I'm so excited as we get closer and closer to the release of Haunted!  I can't stand the suspense any longer!

Haunted Excerpt

I clutched his hand as we moved along toward Magnolia Bridge. Still yards away, I could hear the drums as well as feel them vibrating somewhere deep inside the middle of my body.
As the bridge came into view, the beat of the drums took over the air and shook the ground beneath my feet.
             
The crowd kept moving closer and closer to the old wood and metal bridge. As I stepped up on the first creaking wooden plank, I saw eerie drawings of symbols and words in glowing white chalk scratched on its surface.

 The air was thick with humidity and noise, too loud to even breathe. It all began to spin, the drums, the wooden planks covered in glowing drawings, and the sickening sweet smell of so many bodies pushed together.
             
I felt myself staggering, everything going hazy and then coming back to quickly, like a record played at the wrong speed. Before I could recover, I was spinning and the drums became loud booms that shook the ground and far off there was a baby crying.
             
It wasn't safe here. I had to get away. They were going to find us. They were going to get me.
             
"Jonah," I pleaded, "I've got to get out of here."
             
He didn’t hear me. I was clutching at his arm, but he was lost in the sea of bodies. At last, I clasped his hand and jerked him around to face me.
             
"Now!" I demanded. "I want to go now!"
             
Jonah was reluctant to leave, but the expression on my face must've convinced him because he guided me through the crowd without complaint.
             
As we stepped off the bridge, a beautiful woman with deep olive skin stepped into our path. She seemed to glow in her long white dress and white head wrap. There was something pulsating on her shoulders. It took a moment for my eyes to focus enough to see that it was a large snake that slithered about her neck.
             
"I see that which you want most," she declared, pulling the snake’s head up to hers so that it's forked tongue could flicker across her lips.
             
I stepped around her, cringing away from the serpent.
             
The woman laughed, showing a wide mouth of bright white teeth, "He can come back, you know."
             
The air left my lungs and I stopped short. I couldn't have heard her right. I dropped Jonah's hand and turned around
slowly.
             
"What did you say?" I asked.
             
She stepped over to me, swaying her hips so that her dress swung like a bell.
             
"I can bring him back," She whispered as she came within inches of my face. "I know that is the thing that you want
most."
             
There was a surge of air swirling around me and over my head. The woman's eyes focused on it with a knowing
smile.
             
"He will be angry," She said and took a card out of the waistband of her dress. "Come and see me when you can."

 I clutched the card in my hand as Jonah led me away. I looked back and watched the woman disappear in the darkening crowd.

So, it’s April.  I should be thinking about spring cleaning, sprucing up my yard, and my book being released later this month. Instead, I’m thinking about one thing: Titanic.

 To me, the month of April has always been reserved for all things Titanic.  Some of my first memories of television are centered on specials about the doomed ship.  In that time before the Titanic was discovered on the ocean floor, scientists shared their theories about how the ship sank and then came my favorite part, the survivors.  I can remember sitting on the couch, fresh from my bath and dressed in a cotton gown with itchy lace trim, watching white haired seniors retell their stories over and over.  
 
The idea of that ill-fated night was terrifying.  Your entire fate could be decided based on your sex and your class.  The panic, the screams, that last look at your husband or father as the lifeboat was lowered; it goes beyond James Cameron’s movie.

 The Titanic was magical and mysterious back then.  There was the beauty, the elegance, the terror, and the tragedy.  The “ship of dreams” had become the ship of legend, looming just as large in myth as it had in life.  
 
Did the band really play on as the ship sank?  Did it split in two as some witnesses said?  Why weren’t more people saved?  Why didn’t more boats come to the rescue?  Who was the ship that some of the survivors saw (so close they could see a man walkin

 In my girlhood imagination, the Titanic rested at the bottom of the sea, in one piece, with everything and everyone preserved just as it was….That would be the magic of Titanic.  The lasting image in my mind of a moment stopped in time, but yet surviving for decades.

 Then came that September day in 1985 when the mystery was solved and the Titanic was found.  The years have gone on and the survivors have passed away, the once grand ship decays in its watery grave, and all that is left is a handful of fading photographs and a few static filled sound bites.  Scientific fact has chipped away at the myth.

 The generations that follow will remember James Cameron, Rose and Jack, and the cloudy images of the rust covered boilers and port holes.  They forget that at one time, the Titanic slept undisturbed and unfound, almost as elusive as Atlantis.  They forget the stories coming from those that lived through it, more terrifying than any movie.  For me, I will remember the legend, the myth, the mystery, and yes, the magic of Titanic.