocolate. If you have thoughts on any of this (except the chocolate obsession), I’ve love to hear about it.

Jody Allen

Rings True, historical copy editing

Scottish Scribbles

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Ghostly Encounters by Maureen Welli

 Ghost stories  1 Response »
Oct 222011
 

Maureen Welli is the first to respond to my shout out for ghost stories. She hasn’t had one encounter with ghosts…she’s had two. Some people have all the fun. (Can you tell I’d love to see a ghost?) Here’s Maureen to tell you about her experiences.

The first one happened when I was between 9 and 11 over a few years. My friends and I grew up in a new subdivision that was built on an old farm. We suspected that the ghost, we called him “It”, was the old farmer who owned the land. He made himself known to us in various non-threatening ways. Putting shades up and down in one of our houses when we were on vacation, and no one was in the house. Making noises, moving things, etc. But we never actually saw him, until one night. When I was 11 we moved away and built a new house in another town, I went back to visit my best friend for a sleepover and we both woke up in the middle of the night to a large white mist hovering in the doorway to the bedroom. It slowly moved toward us and we were deathly still (too afraid to move or make a noise). It hovered for a few seconds looking like a large see-through snowman and disappeared. I whispered to my friend “Did you see that?”, yes, she had seen it too. We were too afraid to go back to sleep after that.  But we were also thrilled we were finally able to see “It.”

The second encounter happened at the new house I mentioned in the story above, when I was about 16 or 17. It was a two story colonial and I was in the bathroom upstairs, my parents were downstairs in the family room watching TV. Again, this house was built out in the country on old farm land. I was filling the tub for a bath and looked over toward the door, there stood a man, plain as day. He had a white beard, plaid shirt and overhauls and just stood there looking at me for a few seconds. I turned to shut off the water, and when I looked back he was gone. I went downstairs and asked if anyone had come over? (Why this man would have been walking around the house on his own when my parents were downstairs scared me more than thinking it may have been a ghost.) They said no one had come over or come in the house, they thought I was nuts. I never saw that man again.

Maureen Welli

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My updated life

 Edie's Posts  2 Responses »
Oct 162011
 

I’ve been so busy lately, I haven’t posted on my blog. ENTANGLED, A PARANORMAL ANTHOLOGY is getting fabulous reviews. A generous donor is matching all royalties on sales through October 20th to give to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. Bestselling author Phil Hawley will also “give a copy of STIGMA to anyone who purchases the anthology during this period.” You can read more about both offers here. I’m awed by all the support we’ve been getting.

In addition to ENTANGLED, I have a short story and an essay in two other anthologies with proceeds going to charities: ANY WITCH WAY BUT WICKED and AUTHOR MOMENTS. I belatedly updated my website. Just click on the links and find out more. I have excerpts!

I finished the first draft of a GALAXY GIRLS novella. After that I plan to write a DEAD PEOPLE short story. I’ll give the short story to my newsletter subscribers for free. About six years ago, Karin Tabke and I co-wrote a fun mystery. We still love it and plan on self-publishing it in November.

I have something extra planned that should be fun, but I’m not ready to talk about it yet. On the TV front, I’m hooked on the new show Revenge, and I’m disappointed in this seasons Project Runway contestants. But I still love Tim Gunn and Heidi. For the most part I limit myself to one show a night. Sometimes no shows. What have you been doing?

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