A Little Woo-Woo?

 LUCY BURDETTE: Do you like a little paranormal accent in your books, or are your tastes strictly reality-based? 

I thought I was a no-nonsense reality writer until my tarot card reader showed up in AN APPETITE FOR MURDER. Then Hayley Snow revealed that she’d rather have her cards read than spill her secrets to a shrink. Now she insists that I work him into all the Key West books, at least a cameo. 

In the February 2014 release, MURDER WITH GANACHE, she tried to get a reading from Lorenzo, but he was too busy. So she ended up dropping in at a psychic fair fundraiser at the Bottlecap Lounge. And where she goes, I generally go first...

And it was great fun to read the Ouija board seance scenes in Rhys’s new HEIRS AND GRACES. Tension was upped, clues appeared, and it all fit nicely into the story and  revealed more about the characters. 

What about you Red writers and readers? Do you like a dash of woo-woo in your books? A touch of magic in the writing? 

 

And just for fun, here are two links that will help you see into your future, a magic eight ball and a three card Tarot reading. 

And don't forget, one lucky commenter will receive an ARC for Julia Spencer-Fleming's November release, THROUGH THE EVIL DAYS!

And also don't forget, this is the last day to get a free download of Rosemary Harris's THE BITCHES OF BROOKLYN! Click here.

Puzzling Out the Paranormal: Scrapped

HALLIE EPHRON: Today we're happy to welcome Mollie Cox Bryan to Jungle Red. Her second Cumberland Creek mystery Scrapped is just out. It's got plenty of down home fun, secrets, murder, and a splash of the supernatural.

A new character, Cookie Crandall, makes friends with fellow scrap bookers. A self-proclaimed witch, Cookie  rhapsodizes about runes and moon phases. She becomes the prime suspect in a series of bizarre murder, and even her new friends begin to doubt her innocence when they find an ornate, spiritual scrapbook that an alleged beginner like Cookie could never have crafted.

I love stories that mix a little supernatural with the natural, and then let the reader puzzle it out. Sounds like you do, too, Mollie.
 

MOLLIE COX BRYAN: I have a confession. A lifelong obsession—with the paranormal.

But it's not the kind of obsession in which I read every paranormal book I can get my hands on and write about werewolves and vampires. (Though I might do that some day. I never say never.) But for now, my obsession lingers on the moment of wonder.

HALLIE: Like when someone says, "Did you see that?"

MOLLIE: Right! And you did not see it, but you get the goose pimples because you know the person next to you did.

So much about this life that’s enjoyable is unexplainable. The pull you feel to study engineering, your longing to live in a certain part of the world, or the time you’re walking down the street of a huge city and your eyes suddenly find another person’s and you just suddenly know, in the midst of the crowd, that this person will have some meaning in your life. Maybe you can explain some things, but this? Nah.

HALLIE: And how can you tell if it's supernatural or natural?

MOLLIE: I find it curious that the paranormal really cannot be proven. I know about the paranormal investigators and so on and even watch some of those shows. But I never see or hear what they are talking about. (Did you hear that?” says the investigator. “No,” I usually reply.)  And when I do hear the noise, there’s an explanation—mice, a weird air current in the room, and so on.

But. When things like this happen to you, you don’t need proof, do you?
HALLIE: That's the fun of it.

MOLLIE: I dig the unexplainable. This is why I use the paranormal in my books. I’ve been asked about the paranormal element in my first book SCRAPBOOK OF SECRETS. Is Bea’s husband really haunting her? Or does she just miss him so much that she imagines him? And if that’s the case—how powerful is this thing we call imagination? Can it make something seem so real that we actually wield it into existence? I wonder.

HALLIE: Love that question: Is it real? Because, you know, it's fiction!

MOLLIE: I think it's great fodder for fiction. Conversations with our loved ones that have died? How many of us do that? I know when I run across something my Gram might have thought funny, or am working on a recipe that she gave, me, I have a little conversation with her. Am I they only person who does this?

In SCRAPPED, my new character, Cookie Crandall, is a practicing witch, yet she doesn't talk to ghosts and/or welcome vampires in her life. She’s more about the everyday kind of witch that might be living in your neighborhood.

HALLIE: REALLY?

MOLLIE: You read it right. In fact she says when explaining her beliefs. “You can call it prayer. I call it magic. It’s about connecting with the universe, asking for it to listen, and watching as things unfold. We use different props, that’s all, my friend.”

So while there's a miniscule amount of paranormal elements in my books, it's in each one so far,  the focus is on the everyday paranormal. The kind that leaves you wondering: did I just see a ghost? Have I been here before?

HALLIE: So, Reds, here's Mollie's question: As readers, how do you feel about that when you're reading? Do you want hard cold answers? Or is okay to leave some unanswered questions?

Haunted...

HALLIE: After enjoying Charlaine Harris's visit to the New England Crime Bake, I've been thinking about the appeal of the paranormal, and how many otherwise perfectly normal people I've met are convinced that a house they lived in was haunted. A woman I used to work with told me how she could feel the cold air and many times saw the ghost of a woman in an upstairs bedroom. She and her family never used the bedroom, nor did the family that lived in the house before them.

So even though I've never put a vampire or a werewolf or a fairy into a novel, every once in a while I do put in a touch of woo-woo. Like when one my main character drank a glass of wine, imagined he was talking to his dead wife, fell asleep, and when he woke up there were two wine glasses beside him.

Have you toyed with the fantasy or paranormal in your fiction? What about in real life--anyone grow up in a house that felt haunted?

JAN: Well my new novel features an antagonist who may or may not be the devil, so I am definitely experimenting with Woo-woo (although I originally wrote this novel 21 years ago before I ever heard the term woo-woo)

About thirty years ago, my husband (then boyfriend) and I went to a bed and breakfast in Nova Scotia and we both woke up at four in the morning totally freaked out feeling weird energy in the room and convinced it was haunted. We gathered up our things, went out for breakfast and returned to check out by something like 6:30 a.m. We have never before or ever since felt that way or experienced anything like that, so we are not inclined to fantasize in that direction.

Not entirely sure about ghosts -- especially ones called up at seances - we believe what we want to believe -- BUT I'm a true believer in energy -- certainly the energy that we all project while we are alive. So its not that hard for me to believe that some energy lingers.

RHYS: I grew up in a haunted house. It was a big rambling old country house and my brother and I slept alone on the top floor with a long staircase between us and our parents. The mat outside my door used to flap even though no window was open and one night the window opened by itself in the middle of the night, causing me to freak out. I used to have a recurring dream of waking up and seeing a procession of hooded figures coming up the stairs toward me.

When I spoke to my brother about it recently and said I thought the house was haunted, he replied, "Of course it was." And he was only about eight when we moved away. I never saw an actual ghost and I suppose all the creaking and flapping could be attributed to drafts, but why would a little boy sense the presence of something paranormal?

And of course my latest book, Royal Blood, is a complete spoof on the whole vampire genre, but you never quite know in the end whether the vampire might have been real.

ROBERTA: Never lived in a haunted house--as far as I know! I did enjoy hearing about Charlaine's imaginative worlds this past weekend. I'm so stuck on reality! I guess the closest I'm coming is a tarot card reader in my new series. I'm going to have to trot down to the Mallory Square sunset celebration in Key West and get my cards read so I can write it realistically...

ROSEMARY: Uh...no. I'm a gardener. I compost. Nuff said.

HANK: Never lived in a haunted house. (That I know of, at least.) But ESP? yes, indeedy. There's more going on than we understand? Yes, indeedy. So who are we to dismiss things that happen as "coincidence"? I'm open to it.
HALLIE: I like it best in books, as in life, when there's something weird but you don't quite know what to make of it.

Please share with us your tales of ghost, visitations, or simply stuff you just can't explain.

AND COMING ATTRACTIONS: Tomorrow, Sarah Smith visits Jungle Red to talk about her new YA novel, "The Other Side of Dark," with a young girl who talks to ghosts and wonders if she's going crazy. It's a sweet and poignant.

Then, after Thanksgiving, Toni L. P. Kelner and Dana Cameron pay us a visit to talk about how their celebrated short stories are exploring the dark side. On Saturday Barbara Corrado Pope drops by to talk about her wonderful new historical mystery that only sounds like it's got vampires in it, "Blood of the Lorraine."