NOTE: 2020 Conversations with Colleen: Meet Author, Mae Clair, @MaeClair1

May 8, 2020 / Marcia Meara / 8 Comments

My good friend and favorite Penderpal, author Mae Clair, is being interviewed over on Colleen Chesebro’s All The Best – Word Craft Prose and Poetry blog. Here’s a great opportunity to learn a bit more about Mae’s wonderful Hode’s Hill series, as well as some insight into how she writes. It’s a fun interview and I hope you’ll take a minute to stop by and say hello to Mae and Colleen. Thanks! 🙂

2020 Conversations with Colleen: Meet Author, Mae Clair

#GuestAuthor – #Promo – #Excerpt – Eventide by Mae Clair

February 6, 2020January 27, 2020 / Marcia Meara / 60 Comments

Great news! Mae Clair is back with more on her wonderful Hode’s Hill series. Today, she’ll be sharing a bit about the third book in the series, Eventide, including a super excerpt for your reading pleasure. As always, let’s take a look at the fantastic cover for this one. Pretty great, huh?

And now, I’ll turn this post over to Mae. You’ll love what she has to say!

~~~

Many thanks for hosting me again, Marcia. I was here yesterday with the announcement that my publisher has discounted my Hode’s Hill series for the month of February. End of Day and Eventide are currently priced at .99c each. Later this month, you can pick up book one, Cusp of Night FREE from the 20^th through the 25^th.

That means you can purchase all three supernatural suspense mysteries for a total of $1.98, a hard deal to beat. Each book features dual timelines—a mystery in the past, and a mystery in the present—which tie together at the close of each novel.

Today, I want to take a closer look at book 3, Eventide. If you like ghost fiction, I think you’ll enjoy this story.

Three years after the murder of her husband, Madison Hewitt is putting her life back together. She purchases an old home several miles from town along a creek. After a short time in the house, Madison begins to suspect the property is haunted. She asks her sister’s boyfriend, Dante DeLuca to go through the home and give her his impressions. Sensitive to the spirit world, Dante is able to read “folk memories.” In the scene below, Dante, along with Madison’s sister, Jillian, explain what constitutes a folk memory.

~ooOOoo~

Madison glanced up from her cell phone when Blizzard trotted into the drawing room, trailed by Dante. She’d missed a call, but the number was one she didn’t recognize. Most likely, a robocall or junk solicitation. Edgy since Dante left to investigate, she dropped the phone onto an end table.

“Well? Anything?” She leaned forward in her chair, a monstrous claw-footed thing left by the previous owner.

“Not much on this level.” Dante settled on the sofa beside Jillian. “I picked up an audible manifestation earlier in this room. A man and woman arguing.”

So she had heard something. “Could you tell what they were saying?”

“No, the incident was too quick, but the tone was unmistakable.”

“What about the basement?” She thought of the old cistern.

“There’s some kind of residual taint, but it doesn’t feel spiritual. You’ve also got two outside areas with activity.”

“Folk memories?” Jillian asked.

“These are different.”

Madison looked between them. “I’m not sure I understand what creates a folk memory.”

“Think of it as a moment frozen in time.” Dante shifted, allowing Blizzard to settle on the floor near Jillian. “Something happens—usually horrific—and the incident replays over and over.”

“You mean ghosts recreate it?”

“No. It’s the memory of the event itself, imprinted in the place where the tragedy occurred. Like a TV episode on constant rerun.”

“No one is really there,” Jillian added.

Dante spread his hands. “Anyone receptive to the spirit world can usually sense folk memories.”

Her stomach tightened. She regretted the slice of key lime pie she’d had for dessert. “Do you mean…” It was hard to force the words. To dial her mind back to the most heinous night of her life. “Boyd’s death could have left a folk memory in our house at Mill Street?”

“Yeah.” Dante blew out a breath. “It probably did. But it takes time for the residue to become visible. Decades, sometimes centuries. There’s no rhyme or reason why some atrocities leave imprints and others don’t.”

She felt the blood drain from her face.

Jillian stretched forward to clasp her hand. “Put Boyd’s death out of your head, Maddy. That’s not why Dante is here.”

“I know.” She closed her eyes, tears burning the lids. “But the thought of his murder playing over and over…”

“No one will see it, Madison.” Dante’s assertion left no room for argument. “You need to stop seeing it.”

She nodded. Snatched a tissue from a box on the end table. It was time to refocus. “You said you felt impressions outside.” She dabbed her eyes.

“The graveyard?” Jillian guessed.

Dante shook his head. “Near the veranda below Madison’s bedroom, and along the creek bank. The veranda is covered in cold spots.”

Madison crumpled the tissue in her hand. “What about the creek?”

“That was different. I’m convinced something bad happened there. Not enough to create a folk memory, but enough to leave a hostile mark.”

~ooOOoo~

BLURB:

The darkness is coming . . .

The old house near Hode’s Hill, Pennsylvania is a place for Madison Hewitt to start over—to put the trauma of her husband’s murder, and her subsequent breakdown, behind her. She isn’t bothered by a burial plot on the property, or the mysterious, sealed cistern in the basement. Not at first. Even the presence of cold spots and strange odors could be fabrications of her still troubled mind. But how to explain her slashed tires, or the ominous messages that grow ever more threatening?

Convinced the answer lies in the past, Madison delves into the history of the home’s original owners, only to discover the origin of a powerful evil. An entity that may be connected to a series of gruesome attacks that have left police baffled. No matter where she turns—past or present—terror lingers just a step away, spurred on by a twisted obsession that can only be satisfied through death…

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Connect with Mae Clair at BOOKBUB and the following haunts:

Spiritualists, Houdini, and a New Release! #CuspOfNight

June 6, 2018June 6, 2018 / Mae Clair / 52 Comments

Marcia was kind enough to invite me to share my upcoming release, Cusp of Night with readers of The Write Stuff. Thanks, Marcia! 🙂

I’m jazzed to be here with this novel that twines two timelines in a tale of mystery and suspense. Cusp releases on June 12th, but you can pre-order your copy now from any major bookseller, through this link.

Part of the book addresses spiritualistic practices of the nineteenth century. The research was riveting!

Most seances of that time were held in dimly lit rooms, with the “sitters” often divided by gender. The medium opened with a prayer or a hymn. The use of musical instruments was also common, and played an important part of the evening. Spirits frequently chimed in with ghostly instruments, giving sound to horns, trumpets, and bells. Often these instruments would fly about the room, soaring above the heads of the sitters who clasped hands or pressed their palms to the tabletop, fingers touching. Glowing images often appeared—anything from full manifestations to disembodied faces or ghostly hands that would touch the sitters on the back or shoulders.

It may seem odd to us that people of the era could be fooled by pieces of cheesecloth said to be “ectoplasm” or ghostly hands controlled by air pumped through rubber tubes, but mediums of the 1800s were as much showmen and magicians as they were practicing spiritualists. The country was hungry to communicate with the dead, especially after the massive loss of life during the Civil War. After honing their skills on the dingy circuit, there was an abundance of amateur magicians and charlatans ready to step up and fill the voracious call for mediums. Practitioners of the day weren’t above advertising their skills in the classified ads and lining their pockets.

Harry Houdini demonstrates how a medium might produce ectoplasm using a streamer of fine cloth

By Harry Houdini (“Spirit Tricks”. Popular Science. December, 1925.) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Some of the most notable mediums of the time were cited for fraud repeatedly, yet people still flocked to them, fully aware they’d been tagged as cheats. None of that mattered in the fervor of reaching through the Veil to Summerland, a place where the dead resided, and might communicate with the living.

Although, taken at a later date than Cusp of Night is set, the photo on the left shows Harry Houdini demonstrating one way in which a medium produced fake ectoplasm.

In my book, Cusp of Night, Lucinda Glass—a medium of the late 1800s—reaches out to Maya Sinclair, a librarian whose life changed the moment she was injured in a car accident. For a period of two minutes and twenty-two seconds, Maya was clinically dead.

Here’s a closer look at the blurb:

Banner ad for cusp of Night, a mystery/suspense novel by author, Mae Cllair

Recently settled in Hode’s Hill, Pennsylvania, Maya Sinclair is enthralled by the town’s folklore, especially the legend about a centuries-old monster. A devil-like creature with uncanny abilities responsible for several horrific murders, the Fiend has evolved into the stuff of urban myth. But the past lives again when Maya witnesses an assault during the annual “Fiend Fest.” The victim is developer Leland Hode, patriarch of the town’s most powerful family, and he was attacked by someone dressed like the Fiend.

Compelled to discover who is behind the attack and why, Maya uncovers a shortlist of enemies of the Hode clan. The mystery deepens when she finds the journal of a late nineteenth-century spiritualist who once lived in Maya’s house–a woman whose ghost may still linger.

Known as the Blue Lady of Hode’s Hill due to a genetic condition, Lucinda Glass vanished without a trace and was believed to be one of the Fiend’s tragic victims. The disappearance of a young couple, combined with more sightings of the monster, trigger Maya to join forces with Leland’s son Collin. But the closer she gets to unearthing the truth, the closer she comes to a hidden world of twisted secrets, insanity, and evil that refuses to die . . .

PRE-ORDER HERE

bio box for author, Mae Clair