To be any sort of writer, you have to be a reader. When I'm reading, I get lost in the story and characters. But sometimes it goes deeper than that...

To me, a great story lives on long after I have closed the book, not just because of it's plot or characters, but because of those little moments that come back to you days later. It's those moments that turn random books into cherished favorites.

The Scene with the Jars in The Witching Hour: Now everyone knows that I'm a huge Anne Rice fan, so it shouldn't be much of a surprise that one of her books would make my list. In The Witching Hour, Rowan and Michael are exploring the first street house and they come across the jars holding the heads and babies. To me, that scene, describing the contents of the jars and how the seal of some is broken so there are worms inside, sums up the creepy WTF sort of reaction to the whole book. Add to that Michael breaking open the jars to touch the slimy things....Yuck!

The Playground Scene from The Shining: Stephen King is well known for creating books filled with moments that send chills up your spine, but the one that sticks out to me is the playground scene from The Shining. Danny is playing outside and he gets that "you are not alone"-it's too quiet to be safe sort of feeling. As kids, how many of us had felt that? 

Scarlet's Homecoming Scene in Gone with the Wind: This is a classic novel, full of amazing action and heartbreak, but the scene I identify with most is when Scarlet goes home to Tara. She traveled all this way, starving and afraid, hoping to just make it home where her mother will take care of everything. She gets home and her mother is dead, her father is mad, her sisters sick, and everyone is starving. They all look to her for guidance and she just wishes they'd all go away. To me that summed up the forced changes that were all through Gone with the Wind.

Perhaps it's the instant connection to a familar feeling that does it. Perhaps it's that feeling of, for just one moment, totally forgetting that it's fiction. Maybe it's something different for everyone.

What is a moment from a book that you will never forget?

I am a huge lover of all things dark and creepy which most of you know, but did you also know I have a romantic side? It's not something that I show often because it's not the traditional flowers and sunset walks type of romantic, but more a love of tragic romances that take my breath away. Yes, I am a lover of gothic romance!

Gothic fiction of any sort is a delicious combination of horror and romanticism. Gothic romances just take it one step further. This type of novel flourished in the late 18th and 19th century, but more recent contributers would be Anne Rice. These dark novels normally involve paranormal elements set against an architectual backdrop that is almost a character in itself. Think of the First Street House from The Witching Hour, or any of the buildings from Jane Austen's novels.

Without realizing it, I made my own contribution to the gothic romance genre with my Spiritus Series. I thought I was just telling the story of a ghost haunting the reincarnation of the wife that killed him, but as the story grew, the gothic elements became harder to ignore or deny. What started out as a love story, became darker and darker. Hence, my own personal genre: Romantic Horror

If you've never read a gothic romance, or if you're looking for a new one, the first book in my Spiritus series is ♥FREE♥ in most ebook formats.

A love that refuses to die...

"As I watched him vanish into a soft mist that faded away, I knew that he was no ordinary spirit...I knew that he was a dangerous entity that could be in some corner of another realm planning his revenge, but I also knew that I was hopelessly in love with him."

When Becca moves into her ancestral home in Corydon, Indiana, her life takes a puzzling and thrilling turn when she meets the ghost haunting the halls. As the seductive spirit lures her closer and closer, she learns about her own past and starts to understand that some mistakes are meant to last.

Becca McAllister has always been different from other girls her age. Never part of the "in crowd", Becca never really fit in anywhere. When her mother dies and her father moves them to the small town of Corydon, Indiana, Becca didn't expect things to change.

But things do change when Becca accidentally makes contact with a one hundred and sixty year old ghost, Alastor Sinclair, that haunts the halls of her new home.

To Becca, Alastor is a seductive spirit that seems to see straight into her soul. To Alastor, Becca is what he has waited a century for--A second chance.

But the closer they get, the more Becca realizes that this isn't the first time she and Alastor have known each other. Worse still, is she the one responsible for his death so long ago? And if so, did he come back for love or revenge?

As most people know, I am a sucker for all things British! My childhood (and current) crush was the dashing Michael Praed, one of my favorite current shows is Doctor Who, and I adore Absolutely Fabulous! So it only stands to reason that I would also have a passion for British Horror Novels. This is the list of my top 5 British Horror novels.

Dracula by Bram Stoker

Jonathan Harker, incarcerated in a Transylvanian castle, has an alluring but terrifying dream of three women, eager to prey upon him. His host and jailer is none other than Count Dracula, or Nosferatu, the Un-Dead, controller of the wolves.

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

At once a Gothic thriller, a passionate romance, and a cautionary tale about the dangers of science, Frankenstein tells the story of committed science student Victor Frankenstein. Obsessed with discovering the cause of generation and life and bestowing animation upon lifeless matter, Frankenstein assembles a human being from stolen body parts but; upon bringing it to life, he recoils in horror at the creature's hideousness. Tormented by isolation and loneliness, the once-innocent creature turns to evil and unleashes a campaign of murderous revenge against his creator, Frankenstein.

Frankenstein, an instant bestseller and an important ancestor of both the horror and science fiction genres, not only tells a terrifying story, but also raises profound, disturbing questions about the very nature of life and the place of humankind within the cosmos: What does it mean to be human? What responsibilities do we have to each other? How far can we go in tampering with Nature? In our age, filled with news of organ donation genetic engineering, and bio-terrorism, these questions are more relevant than ever.

The Ghosts by Antonia Barber

When Lucy sat in the attic, she thought she heard the sound of voices calling...
That's when she started to believe the rumors in the village that the old house was haunted. But no ghosts appeared - until the day Lucy and her brother Jamie stood in the garden and watched two pale figures, a girl and a boy, coming toward them.


That was the beginning of a strange and dangerous friendship between Lucy and Jamie and two children who had died a century before.


The ghost children desperately needed their help. But would Lucy and Jamie have the courage to venture into the past - and change the terrible events that had led to murder?

The Island of Doctor Moreau by H.G. Wells

One of H.G. Wells’ most visionary tales, The Island of Dr. Moreau relates the disturbing tale of Prendick, a shipwrecked naturalist who unwittingly discovers a horrific scientific and social experiment that is creating a blurred race of hideous creatures, half-human and half-best. Terrifying and spellbinding, Wells’ masterpiece warns of the catastrophe that could result when man recklessly tampers with nature. Eric Vincent’s artwork vividly summons up the nightmarish life in Dr. Moreau’s tortured world.

In my Spiritus Series, I explore the idea of reincarnation and ghostly love that can last two lifetimes and Incarnate is the climax to that tale. Part of the story is told in letters between Alastor and the first Becca during the American Civil War, it shines some light on their relationship and the trauma that would haunt them into the next life.

Letter from 13th Regiment Calvary of Indiana, Company B Lieutenant

Alastor Sinclair to His Wife Rebecca Sinclair


March 11, 1863

 Dearest Becca,

I wanted to take a moment and send you a few lines to let you know that I am still among the living.  We did not move toward Georgia, instead we rode toward Virginia. 

My darling, I have seen many things in the past weeks and I fear that cause of this war is not as simple as we have been told.  I hate to trouble you, but if I do not tell someone of the horrors I have witnessed, I fear that I will go mad.

In Tennessee, fugitive slaves would seek out the union army for protection, many wanting to enlist in the fight.  I saw men with their backs covered in scars from whips, women and children still wearing ankle shackles that had torn their legs clean to the bone, and other horrors that I can’t even put to paper.

As we moved toward Virginia, we passed a few of the fabled plantations.  These are nothing more than large farms really, nothing at all like what we were told.  Some of the sights were like those in Tennessee of poor souls treated no better than livestock, but then we would come across homes where all the white folks were sick with the fever and the slaves would not abandon them, then at next town more cruelty, and then white folks going without food so that a dying slave might have a decent meal.  I saw such cruelty in some and such compassion by others, both black and white, that I fear that both sides were lied to by our politicians.

I am no longer sure of this war or what a good outcome may be, but I know that I wish I was home with you now and all of this was only a memory.  I want this all to end. 

I no longer have the stomach to write these things.  As always I love you and am thinking of you.


Your devoted husband,

Alastor


These words give a glimpse into the tragedy of war. Back home, Becca would endure her own trials and suffering. After the war, the combination of the two would prove fatal and leave both of them dead. One to haunt the halls of their home and the other would eventually return in her reincarnated form to the scene of the crime. Can love cross the line between life an death?

If you haven't had a chance to fall in love with the Spiritus Series yet, now is your chance! The entire series is offered as a box set for only 0.99!

I'm all about romantic horror. Give me a ghost in love with a living person, a wizard willing to give up his power for the woman that he loves, or anything dark and creepy. My very favorites (at the moment) are the witch romances. Witchcraft is always a fascinating subject and when you throw in some romance....Wow! These are just a few taken from my favorites and my TBR list...

The Witching Hour (Lives of the Mayfair Witches) by Anne Rice

On the veranda of a great New Orleans house, now faded, a mute and fragile woman sits rocking . . . and The Witching Hour begins.

It begins in our time with a rescue at sea.  Rowan Mayfair, a beautiful woman, a brilliant practitioner of neurosurgery--aware that she has special powers but unaware that she comes from an ancient line of witches--finds the drowned body of a man off the coast of California and brings him to life.  He is Michael Curry, who was born in New Orleans and orphaned in childhood by fire on Christmas Eve, who pulled himself up from poverty, and who now, in his brief interval of death, has acquired a sensory power that mystifies and frightens him.

As these two, fiercely drawn to each other, fall in love and--in passionate alliance--set out to solve the mystery of her past and his unwelcome gift, the novel moves backward and forward in time from today's New Orleans and San Francisco to long-ago Amsterdam and a château in the France of Louis XIV.  An intricate tale of evil unfolds--an evil unleashed in seventeenth-century Scotland, where the first "witch," Suzanne of the Mayfair, conjures up the spirit she names Lasher . . . a creation that spells her own destruction and torments each of her descendants in turn.

From the coffee plantations of Port au Prince, where the great Mayfair fortune is made and the legacy of their dark power is almost destroyed, to Civil War New Orleans, as Julien--the clan's only male to be endowed with occult powers--provides for the dynasty its foothold in America, the dark, luminous story encompasses dramas of seduction and death, episodes of tenderness and healing.  And always--through peril and escape, tension and release--there swirl around us the echoes of eternal war: innocence versus the corruption of the spirit, sanity against madness, life against death.  With a dreamlike power, the novel draws us, through circuitous, twilight paths, to the present and Rowan's increasingly inspired and risky moves in the merciless game that binds her to her heritage. And in New Orleans, on Christmas Eve, this strangest of family sagas is brought to its startling climax.

Sterling (Mageri Series) by Dannika Dark

Zoë Merrick lived an ordinary life until the night she was brutally attacked. She narrowly escapes death, rescued by Adam Razor, an ex-soldier who offers her friendship and a place to stay. But something else is different. Zoë is unable to control an unexplainable energy coursing through her body.

Justus De Gradi is a man who can teach her that control. She meets him by chance - a man who's handsome, arrogant, and not entirely human. He reveals that she's a Mage - an immortal made of light, not magic. Zoë must now make a choice: Rebuild her life in the human world with the man who saved her, or live with Justus and learn how to use her extraordinary gifts. Justus has sworn an oath to protect her life, but can he guard her from the one man who has a right to claim it?

Zoë learns the price of freedom...and the value of loyalty.

Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman

Practical Magic starts out as a tale of Gillian and Sally Owens, two orphaned girls whose aunts are witches--of a mild sort. For the past two centuries, Owens women have been blamed for all that has gone wrong in their Massachusetts town, ever since their ancestor arrived, rich, independent, and soon accused of theft: "And then one day, a farmer winged a crow in his cornfield, a creature who'd been stealing from him shamelessly for months. When Maria Owens appeared the very next morning with her arm in a sling and her white hand wound up in a white bandage, people felt certain they knew the reason why." The aunts are daily ostracized by the same upstanding citizens who sneak to their house at night for magical love cures. To the sisters they are for the most part benevolently absent, though their bell, book, and candle routine makes life a torment for Gillian, beautiful and blonde and lazy, and Sally, who's all too responsible. But when one of the aunts' cures works too well, ending as a curse, the dangers of real love become all too clear.

Wicked Fate by Tabatha Vargo

Magic has no place in this world, so technically neither do I. Those around me want to see me burn—make me explode underneath their accusing glares—but I won't. There's only one person that gets me hot, and we've never spoken to each other. He's clueless to my fascination, but knows too much about secrets I've never whispered. He's different from the rest. The black sheep... Adam.

I want him in my future, but my past threatens everything I've longed for. I won't run, I'll fight. I don't know what destiny has planned. I only know love can be cruel, and fate is truly wicked.

A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness

In this tale of passion and obsession, Diana Bishop, a young scholar and a descendant of witches, discovers a long-lost and enchanted alchemical manuscript, Ashmole 782, deep in Oxford's Bodleian Library. Its reappearance summons a fantastical underworld, which she navigates with her leading man, vampire geneticist Matthew Clairmont.

No Shoes, No Shirt, No Spells by Rose Pressey

Elly Blair welcomes the chance to escape her ex-fiance and job from hell when Grandma Imelda, ready to retire to sunny Florida, calls for her to take over her little southern cafe.

Elly has no idea her grandmother has baked up magic for the unsuspecting townsfolk for thirty years-and now Grandma Imelda insists that Elly use her own hitherto unsuspected magical powers to carry on the family tradition.

But Elly's new at this stuff. Her dishes don't turn out as full of smidgens of enchantment and dashes of wishes come true as she'd hoped. When handsome customer Rory Covington takes a bite of the wrong burger, he ends up capturing the attention of every woman in town. Elly doesn't know if her feelings for Rory are true or based on her magic gone awry.

Tom Owenton is an investigator the National Organization for Magic sent to look into the magical mishap. Unless Elly can reverse the spell, the cafe will be closed permanently. Tom is more than willing to help Elly out of this magical pickle, but she's not sure she should accept his offer.

Elly only has forty-eight hours to find a way to reverse the spell, or she'll lose the cafe and never discover if her feelings for Rory are real.

Witches of East End by Melissa De La Cruz

The three Beauchamp women-Joanna and her daughters Freya and Ingrid-live in North Hampton, out on the tip of Long Island. Their beautiful, mist-shrouded town seems almost stuck in time, and all three women lead seemingly quiet, uneventful existences. But they are harboring a mighty secret-they are powerful witches banned from using their magic. Joanna can resurrect people from the dead and heal the most serious of injuries. Ingrid, her bookish daughter, has the ability to predict the future and weave knots that can solve anything from infertility to infidelity. And finally, there's Freya, the wild child, who has a charm or a potion that can cure most any heartache.

For centuries, all three women have been forced to suppress their abilities. But then Freya, who is about to get married to the wealthy and mysterious Bran Gardiner, finds that her increasingly complicated romantic life makes it more difficult than ever to hide her secret. Soon Ingrid and Joanna confront similar dilemmas, and the Beauchamp women realize they can no longer conceal their true selves. They unearth their wands from the attic, dust off their broomsticks, and begin casting spells on the townspeople. It all seems like a bit of good-natured, innocent magic, but then mysterious, violent attacks begin to plague the town. When a young girl disappears over the Fourth of July weekend, they realize it's time to uncover who and what dark forces are working against them.

With a brand-new cast of characters, a fascinating and fresh world to discover, and a few surprise appearances from some of the Blue Blood fan favorites, this is a page-turning, deliciously fun, magical summer read fraught with love affairs, witchcraft, and an unforgettable battle between good and evil.

Seduced by Innocence: A New Adult Paranormal Romance of Shifters & Witches (Rose's Trilogy, #1) by Karpov Kinrade

All my life I've been told that I will kill my first love. That the dark power I harbor within myself will destroy him.

Just like it's destroyed others.

Witches take an oath to do no harm, but I broke that oath even as a child, and so I hide within the invisible walls of my strange coven, keeping everyone at a distance.

Until I meet Derek.

His magnetism draws me in even as I know I should run. But I can't run, because I need him to teach me how to defend myself and others, so I don't fall victim to the shifters out to terrorize my coven.

He can't know my secret, and I can't give in to the other need that's growing between us, the one that heats me from within whenever we're together.

But flesh is weaker than intention, and neither of us can fight the fates. If only we'd known the truth before taking that first bite of forbidden fruit.

Now it's too late.

The Witch and the Gentleman (The Witches Trilogy: Book 1) by J.R. Rain

Allison Lopez is not your everyday Psychic Hotline operator. She's a real psychic with real abilities that seem to grow daily, thanks to her close association with an immortal friend. Now, as her abilities continue to grow, Allison meets a very strange woman who reveals a starling secret to her. Life, for Allison Lopez, is about to get even stranger...and more fantastic.

And when she gets a phone call from a distraught father seeking answers to his daughter's murder, Allison finds herself in unfamiliar territory: looking for a cold-blooded killer. It will take all of Allison's abilities, both old and new, to catch an animal who preys on the innocent. And as the case unfolds, Allison is about to discover that not all is as it seems and life still has a few tricks up its sleeve.

High Witch (High Witch Book 1) by Mona Hanna

Brayden dreams for thirty nights, tortured by the vision of a beautiful woman. When Ariel Williams walks into his inn, he sees that she's the one he's been obsessed with in his night time journeys. But Ariel is fleeing an arranged marriage and keeps shyly to herself, until the worst happens and by mistake she casts a spell on a guest. Brayden works with Ariel to help her control her magic but discovers she's a High Witch - one of only three witches in the world with a rare kind of power.

Immediately the two must flee; evil warlock Julius wants to enslave Ariel - mind, heart and body. Julius and his lover the High Witch Nadia will stop at nothing to capture Ariel, and the danger threatens to tear Ariel apart from Brayden. Ariel's only hope is that her love for Brayden and her newly-discovered powers are strong enough to save them.