Creating the Paranormal World...
One of the hardest things as an author is self editing. I don’t mean editing your story, I mean editing your thought process. For me, the story begins in my head months, if not years, before it begins on paper. Thoughts and ideas, snippets of scenes and bits of dialogue, all roll around my head until they come together as a semi-cohesive storyline.
That means that I spend a lot of my time, as Tim Gunn would say, making it work. The problem isn’t finding good ideas, the problem is in not behaving like an adolescent girl with an accessory addiction and piling everything into one story.
It’s sort of like those rambling and possibly chemically enhanced conversations from college that meandered into the wee hours of the morning. Those conversations normally began with phrases like, “And wouldn’t it be cool if...”, or “What if the Justice League and the X-men..”. It’s trickier with paranormal stories than with others. When you start blurring the lines of what is real and what isn’t, how far do you go? Do you create an entirely separate reality or universe, or do you bring the paranormal into the existing world? And if you choose the later, do the mere mortals in your story get to be in on the joke?
In writing “The Haunting of a Duke”, I chose to stick with a traditional Regency setting, bringing in the spiritualism that was just becoming popular at the time. Using this setting allowed me to create this wonderful conflict between the characters who were believers and those who were skeptics. It also allowed for growth and change within these characters. Creating the character of Emme was a wonderful challenge. On the one hand, she was an innocent young woman, sheltered from so many things, but in other ways she was very jaded and world weary. Her experiences with ghosts and spirits had introduced her to some of the most horrific things that one human being could do to another. She was burdened by her gift, and isolated by it. Rhys had also seen horrible things in his life, both as a soldier and then as the husband of a mad and self destructive woman. His life had been filled with tragedy and it had left him jaded to the idea that there was anything beyond that existed beyond death.
In writing a paranormal story, there have to be rules. You set them and you follow them. As an author, it’s your world and you determine what can and cannot exist within it.
Title: The Haunting of a Duke
Author: Chasity Bowlin
Publisher: Wild Rose Press
Length: 290 pages
Sub-Genres: Paranormal, Regency
BLURB:
Facing danger from both sides of the grave, will two souls merge to find a love
that conquers all? Communing with spirits has been both gift and curse to
Emme Walters. Now it's made her a killer's target. Emme knows why the
Dowager Duchess of Briarleigh invited her to a house party--to investigate
whether the duke, Rhys Brammel, murdered his wife years ago. But Emme
never imagined she would fall in love with the brooding duke. Branded by
society as a possible killer, Rhys is suspicious of Emme and her
alleged "gift." Then a late night encounter creates awareness of her
other, more attractive, aspects. When Emme's life is threatened, Rhys becomes
her protector. Emme and Rhys find passion and peril as they join forces to
solve the mysteries at Briarleigh. She made him believe in spirits, but can she
make him believe in love?
BUY LINKS:
The Wild Rose Press
Amazon - Paperback
Amazon - Kindle
Barnes & Nobles Nook
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Chasity, a former ghost hunter and professional student, lives in Kentucky where she works for a nonprofit agency providing family counseling. In her spare time she reads romance voraciously, rescues stray animals and occasionally stalks her favorite bands.
Twitter is @ChasityBowlin