What Are The Grim Secrets of the Asylum?

Multi-genre author, Dana Wright proves that horror wears many hats. With her brand new story Asylum - the first in her Ghost Echoes series - she has written a novella, full of suspense, the supernatural and some serious sexual tension between her two main characters. I'm delighted she is joining me today - and she's talking about writing, research, and how to juggle life, the day job and dealing with deadlines:

1      Tell us about your newest release.

My newest release is called Asylum and it is about a young woman named Rachel who can see behind the veil and connect with spirits. When she is faced with taking another ghost hunting job after a horrible accident, she is tormented but needs the money to get her grandmother out of a terrible nursing home. She goes to Bremore Asylum with her nemesis, the psychic debunker Matt Rutledge. He thinks she’s a load of hot air and is about to learn the hard way she isn’t. (That’s one of my favorite parts of the story.)

      What was one thing you wanted to research when writing the story?

The research into old asylums and the abuse that went on in some of them. Women were placed in asylums by their families for failing to comply with the social attitudes of the time and there was a lot of pain that stuck around. I wanted to explore that.

The other thing I wanted to explore is the genuine phenomenon of connecting with the spirit world (Rachel’s point of view) and fighting the type of shyster that takes advantage of people in times of great hardship or grief. (Matt Rutledge’s character). They both have very valid points of view and it was wonderful to see them mesh. 

       Do you have anything you do before you start a project?

When I start a new story I immediately go to Pinterest and start looking at images associated with the current project and if they connect, then I make a board. I also pick out music that fits the theme if it is very pronounced. For example, one story I have under my pen name deals with a dark circus/urban fantasy type of environment. I found the most amazing album that had creepy circus music and the story came alive in my mind. The catch is to find something that doesn’t distract with lyrics or I’ll be singing (badly) instead of writing.

     
     Which authors have influenced your work?

Anne Rice

Stephen King was a biggie in my formative years. I also read a ton of Anne Rice and a wonderful anthology given to me by my sister for Christmas one year when I was a child called Tales of Horror and the Supernatural. I think the tendrils worked their way into my brain. Lol. I also read a lot of Virginia Henley, Nancy Collins, Kim Harrison and Melissa Marr. Urban fantasy, horror, romance, mystery and young adult all find their way into my stories at one point or another.

How does your family like you being an author? 

They are excited for me. I write under two names and they love that I am doing light romance now and demand I write a werewolf or shifter novel. My thinking cap is on.

My husband is my biggest cheerleader. We have worked out a system where he will go to the grocery store and throw me chicken strips or a pizza when deadlines loom and I’m freaking out trying to balance a full time job and writing under two names. It is a balancing act, but with his help I am able to get quality writing time almost every day.

When you aren’t writing what do you like to do?

I love to crochet, knit, play with my furry canine children, bake and read. But as you can imagine, writing comes first and I don’t get to do as much of my hobbies as I would like. Monster movies are also a favorite and you can often find me watching Netflix on my iPad doing my hair or glued to the set while I sit with my husband while we eat, then I dive right back into my writer cave.

      What’s next?

I am working on the next Ghost Echoes story, two YA books, a horror novella and about a dozen other different projects. I’m also working on a middle grade series and it is in the planning stages.

Seven things to know about me:

1.       I am a dog mom.

2.       In my day to day life I am a bookstore manager.

3.       I can’t drive a stick shift to save my life.

4.       Spiders are awesome but roaches make me scream like a girl. (Spiders knit-they are useful but roaches are just nasty little things.)

5.       I hate tomatoes but love spaghetti.

6.       I write under two names. Dana Wright for YA, horror and light romance. Erzabet Bishop for erotic horror and all sorts of erotic romance.

7.       Pizza and macaroni and cheese are my favorite comfort foods outside of chocolate.

The ''awesome" spider

Thanks for having me on the blog today Catherine! It was a lot of fun and I hope you will all love Asylum.

Thank you for being my guest, Dana. And, for the record, I LOVED Asylum!

Blurb:

The voices of the past are alive behind the iron gates of Bremore Asylum. Can Rachel and Matt deduce its secrets before it's too late?

When Rachel agrees to take the job investigating the disappearance of a fellow ghost hunter at Bremore Asylum, she is totally unprepared for the sexy and stubborn psychic debunker Matt Rutledge to be a part of the package. Can these two opposing forces find the answers behind the asylum's crumbling walls before they become the newest victims to the asylum's grim history?

Excerpt:

Rachel narrowed her eyes. What little hold she held on her frayed temper snapped. Self-doubt flared, but she stamped it out as quickly as it came.

"What's that supposed to mean?" She stepped forward, hands clenched into fists, her foot brushing against the luggage. Her hoodie slid off the suitcase and flopped unceremoniously into the dirt. 

"We haven't even started on the project and you're trying to displace me already?" 

Rutledge stepped back, surprise clear on his lightly parted lips. Lips she apparently still wanted to kiss, damn his eyes. God, what was wrong with her? 

"My friend almost died because of a mistake I made. But you're already aware of that, aren't you, Mr. High and Mighty? Listen to me and listen good. I'm here because my grandmother needs me. I'm a damn fine ghost hunter, which you would already know if you bothered to see beyond what happened to Jeannie." She poked her finger into his chest and had the satisfaction of seeing him wince. 

Matt stepped back and held up his hands, a ruddy flush creeping up his cheeks. "Okay. I was out of line. Truce?" He bent down and carefully picked up her hoodie, handing it to her gingerly. 

"Thank you, Mr. Rutledge." Rachel snatched the hoodie from his hands and tied it around her waist with a firm yank. She didn't want to chance it falling in the dirt again and it was going to be a long weekend. At the rate they were going, it was going to be a full-on ice storm between them. 

A flash of humor crossed his face. "Do you think maybe you could call me Matt?" 

"That depends." 

"On what?" Matt cocked his eyebrow with surprise. 

"On whether you can stop dissecting me like one of your frauds."

You can buy Asylum here:

Breathless Press

Amazon 

 About the author:

Dana Wright has always had a fascination with things that go bump in the night. She is often found playing at local bookstores, trying not to maim herself with crochet hooks or knitting needles, watching monster movies with her husband and furry kids or blogging about books. More commonly, she is chained to her computers, writing like a woman possessed. She is currently working on several children's stories, young adult fiction, romantic suspense, short stories and is trying her hand at poetry. 

She is a contributing author to Ghost Sniffer’s CYOA, Siren’s Call E-zine in their “Women in Horror” issue in February 2013 and "Revenge" in October 2013, a contributing author to Potatoes!, Fossil Lake, Of Dragons and Magic: Tales of the Lost Worlds, Undead in Pictures, Potnia, Shadows and Light, Dark Corners, Wonderstruck, Shifters: A Charity Anthology, Dead Harvest, Monster Diaries (upcoming), Holiday Horrors and the Roms, Bombs and Zoms Anthology from Evil Girlfriend Media. She is the author of Asylum due out in October 2014.   Dana has also reviewed music for Muzikreviews.com specializing in New Age and alternative music and has been a contributing writer to Eternal Haunted Summer, Nightmare Illustrated, Massacre Magazine, Metaphor Magazine, The Were Traveler October 2013 edition: The Little Magazine of Magnificent Monsters, the December 2013 issue The Day the Zombies Ruled the Earth. She currently reviews music at New Age Music Reviews and Write a Music Review.

Follow Dana’s reviews:

 Twitter: @danawrite

Dana Wright

Facebook

Bootleg Cove (What Waits In The Shadows) - Devin Govaere

 Another member of the quartet of Samhain Publishing's Gothic Horror Anthology winners joins me today. Here's Devin Govaere with some background to her scary, atmospheric tale, Bootleg Cove:

 Good day, everyone! Thanks to Catherine for inviting me to her blog to tell you about my novella, Bootleg Cove. I’m so happy to be included with Catherine and our two fellow authors, Russell James and JG Faherty, in Samhain’s gothic horror anthology, 'What Waits in the Shadows'. Bootleg Cove is the story of a young widow and her son trying to find a new life in an abandoned restaurant on an isolated stretch of Chesapeake Bay. Willie Douglas’ tale takes place within a few days, but the story of how she came into existence takes years.

I’ve been writing for quite a while now—several genres under several different names—but until recently, I avoided writing in the horror or gothic genres. Family and friends have asked why this is, and the answer is hard to admit but also very simple: I was worried about failing.

The horror genre is close to my heart, something so ingrained in my life that it’s part of my earliest memories. I’m sure that parents today might hear my story and believe I had the world’s worst parents, but I can assure you that isn’t the case. My parents encouraged me to embrace the things I love—including horror.

My earliest memories of horror—and my earliest real memories—began when I was five. Not only did I start school (which I hated), I had a dream that scared the socks off me. I was lying under a bed, and from my vantage point, I could see a table covered with a red and white checkerboard cloth. I was shaking, frightened beyond anything I’d ever felt before except for leaving my mother every morning to go to kindergarten. In my dream, I held my breath, listening with a pounding heart to the chuffing sounds coming from beyond the table. Soon, two brown, furry feet with long claws came into my view. I pushed myself as far under the bed as I could and stared as the man-animal moved past the bed, its long claws clicking on the wood floor. And just as I thought my little five-year-old heart would burst, I woke up.

From that moment I was hooked. I’d been scared out of my mind and come out the other side. I decided I would embrace the darkness before it embraced me. 

Back in my childhood, the horror genre was nothing like it is today. There was very little to appease my desire for thrills and chills. I collected monster models—an unusual hobby for a little girl back then—and monster magazines. I watched The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits, and I went to every Saturday matinee our small town provided. One of my favorite afternoons ever included watching the double feature, The Blob and Dinosaurus!

During those years, I also discovered another outlet for my obsession. I don’t remember how I actually discovered it, but it was probably quite by accident because neither of my parents were into horror. My obsession was called Chiller Theater. We lived near Pittsburgh back then, and every Saturday night, Bill “Chilly Billy” Cardille hosted a double feature of B horror flicks. I began to lie awake on Saturday night and sneak out of bed to turn on the TV. Once my mother realized what I was doing, she stayed up with me, and we made a night out of it. She didn’t care for the movies, but she kept me company, ironing quietly behind me while I sat with bated breath watching every monster I could ever have envisioned come to life. I never told her that I’d lie awake for hours afterward with my head under the covers, thinking and worrying and wondering about monsters and how many might truly exist. If I had even whispered a hint of my anxiety, she would have made me stop watching, and the last thing I could do was stop. In fact, the more I watched, the more I craved. The more I watched, the safer I felt because I was equipping myself with knowledge, about both monsters and how to defeat them.

 The years passed, and I added books to my obsession, reading everything and anything I could. When I began to write, it seemed logical I would latch on to the genre that had filled my life, but I didn’t—because I never felt I could live up to all of those creative geniuses who had given me such fun over the years. Then I saw the call for submissions for gothic horror at Samhain. For the first time I considered writing something I’d avoided all these years. It came easily, just flowing out as though it had been there all along, just waiting for me to be ready to put it to paper. I enjoyed every minute of the process.

I don’t imagine most people spend a lifetime preparing for one simple thing like writing a story. I certainly took the long way on the writing path, but when I reached the end, I felt like I was home. The Crab Pot on Bootleg Cove, and the people who’ve lived there, have become part of who I am now. I’ve since written another story that will soon be published by Samhain as well, and I plan to continue writing stories of darkness, pulling on memories and dreams and every bump in the night that slithers my way.

I hope everyone enjoys reading Bootleg Cove as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Who knows the secret of Bootleg Cove?
 
Young widow Willie Douglas recently moved to remote, isolated Bootleg Cove on the Chesapeake Bay with her four-year-old son. Her plan—to renovate and re-open an abandoned restaurant. Almost as soon as she arrived, a handyman showed up out of the blue, offering to help. Then Amanda and Sam, two apparently orphaned teenagers, came to her door in need of help and a place to stay. 

But it’s not just the sweltering heat that’s wearing on Willie’s already fragile emotions.  Her mysterious handyman seems to know more than he’s willing to say, Amanda and Sam are acting very strangely indeed, and Willie’s beginning to realize that all three of her houseguests have more history with Bootleg Cove than she could ever have imagined. Willie is seeing too many things that she either can’t explain or refuses to believe.  But the most shocking revelation about Bootleg Cove is still to come… 

Bootleg Cove is available here:

Samhain Publishing

Amazon.com 

Barnes and Noble 

Kobo 
Omnilit