Karen McCullough

Six sentences from my Gothic novella, Guardian of the Grimoire:

1.. The gargoyle sitting over the library’s main entrance twitched its wings and leaned down to look at her as she rushed up the stairs.

2.That evening, as Jess returned from her dinner break, Carrie looked up from the computer at the main desk and said, “Your boyfriend just came in.”

3 & 4. Other than the visits from the nursing homes and retirement communities, five adults rarely came in at the same time, clearly together. Worse yet, one of them was the Reverend Damon Ryder, the man who’d probably left the sign on the door that morning.

5. “That guy’s trouble,” Carrie said, looking after the Reverend, “But your boyfriend might be, too.”

6. “This isn’t going to be easy to explain, and it’s probably going to be harder for you to believe,” Gabe said.

While we’ve been busy with the Snarkology blog, I’ve been busy visiting other blogs and doing guest posts.

At Leslie Sartor’s Indie Adventure Blog, I did an interview about my own publishing story:
http://www.anindieadventure.blogspot.com/2013/10/meet-karen-mccullough-winner-of-eppie.html

She’s also posted an excerpt from my independently published novel, The Wizard’s Shield:
http://www.anindieadventure.blogspot.com/2013/10/excerpt-from-wizards-shield-by-karen.html

Then I was part of Brynna Curry’s 31 Days of Halloween Bash, talking about my Top Ten All-Time Ghost Stories:
http://www.brynnacurry.com/2013/10/my-top-ten-ghost-stories-karen.html?showComment=1382886391072#c6114670685893959253

And finally, on October 31st, I was on the Romance Books 4 Us blog, talking about the Five Things I Learned About Writing Novels from Barbara Mertz:
http://romancebooks4us.blogspot.com/2013/10/guest-blog-karen-mccullough-five-things.html

Please be sure to read to the end of this post for information on participating in the blog hop and how to be eligible for prizes!

I like to say that I was Gothic before Gothic was fashionable. I was a teenager in the 1960s and incredibly intrigued both by all things paranormal and by all things romantic. At that time the only romance novels readily available happened to fit my desires perfectly…the Gothic romances.  I slurped up every one of them I could get my hands on.

So when I began writing some years later, it was pretty natural that the novels I wrote had a definitely Gothic flavor, even though Gothic romances had gone out of fashion. If you called them Romantic Suspense, that worked. Now that vampires and werewolves are all the rage, a variety of Gothic is back in fashion, though it’s more often called either paranormal romance or urban fantasy.

Not surprisingly, given my interest in Gothic stories, Halloween is one of my favorite holidays. I love the decorations, the change in the weather, the kids in costumes, the goodies, the eerie stories… All of it. And I love writing stories with Gothic Halloween-type themes. There are just so many opportunities!

And speaking of that, I’ve just released a new one!

Guardian of the Grimoire

Librarian Jess O’Rourke already has  her hands full with her father’s declining and health and the under-staffed,  under-funded library she runs. A new preacher in town waging war on her books is  just an annoyance at first, but an attractive mysterious stranger warns her  that there’s more behind the reverend’s campaign than she can guess. The new  preacher is a human possessed by a demon and he’s searching for an old grimoire  that’s part of an uncatalogued collection of books stored in the library’s  basement.

Gabriel Sutton has been the guardian  of the book for a long time, a very long time, he claims, since that has been  his penance for crimes he committed as a soldier during the Civil War. He  convinces Jess that she needs to find the grimoire and use it to return the  demon to where he belongs.

Their time gets short when the  reverend realizes she’s searching for the book and resorts to desperate  measures to either retrieve or destroy it.

You can read the first chapter here.

Buy Links:  Amazon    Nook    Smashwords

Contests:

1. Comment here to be entered in a drawing for a copy of the ebook of your choice from any of the books I have available!

2. Go to the Rafflecopter for the Hop and enter to be eligible for the grand prize, a $60 Amazon gift card!

Here’s the list of participating blogs:

I’m guest blogging at Lisa Chalmer’s Blog on the subject of Paranormal – It’s More Than Bloodsuckers and Shapeshifters.

Please stop by!

http://lisa-chalmers.com/guest-blogger-karen-mccullough/

Can I suggest my short story Unmasking?  It’s a quick, fun read, set at a Halloween party.

Here’s a quick snippet from the story:

Trace turned and realized the ghost was right behind her.

“That… We’ll see who’s conning who,” the ghost muttered.

“He wasn’t much help locating the guy,” Trace said.

“You weren’t exactly smooth in your approach there either, sweetie,” the ghost answered. “‘Are you here by yourself?'” He rolled his eyes. “Ever heard of subtlety?”

“Same answer as small talk. Heard of, can’t do.”

“Practice, practice,” the ghost suggested.

“Just makes me tired.”

“All right, we’ll go for a female this time. There’s your next target.” He pointed to a weedy-looking, gray-haired matron in an elaborate floor-length dress that could have qualified her as any number of fantasy characters.

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And if you’re looking for more Halloween reads, here’s a list of intriguing stories for the season:

http://www.romancejunkies.com/halloweenreads/Halloweenreads.html