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NANOWRIMO is here! Are you in? #nanowrimo2017 #mfrwauthor #amwriting
Osiyo~
It’s that time of year again. No, I’m not talking about the holidays, though they are also crowding in much too quickly (I’m trying to ignore that right now 😀 ). I’m talking about National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo (NaNo).
A special thanks to friend and amazing author Silver James for creating these AWESOME NaNo daily inspiration badges and letting me steal them a day at a time! I added the frame on mine. Feel free to save-to-borrow your own copy, as she said to share them! Click on any of these badges all month to get to her website and check out her books.
Since I only decided last night to blog my way through NaNo, I’ll be posting days 1-3 today to get caught up. Each day I will share a little something and along with my daily word count progress.
Day 1- 631
A slow beginning to be sure, but it will pick up. 🙂
What is my NaNo project this year? Well, some of you read my short Halloween blog hop ghost story two years ago right here on my blog. It was a prequel to a two-book series in which you were introduced to Mason Baker, an equipment tech for PRU (Paranormal Research Unit, and Elise Crane, e-zine reporter-turned-paranormal investigator when she was unwillingly made a believer in all things that say “BOO!”
Now, it’s Juliet’s turn. She is twin of Romeo Tucker, both of whom you got a sneak peek of in the 2015 Snarkology Blog Hop I participated in. Read The Non-Believer if you dare. But hurry! I will be reworking this short before publishing it, so on November 10th, next Friday, it will be taken down from my blog. I’m hoping to also have at least two (maybe three) more short stories to go along with the novels as production continues.
I am dragging my muse kicking and squealing back to work. To kick-start my writing again, I’m giving Jules, as she prefers to be called, her story. Hopefully, she’ll have a lot to say about it. 🙂
Coming soon—or at least by next Halloween if all goes well—is book one of this series.
Celestial Visions, Chances Are: Juliet
If getting dumped at a funeral was unspeakably depressing, being forced to go inside haunted Marschalk Manor, with the man who kicked Jules Tucker’s heart across the cemetery, was equivalent to a death knoll. And there was something not quite right with her ex-boyfriend’s sudden determination to contact his cousin’s ghost. The request seems off kilter, but she couldn’t put her finger on why…
Everyone in Marschville knew the rumored secrets of the manor—that the veil between earth and the other realm opened wide and freed the spirits of those who died, to cause all sorts of mayhem within the mansion walls, during the week leading up to a blue moon. Luckily, blue moons weren’t a regular occasion, but Jules was absolutely sure the mayhem would affect her if she had to enter that…place…during that time.
Thankfully, any spirits not safely back on the other side, far away from Jules, will wither and die at the end of the blue moon. Problem solved.
Of course, it’s all rumor… Or is it?
Jules suddenly finds herself running from her ex, and running to him at the same time. How is it possible her boyfriend is stuck on another plane, while his evil cousin lives happily in Raze’s physical body, free to torment her?
The one thing Jules is more afraid of than never finding true love is…ghosts.
Can she take the chance and embrace her “gift” to save Raze? And what will happen when twin brother Rome discovers she can go into the other plane at will?
She has to make a literal life and death choice. To get up close and personal with her fear, or risk losing Raze forever. She will have to become the thing she spent her life running from in order to free Raze’s soul from his demented cousin’s trickery before the next blue moon—in that one cursed week.
***
Since this is a work in progress (WIP) anything can change between now and publication. This blurb will almost certainly change :D, but it should give you an idea of what to expect in Jules’ story.
I’ve done NaNo several times since 2006 and it’s always fun, if not productive for me. For the first time I’m using the Scrivener program for NaNo, instead of basic MSWord. If you’re NaNoing, and haven’t tried the program, you can get Scrivener at a 20% discount during NaNo, or get one of their other offers for it, also at a discount. Believe me, even at full cost, it’s well worth every penny! If you aren’t sure you want to buy Scrivener yet, there’s a special NaNo trial version available as well.
So, are you NaNoing? Do you want to?
It’s only Day 3 and not too late to join the fun! Just check it out and you might be ready to NaNo next November.
Happy NaNoing!
Dodadaghovi~
Calisa Rhose ~ There’s a Free book in the round pen! Myth and Magic by Mae Clair #mfrwauthor #freebook #Mae Clair
Free June 8 to June 10: ECLIPSE LAKE by Mae Clair #RomanticMystery
If you enjoy romance, mysteries, and suspense, I invite you to take advantage of my limited time offer for ECLIPSE LAKE. Grab your Kindle copy, June 8 to June 10 for FREE. This is a stand-alone full-length novel of old wounds, buried secrets, and sweet romance. It’s not part of a series, so you can enjoy the complete tale.
BLURB FOR ECLIPSE LAKE:
Small towns hold the darkest secrets.
Fifteen years after leaving his criminal past and estranged brother behind, widower Dane Carlisle returns to his hometown on the banks of sleepy Eclipse Lake. Now, a successful businessman, he has kept his troubled past a secret from most everyone, including his seventeen-year-old son.
But memories in small towns are bitter and long.
Ellie Sullivan, a nature photographer for a national magazine, has a habit of ping-ponging across the map. Her latest assignment leads her to Eclipse Lake where she becomes caught up in the enmity between Dane, his brother Jonah, and a vengeful town sheriff. When freshly-discovered skeletal remains are linked to an unsolved murder and Dane’s past, Ellie is left questioning her growing attraction for a man who harbors long-buried secrets.
Grab Your Free Copy from Amazon here
If you don’t have a Kindle, download a FREE Kindle Reading app for the device of your choice
I hope you enjoy ECLIPSE LAKE and ask only that when you’ve finished reading you’d leave an honest review on Amazon. Authors love hearing what readers enjoyed about our novels (even what didn’t work). It’s a favored reward J
I’d also like to ask for your support in the release of my brand new Halloween-themed romantic suspense novel, MYTH AND MAGIC. There’s nothing like a little October spookiness for weaving a touch of magic into your summer.
MYTH AND MAGIC:
Love and danger intertwine
AS CHILDREN THEY PLAYED GAMES OF MYTH AND MAGIC…
Veronica Kent fell in love with Caith Breckwood when they were children. As a teenager, she was certain he was the man she was destined to marry. But a traumatic event from Caith’s past led him to fear a future together. He left Veronica, hoping to save her from a terrible fate. Twelve years later, Caith, now a P.I., is hired to investigate bizarre incidents at the secluded retreat Veronica manages. Returning to his hometown, Caith is forced to face his nightmares—and his feelings for the woman he’s always loved.
THEN ONE DAY THE MONSTERS BECAME REAL.
After the callous way Caith broke her heart, Veronica isn’t thrilled to see him again. But strange occurrences have taken a dangerous toll on business at Stone Willow Lodge. Forced to work together, Veronica discovers it isn’t ghostly apparitions that frighten her, but her passion for a man she has never forgotten. Or forgiven. Can two people with a tarnished past unearth a magical future?
***
Release day for MYTH AND MAGIC is June 9, but you can pre-order prior to that. It’s available from all of these bookstores:
Purchase MYTH AND MAGIC and grab your copy of ECLIPSE LAKE for free. You get TWO full-length books of suspense, mystery and romance for under $4.00! Either way I hope you will enjoy the free book. Both stories plus their characters hold special places in my heart.
Thank you for your support and I’d love to hear from you! You can find me at any of the following haunts:
Kensington Books Author Page
Goodreads
About Mae Clair:
Mae Clair opened a Pandora’s Box of characters when she was a child and never looked back. Her father, an artist who tinkered with writing, encouraged her to create make-believe worlds by spinning tales of far-off places on summer nights beneath the stars.
Mae loves creating character-driven fiction in settings that vary from contemporary to mythical. Wherever her pen takes her, she flavors her stories with mystery and romance. Married to her high school sweetheart, she lives in Pennsylvania and is passionate about cryptozoology, old photographs, a good Maine lobster tail and cats.
Suggested tags for blog post:
Eclipse Lake, Myth and Magic, Free reads, Free Kindle Read, romantic suspense, romantic mystery, Mae Clair,
Spook or Treat Answers to Truth of Fiction! ~ Calisa Rhose
Osiyo~
I promised to reveal the truth behind my Haunted Garden Blog Hop post stories so without dragging out the suspense, here they are!
Answers to this post:
- Does tossing a coin in the sea while speaking a chant break a curse?
According to my aunt who fell ill many years ago- She told me she visited her Faith Healer and this was the remedy offered to her and which she followed to a T.
Another witch’s curse… I asked about that, but she just responded with this strange, almost secretive laugh.
This is a TRUE story.
- Will an egg under bed cure fever?
My aunt claims to have personal knowledge this works, having used the method on her own children over the years.
I’ve never tried it. If you do, come back and share how it turns out!
TRUE only because I have just her word for it. LOL
- Does having your photos taken steal your soul?
I personally don’t believe this one. If it is true, I don’t expect to have a lot of soul left by the time I die. I’ll say this is FICTION.
- Did the man suffer beatings while locked up ‘safe’ in a jail cell?
Auntie won’t say she was responsible, but she doesn’t deny it either. I have asked her outright several times if she did it and all she says is, “Someone put a bad curse on him.”
TRUE- it happened. Even my mother who saw him, heard his story too, couldn’t explain it.
But then ~
- It was also my mother who also told me about her sister the first time I heard that chilling story- but she’s not the only one who told a version of my aunt’s death. This is a story with many more layers and elements to it. As creepy as it may seem, as incredulous as it sounds, I grew up hearing this story from various family members and, though each story differs slightly on a detail here or there- each version of the base facts have remained constant over the years.
Men, people, really are this evil. My cousin (that aunt’s only daughter) and I have tried to research it, at her request, and as seems to happen often in small town rural Midwest America, the records that could clear this up (or add more questions) was conveniently flooded in the 70s–and the sheriff is long-dead–effectively destroying all paper trails and evidence.
What I’ve told you is completely TRUE. (and if certain family members read this I’ll probably get some serious flack for sharing a family skeleton. Lol)
So there you have it. The answers to my spook stories. Yes, my life is one thrill after another! 😆
Have a Happy and Spooky Halloween!
**I hope you’ll come back tomorrow when Nano 2012 begins. Are you participating in this furious and crazy contest? Is it your first time, your fiftieth? Come share your National Novel Writing Month experiences!
I’ll also have a surprise for visitors on the Ranch Monday. Shhh- It’s a secret you’ll have to come back then to find out what it is!
Dodadagohvi~
Spooky Truth or Fiction ~ Calisa Rhose
Osiyo~
I’m thrilled to be a part of the Wild Rose Press’s Haunted Garden Blog Hop! There are lots of blogs to have fun with from now through the week (26-31) with prizes at every single stop! All you have to do is click on the five links below to go to the next set and comment to win. Easy-peesy, right? So sit back and enjoy the ride.
I remember one year my sister, brother and I got to go trick-or-treating with my cousin and aunt. I recall how excited, but a little scared I was to be in the dark with my aunt in a strange town. Now this might seem odd and you may be chuckling, but you don’t know my aunt.
She was my mother’s baby sister, and where my mom and the middle sister grew up average women, Auntie went…her own way.
I’m a fan of that show, TRUTH OR FICTION, where they show three or four short stories of supernatural or questionable events and you’re supposed to guess whether they are true or false. I usually get them all wrong. 😆 But that gave me an idea for this post, and to keep from getting sued (or worse!) I’ve made my own mother and her two sisters as the subjects–so here goes…
Truth or fiction?
- Auntie liked her candles and often talks about visiting the Faith Healers on a regular basis. She’s given me remedies to heal a curse that involves throwing a blessed coin into the sea as she repeated a chant three (or five?) times. For me, this thought conjure images of a cloaked woman, dark hair blowing wildly from the edges of a huge hood, wide skirt billowing around her legs, as she strolls on a jagged cliff high above crashing waves…
I can almost hear her chanting the secret words the Faith Healer told her to before throwing the coin into the murky depths below.
- Auntie also told me to put a room temperature, raw egg under the bed of a sick person to draw out the fever–which will hard boil the egg.
- Auntie will do almost anything to prevent her picture taken (though she’s had her familial moments lol), because she claims every time (my) picture is taken, a little piece of my soul is stolen.
- She told me about a boyfriend who cheated on her once when I was around ten years old. At some point after that he was arrested for some misdemeanor. The next morning the man supposedly awoke in the jail cell, with bruises and sore all over and claimed “someone I couldn’t see beat me up all night.”
I guess Halloween doesn’t mean as much to me because I lived it daily day growing up.
But auntie wasn’t the only special one in my family.
My mother had her gifts too. I told the story last year of her guardian angel and the first time I saw him. Well, let me tell you about another talent she possessed before her death. I got her to sit and do a partial card reading for me when I was eighteen. I don’t remember the results of that reading, probably because ever since I was entranced by the story she told me that day. She would only do a partial readings, and then only if the cards fell right. If they didn’t she’d take them back and walk away.
Why?
I don’t pretend to understand how card readings work, but the story is that when I was around eight months old my mom read for her middle sister for fun one day. They laughed as one card after another revealed horrible details. My aunt would be in a car, in rain, and run off a bridge and die before her twenty-fifth birthday.
- Less than a month later my aunt and her husband got into a fight that to this day is conflicted and mysterious, the events following that argument even more suspect and sketchy.
In the end it was my cousin, only four at the time, who revealed a mystery. According to my cousin (who claims no knowledge of this conversation today), that my uncle deliberately drove off a little bridge a few miles from their house, in a rain storm. The three kids, nor her husband were injured, but her neck was broken. Her death was recorded as accidental. Her twenty-fifth birthday came a few days after her funeral.
So what about me, you might ask? I’ve already admitted to seeing my mother’s guardian angel. That’s as far as I’ll go here.
Now for the fun part.
Do you believe these stories really happened? Why? Why not? I’ll reveal the answers on the 31st!
Hop over to these author sites for more fun and I’ll be choosing one lucky commenter to receive a Wild Rose Press gift certificate or two (value to be determined on number of winners I pick :)) after the contest ends on October 31.
http://www.hywelalyn.blogspot.com
http://blog.rolynnanderson.com/
http://twrpblackrose.blogspot.com/
http://www.genevieveash.com/blog.html
http://www.shadowsofromance.blogspot.com
Dodadagohvi~
Smoldering Nights…with Pee Wee Herman?
Osiyo~
I have one hot book to share today! My guest has brought her new Ellora’s Cave release for us to drool over. *Calisa hands out towels as she remembers the need for one last week*
Welcome Lisa Carlisle!!
What is your writing routine?
I put on some music, grab a coffee if it’s morning or something stronger if it’s late, and sit down with my Netbook with a slow Internet connection. It keeps me from going online and getting distracted because it’s painfully slow. I love to write at cafes, but after a day at work, I usually end up writing on the sofa in the living room.
Who are some of your must-read authors and why?
I loved Robert B. Parker’s Spenser books and have read every one. I also loved Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles and The Witching Hour. Today, I’m reading Charlaine Harris’s Sookie Stackhouse series and P.C. and Kristin Cast’s House of Night series. For short, hot stories to escape into for a little while, I check out my publisher’s site, Ellora’s Cave.
I’ve read most of the House of Night series and got behind when my own debut book sold last year. I need to catch up again. 🙂
Where in the world would you want to visit (all in the name of research, of course) and why?
I lived in Paris in my early 20s and thought I would write all these stories there. Every time I tried, I turned to my journal or a letter instead as there were so many things I wanted to share about what I saw and experienced. I’d love to go back to Paris and London to write. Now that I’m more grounded (I hope), maybe I won’t be so distracted. 😉
Oh to go to Paris and write… *sigh*
What obstacles have you overcome to get where you are, and what advice do you have for anyone in a similar situation?
Well, I served in the Marines when I was younger, which I joke trained me to become a writer! You might be rejected or attacked many times, but don’t take it personally. Believe in yourself and never give up. It takes a lot of persistence and a little luck.
True and sound advice, Lisa.
What did you enjoy most about writing your latest work?
Although I’ve struggled with finishing some stories, writing my last book, Fiery Nights, was so much fun I didn’t want it to end. I LOVED the characters and kept going back to write new scenes. I’d be riding on my bike and certain lines would come to me and I couldn’t wait to get home to work on the book. The final manuscript was over twice as long as I originally intended as the characters took shape. I was on the edge of my seat rereading the manuscript, feeling for my characters—even though I knew what was going to happen since I wrote it!
Some optional fun:
Favorite movie and why?
Pee Wee’s Big Adventure. Great story, great characters, and so entertaining.
Who or what would you walk over hot coals, climb a mountain, or swim an ocean to get to and why?
My husband. Because he possesses every characteristic I’ve ever wanted in a partner.
Salty, sweet, or both?
Salty. My weakness is tortilla chips with guacamole. I hate having them around because I’ll eat them. But then I’ll curse when we don’t have them because I want them. 😉
Smoldering Nights
Nike loves visiting the goth club Vamps—she can exchange her firefighter uniform for a slinky fantasy outfit. There she runs into the man she’d been admiring from afar at a rock climbing gym. He’s been the star of all her sexual fantasies, so is it any wonder they end up in his private room upstairs? Just when things begin to heat up, Michel’s enemies appear.
Only Michel isn’t an ordinary mortal. And someone from his past is on the hunt for vengeance. Michel and Nike are forced on the run and hide out in a coastal cottage in Maine. They can’t resist their attraction and spend the nights exploring each others’ bodies while trying to sort out how they feel about each other. Can they overcome their differences to be together? And how will they evade the predators who are chasing them?
Excerpt From: SMOLDERING NIGHTS
We squeezed through dancers to make our way to the darkly lit bar guarded by more stone gargoyles on each end. Just as we made it to the other side of the dance floor, I felt someone watching me.
It was him.
Oh my God. He was here.
In all the times I’d come here, dressed in all kinds of tight, miniscule outfits, never had I felt so exposed. I wished I wasn’t wearing a laced-up black leather dress that exposed a lot of cleavage and was tight enough to show a pimple on my ass.
He was sitting on one of the dark-red leather stools, facing the crowd. I looked up at him twice and caught his eye quickly both times before I looked away. Those ice-blue eyes were so penetrating. Each time I’d caught his eye at the rock climbing gym, I’d have the same reaction—I’d look away quickly.
Why didn’t I have the guts to say hi? He was just another guy. So why did he have that effect upon me? There were tons of hot guys with jacked bodies at the gym. This one—only this one—made me react this way, like a zombie unable to speak.
My palms were beginning to heat up and I was painfully aware of the sound of my heartbeat despite the reverberation of the pounding bass around us.
“I know you from the gym, don’t I?”
Oh God. He was speaking to me. Whenever I heard that sultry voice and the French accent, I trembled slightly inside. Was there anything sexier than a French accent? During my brief semester in the south of France my junior year of college, I was in a constant state of sexual arousal with sounds of the French language all around me. Especially when purred by hot French men.
I opened my mouth to answer, but nothing came out. Maya elbowed me.
“Ye-yes,” I stammered, trying to sound nonchalant. “I go to Rock Hard Climbing.” That’s where he worked. “I’ve-uh-seen you there.”
Maya said, “I’ll catch up with you later.”
He nodded at her before she moved down to an empty spot at the other end of the red and black marbled bar.
Damn it. How could she leave me alone with him? She must have figured out he was the guy I often drooled about, when she saw me clam up like an idiot.
I stared at Maya as she scanned the crowd on the dance floor, shooting invisible daggers at her back. I’m going to kill her later.
In all those months fantasizing about this guy, never did I think it would start as awkward as this. Perhaps he’d smile at me first or nod hello at the gym. Then one day he’d ask if I needed a hand with something. Maybe compliment me somehow. I would appear a bit aloof. Each time I went to the gym after that, things would progress nice and slow. We’d gradually talk a bit more until he finally asked me out.
He snapped me out of my thoughts when he said, “I thought I recognized you. You look—” he paused, “different.”
Never, NEVER, did I think our first conversation would be in some underground club with my breasts pushed up against a leather laced up bodice, accentuated by a brooch with a silhouetted skull.
* * *
About Lisa Carlisle
I’ve loved the vampire myth since I was in third grade and had a crush on Dracula (rivaled only by my eternal love for Darth Vader). When I was younger, I served in the Marine Corps and backpacked around Europe on my own, which has provided me enough settings and characters for a lifetime of writing. Now I live in the Boston area with my fantastic, supportive husband and two kids. I’m very happy to be a multi-published, award-winning author writing in different genres.
Disclaimer: I go bat-shit crazy before Halloween and start decorating my house on October 1st. You can never have enough gargoyles.
Author site: Lisacarlislebooks.com
Buy links~
Ellora’s Cave: http://www.jasminejade.com/p-10271-smoldering-nights.aspx
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Smoldering-Nights-Underground-Encounters-ebook/dp/B008VS645I/ref=pd_rhf_gw_p_t_4
Facebook: www.facebook.com/lisacarlisleauthor
Twitter: www.twitter.com/LisaCBooks
Blog: www.lisacarlislebooks.com
Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/lcbooks/
Thank you for bringing two awesome books to the Ranch, Lisa!
So what about ya’ll? Do you go bat-shit crazy over Halloween?
Dodadagohvi~
First born visitor
Osiyo~
This week in my spirit stories I’m sharing the miraculous birth of my first born.
I’ll start at her very beginning. In October 1983 I got pregnant. Hubby and I lived with my mother at the time in Washington state. Right off I had severe morning sickness. I still have no clue why they call it ‘morning’ sick because I was sick from early afternoon past bedtime every freaking day for three months!
When I was three months pregnant I had what my OB doctor called a partial separation of the placenta. “Thank goodness. I thought I was having a miscarriage!” was my response to his diagnoses of the bleeding. He informed me that that was the beginning of a miscarriage. Meaning that the placenta was trying to separate from my uterine wall. GULP. I was put on bed rest and told to take it easy the remainder of the pregnancy. All six more months. Not bed rest for the whole time, but careful.
My mother’s boyfriend was bouncer at a bar and when I was four months along he had called one night and asked us to come over with Mom to play pool. Shortly after we arrived a regular customer pulled a gun and shot Don, the bullet narrowly missing my mother. I’d seen a shiny ‘something-I-thought-was-a-knife’ and she’d slid from her booth seat across from me to stand. The bullet was in the wall behind where her chest had been, not two feet from me. Hubby had leaned back to get a better view and the same bullet missed his neck because he had. Don lived, with no organ damage (he had a healthy beer belly!).
Then that same month my gramma had to have by-pass surgery across the country from us, in N Carolina. Mom went. That was the last time I saw Mom alive. Before she returned hubby and I decided to return to Oklahoma. At five months along we made the trip by Greyhound. Things went fairly well once we got settled in. Until my sixth month when my mother, a fairly healthy woman we thought, (having returned home by then) passed away unexpectedly one night at 46 years old.
Now you see the pattern? Every month from the time I got pregnant something dramatic happened. Oddly- after her death not one solitary incident happened again. The remaining three months went by smoothly. Until the night I went into labor and the car broke down half way to the hospital, that is, but that’s another blog post.
It was a party atmosphere in the delivery room. I was munching ice and listening to the anesthesiologist tell jokes while the doctor did things I wasn’t aware of *down there* and hubby looked on. It occurred to me suddenly that I was having a baby! Maybe I should push like those prenatal classes taught? The doctor welcomed me ‘to the birthing party’ when I did and told me to keep it up. DUH! That girl did not want to be born. The nurse asked if we had names chosen. Now that in itself was odd to me. I knew without a doubt (and without an ultrasound to prove it) that I was having a girl. I can’t explain it- I just knew. As if someone had told me.
After twelve hours of labor the doctor armed with forceps delivered my leggy bundle of joy. We gave her the chosen names for each sex and the instant my daughter was born the nurse yelled- loud!- not that it was a girl, but that “It’s Calais!”
27 years later
The nurses did their stuff and, along with hubby, ran from the room to show off my baby. I didn’t get so much as a glimpse of a toe before they took her out to show the family! Not a hair. I was put in recovery, the baby in the nursery. Five hours later I woke up and asked to see my baby for the first time.
When the nurse brought Calais to me I realized I had already seen her, studied her face, knew every detail of her tiny face. Yet, I’d never laid eyes on her. How? Before I woke I had a ‘dream’. A visit- from my mother. She hadn’t spoken, simply smiled and showed pride in her face. She held my baby in her arms and showed her to me. Lots of thick black hair, tan complexion (from birth her Cherokee blood was evident, as you can see in this pic above, more than any of my three girls), long fingers… I knew she was mine by her appearance alone the instant I looked at her, without reading the name bands on her arm and foot.
I believe that’s why nothing else happened during my pregnancy after my mom died. She protected her first grandbaby from the other side in a way no one else could have. That was also the only time I saw my mother after her death. I’ve dreamed about my gramma, my dad- never of Mom. Not one dream. Just that ethereal hospital visit.
What about you? Do you get visits you can’t explain? Care to share?
Dodadagohvi~
Do you believe in Guardian Angels?
My youngest granddaughter-July, 2012
Osiyo~
Everyone seems to be blogging about spooks and goblins for Halloween so I thought, why not share a few of my own life experiences, too? So in true form, and I mean true ghost stories, I am starting (late, my usual style) with my mother’s Guardian Angel.
I had never heard Mom mention him before the day I had to put my beloved Chihuahua, Tiny, to sleep. I had given her a chicken bone not knowing it was deadly for her. I was seven, maybe eight, and we lived in Washington state. Mom let me stay home to take Tiny to the vet to have her suffering put to an end. Actually, I had insisted on going, tears and all. I don’t remember going to the vet, what happened while we were there, or the trip back home, oddly enough. But I attribute the forgetfulness to what happened the moment I walked back inside our house when we got home.
Mom went ahead of me, unlocked, entered, and went across the living room to the kitchen. I followed slowly, tearfully. I remember not wanting to go in without my Tiny there to greet me with her little ball of enthusiasm so I lagged behind a few feet. I pushed the front door open and crossed the three foot foyer and was about to step onto the carpet when I saw ‘him’ for the first time. On each side of the door was a coat closet. From the one on the left I saw, as plain as the sunny day outside, a shadow cross in front of me. I remember looking around, expecting someone to be at the door. Nothing. I stood scared out of my wits as ‘he’ crossed the living room and I noticed that even out of the sunlight, I could still see his shadowy dark form. He was tall, wore a trench coat and a Fedora (hat). I couldn’t move. He went right into the kitchen with my mom and I just stood there, terrified. A minute later she came to the doorway and told me to come in and close the door. I was so afraid I ran to her and held on, shaking.
I want to stop here for a moment and say that ghostly apparitions are not new to me, to the women in my family. But I had never been so close to one, or in broad daylight before this day.
Mom asked what was wrong and I leaned around her to peer into the kitchen. He was gone! I get chills just writing this. I told my mom what I’d seen and… she laughed! Laughed. Gently. Not at me, but at what had me so shook up.
She sat down and told me about ‘him’. She said that early in her life he had come to her and she was used to his presence by this time. WHO? “He’s my guardian angel. Whenever something upsetting happens, he comes to comfort me.” Well, Tiny was my dog, I was the one who needed comfort. So why was he there? She told me he was looking out for me because he felt my pain! Really? He was looking out for me? That in itself disturbed me. I didn’t want a ghost haunting me! That was not comforting!
Mom explained that he wouldn’t hurt me. He just wanted me to know I was not alone. She also told me I was the only other person he’d ever revealed himself to. Wow.
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It was the first and last time I saw him until I turned eighteen. One day I was upset about something…probably boy trouble. I sat sulking in Mom’s living room (she and my dad had divorced in the years between) and I looked up and there he was, crossing the living room from the direction of my bed room to the front door. Then he was gone again. I don’t remember seeing him since that time. But I know he’s still out there watching.
How can I be sure? My middle daughter was twelve when she told me about a man outside her friend’s bedroom window one night where she was spending the night. I’m an over protective mother but when she described him to me, I relaxed.
That was the first time I repeated my mother’s guardian angel story.
Ever heard of a Puberty ghost? Ever been attacked by a white dog-like creature on a dark back road? Have you…? I have. Tune in next week for another true spook story from my real life.
Dodadagohvi~
I write contemporary and paranormal romance, with sensuality as the key ingredient and spice for kick.
Pen of The Dreamer 