E.J. Stevens's Blog, page 31

Congratulations Thais P. winner of the Wolves' Bane Giveaway at From the Shadows!  Thais will receive an ebook copy of Wolves' Bane by Angela Addams.

Thank you to all who entered!

*Giveaway winner selected using Random.org*

Come on boys and ghouls!  It's time to hop on Route 666 for a spooktacular Paranormal Road Trip.

This week's stop is Rapid City, the setting of KAREN MEMORY, and our special guide is Elizabeth Bear.

Keep reading for a chance to win Karen Memory by Elizabeth Bear!

Elizabeth is the author of the Eternal Sky series, Jenny Casey series, Promethean age series, Jacob's Ladder series, New Amsterdam series, The Edda of Burdens series, The Stratford Man series, Bone and Jewel Creatures series, and the new steampunk novel Karen Memory.

Elizabeth's Top 5 Spooky Places in Rapid City
I might be cheating a bit here, because Rapid City is a fictional place, and all its spook is spook I made up. But the world of Karen Memory is one where, in the very least, the so-called Creatures of the Lumberwoods (the North American legendary fauna of tall tales and native theology) do exist—so it’s conceivable that Karen could hike up into the hills surrounding Rapid City and have a close encounter with a hodag or a splintercat. (Watch out for the hoopsnakes, Karen. I hear they have a nasty bite!)

So we’ll start with that, in fact.

#5 Spooky place in Rapid City… is actually a short day trip outside of town. It’s the primeval temperate rain forests of the Pacific Northwest: vast, towering, and dripping with moss. Their emerald canopies mean deep, moist shade underneath. Dense undergrowth could hide just about anything from wildcats to sasquatch, and you’ll never know what might be peering at you from within the tangled canes of the nearest blackberry bramble.

#4 Spooky place in Rapid City… the dockyards. Massive air and steamships come and go from this Gold Rush town, relentlessly as the tide. They haul out hopeful men and doomed dogs north to Anchorage for the gold trail; hardwood timber for furniture, flooring, framing houses; machinery and raw materials for foreign need. They haul in silk, spices, and indentured Chinese and Indian immigrants—little better than slaves under the law—to work under brutal conditions in mines, on the railroads, and in the prostitute’s cribs. Towering armatures controlled by stevedores clank and hiss, hauling enormous shipping crates into and out of holds. Men and women—ragged, down on their luck—scavenge or whore.

#3 Spooky place in Rapid City… Bayside Market. You wouldn’t think so to look at the bustling and labyrinthine market it shelters, but this immense shed up on piles at the waterfront—it resembles an airship hangar or a drydock, it’s so vast—is said to be haunted. Eager tourists can wander between the stalls, attracted by heaps of golden melons or bright red onions or glistening, jeweled berries (depending on the season); rummaging around piles of baskets made in India and through stacks of willowware bowls imported from China; stroking silk and fawning over ready-made petticoats; nibbling sweet smoked salmon seasoned with maple syrup—and never know that at night, when the wind creaks the slatted walls and the hissing newfangled electric lights go dark, it’s said that a ghostly, translucent glow can be seen gliding between those same stalls. Those who have witnessed this say they’ve glimpsed the outline of a young woman, always an aisle or two away, slender and obviously distraught, running through the empty paths.

There are conflicting stories about her background—a suicide; a murder victim; a girl who was distracted by grief, slipped down the granite steps outside, and died. (It’s also possible that she’s something cooked up by the Rapid City Board of Tourism: a nice genteel haunting is good for business, after all!)

#2 Spooky place in Rapid City… this doesn’t appear in the book, but I’m contemplating a short story about the Rain City Riverside, a notorious local hotel. The Riverside occupies a good location close to the opera house (Rapid City’s pride, joy, and cultural center). The hotel is Rapid City’s only four-star establishment: fine dining, private baths, and at least one of the steakhouse employees is actually French! (Sadly, it’s the maitre d’hotel, rather than the chef, but on the frontier you have to take what you can get. Nobody’s ever seen a ghost in the Riverside—or if they have, hotel management paid them off handsomely enough that they’ve kept it to themselves.

But while the Riverside caters to mining and logging executives, it’s also popular with those lucky gold miners who come back to civilization with a bag of dust or a few nuggets in their pocket, ready to spend.

The legend is that Old Boston, the owner of the Griswold Claim in Alaska, spent a little too much time out in the wilderness—and by the time when he was finally ready to ship back to Rapid City, he’d gone more than a little mad. Whether the violent deaths of himself, three other miners, one bartender, and a saloon girl in the hotel bar were performed by his own hand (as the hotel still insists) or by the hand of an enraged tommyknocker (a kind of mine gremlin) he’d captured in Alaska and smuggled home in a steamer trunk with the plan of selling it to a traveling exhibition (as the lone survivor of the massacre, the maimed and traumatized piano player, maintans) is not known one way or the other.

If there was a tommyknocker, it was never captured, and no one knows what became of it. Which might be why the hotel denies its existence.

They do have extensive wine cellars, however.

#1 Spooky place in Rapid City… the Underground. As with Boston, Seattle, and a number of other coastal towns, Rapid City has had an ongoing problem with flooding and high tides. So Rapid City adopted the same solution as these other municipalities! Which is a pretty lousy solution while it’s under construction, honestly—it involved building retaining walls along the edges of the streets—leaving sidewalk pathways between street and building so doors are still accessible—and then raising the street with fill to a new ground level. This has the side effect, as you might guess, of providing a terrible, terrifying, dark, narrow well around the ground floor of every single affected building, which you must enter in order to get in or out of those buildings—at least until the streets are finished, and the sidewalks are closed over, and new entrances are cut at the new ground level.

Of course, then those wells remain down there, even darker now with a sidewalk on top! And the wells aren’t connected to one another, so in order to get from one building to the next, you have to scramble up and down ladders. About as much fun in hoop skirts and bustles as a pre-novocaine root canal. And the best side effect is that the wells become havens for all the sorts of things you might not wish to do in a public street—from pissing and furtive sex to muggings, assault, and the disposal of bodies.

Urban planning at its finest, and very, very spooky indeed.


Thank you Elizabeth for giving us such a haunting tour of Rapid City!  
To learn more about Elizabeth Bear and her books, please visit her website.  You can add Karen Memory here on Goodreads.

We are also having a fantastic book giveaway to celebrate the release of KAREN MEMORY by Elizabeth Bear.

Karen Memory Book Giveaway
We are giving away a hardcover copy of Karen Memory to one lucky winner!

To enter, please leave a comment on this post, and include your email address so we may contact you if you win.   This giveaway is open to US and Canada only.  Giveaway ends March 3, 2015 midnight EST.


Karen Memory by Elizabeth Bear.

“You ain’t gonna like what I have to tell you, but I'm gonna tell you anyway. See, my name is Karen Memery, like memory only spelt with an e, and I'm one of the girls what works in the Hôtel Mon Cherie on Amity Street. Hôtel has a little hat over the o like that. It's French, so Beatrice tells me.”

Set in the late 19th century—when the city we now call Seattle Underground was the whole town (and still on the surface), when airships plied the trade routes, would-be gold miners were heading to the gold fields of Alaska, and steam-powered mechanicals stalked the waterfront, Karen is a young woman on her own, is making the best of her orphaned state by working in Madame Damnable’s high-quality bordello. Through Karen’s eyes we get to know the other girls in the house—a resourceful group—and the poor and the powerful of the town. Trouble erupts one night when a badly injured girl arrives at their door, beggin sanctuary, followed by the man who holds her indenture, and who has a machine that can take over anyone’s mind and control their actions.  And as if that wasn’t bad enough, the next night brings a body dumped in their rubbish heap—a streetwalker who has been brutally murdered.

Bear brings alive this Jack-the-Ripper yarn of the old west with a light touch in Karen’s own memorable voice, and a mesmerizing evocation of classic steam-powered science.

Release Date: February 3, 2015
Genre: Fantasy, Steampunk


What did you think of Elizabeth's picks for spooky places?  Does Rapid City sound like a place you'd like to visit?
Last week on Paranormal Road Trip we visited Louisville with Shiloh Walker .  Next week we'll be traveling to Australia with Cassandra Page.

Join us for another spine-tingling Paranormal Road Trip...
if you dare!

Congratulations Maria B. winner of the Romance is in the Air Giveaway at From the Shadows!  Maria will receive a complete ebook set of the Spirit Guide young adult paranormal romance series.


Thank you to all who entered.  I hope you had a fantastic Valentine's Day!

**Giveaway winner randomly selected using Rafflecopter**

February is for Paranormal Romance...and we have an incredible month of special author features for you.  Today we have a Valentine's Day themed "this or that" Q+A with Felicity Heaton and Owen Nightingale. 

Keep reading for a chance to win a $10 Amazon Gift Card!

Q+A with Felicity Heaton and Owen Nightingale
I’m standing in the living room of the illustrious hunter, Owen Nightingale, waiting for the man himself to make an appearance. When I arranged this little fun interview, he told me to use the key above the door to let myself into his very elegant Georgian townhouse in the centre of London and that he would meet me here later.

Well, later has come and gone and I think I’ve snooped at every square inch of the pale blue drawing room, messed around with every weapon scattered across the large oak table taking up a good amount of space on the left of the expansive room, and even thumbed through a few of the books that are stacked tightly in the cases that line the right hand side of the room between the tall sash windows. I’ve stared out of those windows for more minutes than I can count, losing track of time as I stared at the quiet residential street below, waiting for the familiar black car to roll up to the space outside Owen’s rather posh house.

Maybe he’s forgotten me.

Just as I debate leaving the U of three black leather couches near the fireplace, I hear a door open and slam shut again far below me. I really hope that’s Owen and not someone who has just let themselves in to burgle the joint. He didn’t tell me to lock the door after myself, and it is the small hours of a Saturday morning.

Heavy footsteps sound on the wooden stairs and even though I’m prepared for it, I still jump when the door bursts open, whirling to face it as my hand leaps to my chest.

Pale green eyes stare across the room at me and then dark slashes of eyebrows drop low above them, narrowing them into a frown that quickly melts into a guilty look.

“Heck, it was today, wasn’t it?” Owen grimaces, and the guy looks just as handsome when he’s cringing as he does when he’s flashing me a killer smile a second later and scrubbing the back of his neck, tousling his dark hair. “Sorry. I got caught up in a little business.”

He seems to be wearing the evidence of that ‘little business’ on his face. I point a shaky finger at the blood splattered up his neck and over the strong straight line of his jaw. His smile fades and he touches his face, brings his hand away so he can look at it, and grimaces again.

He stalks across the room, long lean black-jeans-clad legs eating up the stretch of wooden floor between us. He rounds the couch near me, close enough I can feel his heat and smell his aftershave, and bends to swipe a tissue from the box on the coffee table nestled between the couches. I watch in silence as he wipes the blood off, and then nod and smile when he looks at me, green eyes asking whether he got it all.

Owen heaves a sigh and collapses onto the couch that faces the fireplace, his black dress shirt and jeans making him blend into it in the low light coming from the fire. He stretches his arms out along the back of the couch and kicks his boots up onto the coffee table, a weary look on his handsome face.

“I can come back another time if this is a bad one,” I say and he flashes that killer smile again.

“Nah, we’re good. I should’ve remembered. Cait reminded me enough times. She posted notes all over the damned house.” He shoves his fingers through his dark hair, tugging it back. “And yet I still forgot.”

I shrug this time and sit on the couch to his left. “It won’t take long, just a simple list of this and that questions I need you to answer, and then you can get some sleep.”

He looks tired, and I really shouldn’t have mentioned him going to sleep, because now I’m thinking about him stripping off and crawling into bed.

I clear my throat and rush out the first question. “Chocolates or flowers?”

Owen tips his head back and my eyes disobey my command not to drop to his throat and his delicious Adam’s apple visible through the day’s worth of stubble.

“Ah, flowers.” He drops his chin and smiles at me, a flicker of warmth in his eyes as he realises that the questions are all about romance. “This’ll sound odd, but Cait can’t eat chocolate… it’s a cat thing… being a hellcat shifter is apparently very much like being a regular cat. No chocolate. She loves flowers though. She can’t get enough of them. You don’t see many flowers in Hell where she’s from.”

“It makes sense, although I’ve never really thought about whether cat shifters suffer the same problems as their animal brethren.” It’s definitely something worth noting for all those cat shifter lovers out there. If you ever bag yourself a hot cat shifter, don’t give them chocolate. “I think I know the answer to the next one. Going out or staying in?”

Owen’s smile widens. “Out. She loves it when I take her out. As I said, she doesn’t leave Hell much, but now we’re together, she’s regularly here getting in my way on my jobs.”

Something in his smile says he doesn’t mind the sassy shifter crashing his missions and lending a paw.

“Fancy restaurant or fast food joint?” This I definitely want to know the answer to as I can’t imagine Owen in a fast food joint. He doesn’t look the sort.

“That edge to your cheeky smile says you know I don’t do fast food. I have to keep in shape.” Owen pats his stomach and I try my best not to look down and imagine what he looks like under that black shirt. “That isn’t to say I haven’t taken Cait to a burger joint. She wants to try every single item of food she can, in as little time as possible. Sometimes, I don’t think she understands the concept of immortality. She has centuries to try everything.”

“Okay, so… say you do go out on a date, or maybe have a quiet night in, and you were going to watch a movie. What would it be… an action flick or romantic comedy?”

Owen cringes. “I can’t watch romance with Cait. She gets this gooey look in her eyes and a goofy smile. She almost kicked my arse the first time we watched a romance together and I poked fun at her because she was so absorbed in it and looking like a teen girl with a crush.”

“Definitely action then?” I have to sympathise with Cait because I have been known to sport a silly smile and moon eyes after a good romantic flick. Haven’t we all, Ladies?

Owen nods very enthusiastically.

“Well, since you two love going out, do you take her to a nightclub or a ballroom?” I definitely know the answer to this one.

Owen laughs, and the sound is magical, captivating me as he smiles at me. “Nightclub. She loves Underworld almost as much as I do and we’re regularly there. You have to see Cait dance. Heck, she loves to dance… and it’s mesmerising. Although… I do want to kill the guys who try to dance with her.”

“Why don’t you dance with her?”

He shrugs. “I do, sometimes… but I’m really not a dancer… and when Cait dances I tend to just end up standing there in front of her, staring at her as she dances at me. She’s too damned hot and sexy when she dances. I can’t concentrate.”

“She definitely cast a spell on you at the beginning of your romance by dancing in Underworld right in front of you. I can understand why she affects you so badly.” The opening moment in their romance, Bitten by a Hellcat, is set in that nightclub and Owen was thoroughly captivated by his bad little kitty.

A touch of colour darkens his cheeks and he glances away from me and shrugs. I smile. It’s nice seeing a guy in love.

“Cocktails or coffee? I’m guessing cocktails, many of them… or maybe a shot of Hellfire?” I grin when he scowls at me, refusing to apologise for my coded reference to a moment when he first met Cait.

It softens into another killer smile. “Yeah, cocktails. She loves them. All the bright colours. Cavanaugh makes a mean Mai Tai and Blue Lagoon. I tend to stick with the vodka.”
Understandable. I can’t imagine Owen Nightingale sipping a colourful cocktail. He might lose a little of the respect of the demons, shifters and fae who frequent Underworld. They would definitely be less afraid of him anyway.

I look down at my list of questions. “That’s all of them. Thanks for giving us this little insight into the romance habits of Owen Nightingale, infamous shifter hunter extraordinaire.”

“Ha ha… you’re so not funny. Want me to kick you out?” The tired edge to his jade eyes says he’s half serious.

I stand and brush down my jeans. “Nah. I can let myself out. You get some shuteye. Something tells me it isn’t just the jobs wearing you out…”

The blush stains his cheeks again and he gives me his best glare. I shrug it off. It’s fun embarrassing grown men about affairs of the heart. I think I’ll have to do it more often, but maybe I’ll stick to the heroes in my books who won’t be inclined to tear out my jugular for bringing up their sex lives.

I give Owen a little wave. “Catch you later.”

He lifts his hand in a salute as he yawns and flops over to lay on the couch. I let myself out, quietly closing the door, sure that I’ll be seeing more of Owen and Cait soon.

I hope you enjoyed my little interview with Owen, the hero of Bitten by a Hellcat, the next book in the Eternal Mates series. If you want to know more about Owen, you can take a peek at his book, which is out on February 17th, at my website.

How do you celebrate Valentine's Day?
Thank you Felicity for joining us here today at From the Shadows!

Felicity Heaton is the author of the ETERNAL MATES paranormal romance series.  BITTEN BY A HELLCAT hits shelves February 17th!


To learn more about paranormal romance author Felicity Heaton, please visit her website, and don't miss our in depth Q+A with Felicity Heaton earlier this month here at From the Shadows.

February is for Paranormal Romance Giveaway
All month long we are posting special features from our favorite paranormal romance authors, and we are topping this off with a chance to win a $10 Amazon Gift Card!


To enter, please use the Rafflecopter form below.  This giveaway is INTERNATIONAL.  If you cannot accept an electronic Amazon Gift Card, you may choose one paranormal romance book from The Book Depository (value up to $10.00).  Giveaway ends February 28, 2015 midnight EST.

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Happy Valentine's Day!

I am very excited to show off the cover to BIRTHRIGHT, the fourth full-length novel in the Ivy Granger urban fantasy series!

This cover does a fantastic job of displaying Ivy Granger's growing proficiency with knives. It also gives us a sneak peek at the horrors that Ivy must face in Tech Duinn, on her journey to Faerie.

What do you think of the cover?

Birthright (Ivy Granger #4) by E.J. Stevens

Being a faerie princess isn't all it's cracked up to be...

Ivy must go to Faerie, but the gateway to the Wisp Court is through Tech Duinn, the house of Donn—Celtic god of the dead. Just her luck.

Unable to share her secret with Jinx, and with Jenna called away on Hunters' Guild business, Ivy must rely on Ceff and Torn to lead her to Death's door, literally, and back again. As if that wasn't dangerous enough, there's no saying what horrors lay in store within the Faerie realm. Too bad the Wisp Court is the one lead Ivy has in the search for her father—and possible salvation.

Maybe hiding away and dodging sidhe assassins isn't so bad after all...

Release Date: July 14, 2015
Genre: Paranormal, Urban Fantasy
Add to Goodreads.

About the Ivy Granger Series
The Ivy Granger series is an urban fantasy series written by E.J. Stevens. The series is told in the first-person point of view of Ivy Granger, a psychic detective with ties to the paranormal underworld of Harborsmouth--ties that ensnare Ivy and her friend Jinx in the Machiavellian schemes of the city's teeming population of bloodsucking vampires and psychotic faeries.

Books in this series: Shadow Sight (Ivy Granger #1), Blood and Mistletoe (Ivy Granger #1.5), Ghost Light (Ivy Granger #2), Club Nexus (Ivy Granger #2.5), Burning Bright (Ivy Granger #3).

About the Author
E.J. Stevens is the author of the Spirit Guide young adult series and the bestselling Ivy Granger urban fantasy series. When E.J. isn't at her writing desk she enjoys dancing along seaside cliffs, singing in graveyards, and sleeping in faerie circles. E.J. currently resides in a magical forest on the coast of Maine where she finds daily inspiration for her writing.

Connect with E.J. on Twitter, Goodreads, Amazon, Facebook, and on her Blog.

We are celebrating this cover reveal with a fantastic Birthright giveaway...

Cover Reveal Giveaway
We are giving away a $10 Amazon Gift Card, Birthright mini-poster, and signed Birthright postcard to one lucky winner. 

To enter, please use the Rafflecopter form below.  This giveaway is INTERNATIONAL.  Giveaway begins Friday, February 13th and ends Friday, February 27th.

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Happy Friday the 13th!

Please welcome today's guest author Kate Avery Ellison!  Kate is the author of the Frost Chronicles and the Secrets of Itlantis series, including OF SEA AND STONE.

Keep reading for a chance to win a $25 Amazon Gift Card!

Q+A with Kate Avery Ellison
EJ:  When did you begin writing?

Kate:  I began writing when I was about eight, I think. I wrote “books” that had chapters and a beginning, middle, and end, although they were only a few pages long. I was a big Nancy Drew fan so I started out writing a mystery series that had a total of fourteen books in it, I believe.

I began writing seriously with the intent to publish when I was about seventeen. Health problems got in the way for a while, but I published my first book around age 24.

EJ:  What brought you to the paranormal genre?

Kate:  I’ve always loved the fantastic. I think sci fi and fantasy make it easier to explore difficult concepts in an abstract and less threatening way, so they’re good for writing on topics relating to justice and change, and for pushing the boundaries of thinking and understanding. And hey, dragons and magic are a lot of fun. Also, I just like to let my imagination run wild. I like to look at the world and think, what if ___ were different? How would we live? How would we think?

EJ:  If you could be any paranormal or have any one supernatural talent, what would it be?

Kate:  So if I could have one supernatural talent, it would be the ability to always give the perfect gift, just exactly what the person wants to receive and the most appropriate and touching/meaningful/useful thing.

Why?  I think it would make birthdays and holidays a lot easier, and I like to make people happy. Also I don’t think it’s very easily exploitable by, say, a government or terrorist organization, so it wouldn’t make my life complicated or dangerous.

EJ:  Tell us why readers will enjoy your new release.

Kate:  Well, my two newest releases are A Gift of Poison and the 4th book in the Secrets of Itlantis series, For Wreck and Remnant. A Gift of Poison is one of my favorite books I’ve ever written, and readers who like dragons, magic, sword fights, tales of vindication/cleverness/proving oneself against huge odds, or steampunk fantasy should really enjoy it. The main character Briand is really scrappy and she has a lot of grit. She’s “enlisted” (basically kidnapped) into helping a secret group of fighters who serve the true prince as they use dragons in the war against a psychopathic ruler. I have another book coming out in the same world very soon called The Season of Lightning.

Readers who are enjoying the Secrets of Itlantis series should like For Wreck and Remnant because it has some nice romantic elements between a certain two characters, as well as a LOT of answers about some of the biggest mysteries of the series.

EJ:  If your book(s) were being made into a movie, who would you cast for the leading roles? Why?

Kate:
Aemi – Jessica Szohr, as she can do that sharp, kind of wild look that really makes me think of Aemi, and the actress has a diverse ancestry like Aemi.
Nol – Jake Abel. I think he has the right “handsome but snobby/broody look” Nol has going on for the first part of the book.
Kit – Blake Lee, only with really curly thick hair and more of a tan than normal.
Lyssia – Jena Malone. She’d make a good Lyssia.
Tob – Thomas Brodie-Sangster. He was so loveable in The Maze Runner, and Tob is a very loveable character to me. He has a good energy to him too.
Merelus – Liam Neeson, he has the right gravitas mixed with kindness.
Annah – Nicole Galicia is probably way too young to play Senator Annah, but I like her.



Of Sea and Stone (Secrets of Itlantis #1) by Kate Avery Ellison

All her life, clever Aemi has been a slave in the Village of the Rocks, a place where the sea and sky meet. She’s heard the stories about the fabled People of the Sea, a people who possess unimaginable technology who live below the waves in the dark, secret places of the ocean. But she never dreamed those stories were true.

When a ship emerges from the ocean and men burn her village, Aemi is captured, and enslaved below the waves in Itlantis, a world filled with ancient cities of glass and metal, floating gardens, and wondrous devices that seem to work magic. To make matters worse, her village nemesis, the stuck-up mayor’s son Nol, was captured with her, and they are made servants in the same household beneath the sea.

Desperate to be free, Aemi plots her escape, even going so far as to work with Nol. But the sea holds more secrets than she realizes, and escape might not be as simple as leaving...

Release Date: February 2, 2014
Genre: Fantasy, Young Adult
Add to Goodreads.

Thank you Kate for joining us here today at From the Shadows!

You can learn more about Kate Avery Ellison and her books by visiting her website.

Kate Avery Ellison Book Giveaway
The author is giving away print copies of stand-alone novel A Gift of Poison (US/CA) and a $25 Amazon Gift Card (INTL)!

To enter, use the Rafflecopter form below.   This giveaway is part of the Of Sea and Stone Book Tour, so giveaway winners will be selected by the author or publisher.  Giveaway ends February 19, 2015.

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Good luck!

Congratulations Carmel B. winner of our Paranormal Road Trip Giveaway here at From the Shadows!  Carmel will receive a $10 Amazon Gift Card.


Thank you to all who entered!

Congratulations bn100 winner of the Eternal Mates Giveaway at From the Shadows!  BN100 will receive an Eternal Mates ebook, winner's choice of Kissed by a Dark Prince, Claimed by a Demon King, or Tempted by a Rogue Prince.



Thank you to all who entered!

*Giveaway winner selected using Random.org*

Come on boys and ghouls!  It's time to hop on Route 666 for a spooktacular Paranormal Road Trip.

This week's stop is Louisville, Kentucky and our special guide is Shiloh Walker.  Shiloh is the author of the Ash Trilogy, the Rafferty series, The Hunters series, the Grimm's Circle series, and the FBI Psychics series, as well the Colbana Files urban fantasy series as J.C. Daniels.

Shiloh's Top Spooky Places in Louisville
So you want to check out the things that go bump in the night?  Head on down to Louisville, KY.

When you get there, maybe talk to my mom’s side of the family .  Almost all of them have seen a ghost…or three.  If he was still alive, you could talk to my grandfather—he was actually my mom’s stepdad.  Although, honestly, I doubt he’d tell you this story.

He was a cool guy.  He had this big eagle tattooed on his chest.  Apparently, he was in the navy and got…um, well.  One morning, he woke up and there it was.  ‘Nuff said, right?  He made the most amazing dollhouses.

He’s been gone a long time and my memories of him are mostly just impressions.  But I’ve got stories.

One in particular.

Let me tell about this night…

My family all came from Louisville.  Both sides have been in this general area for a while—my dad’s side has actually been in Kentucky going back generations.  My parents had been dating for a little while and on this particular night, they came home to find my grandmother sitting outside with R*.  had been married to my grandmother for only a short while.  He was my grandmother’s second husband.

It was kind of odd for both of them to be sitting on the porch and my folks looked at them and asked, “What are you all doing out here?”

R looked at Grandma and then at my dad.  “Son, would you mind going into the house, down to our bedroom and turning off the lamp?”

Dad probably thought this was weird.  But he did it and came back out.

“It’s off.”

R. asked him to go and check, and then said, “Would you unplug it? Just to be sure?”

So, Dad does just that. Except it was already unplugged.  Oh. And the light was on.  You can imagine he came scooting out of that house really fast.

Turns out, R. had been napping while Grandma was on the bed reading.  He woke up to see the light coming on, then going off.  He asked Grandma to stop playing with the light.  She said, “It’s not me.  Just lay there.  It will do it again.”

It did. He got up. Unplugged it.  Laid down.  The light came on. Went off.   He jumped off the bed and moved.  Grandma was right after him.

I never did ask what happened to the lamp.

Nor can I tell you where this house is…my mom probably still remembers, but I’m not about to risk setting some family up to be harassed. ;)

But if you’re looking for some spooky thrills, what about the Seelbach ?  While you’re probably not going to find much about it at the hotel’s official website, the hotel has had more than just presidents and famous writers within its walls.  Back in the thirties, a woman was found dead in the elevator shaft and ever since, people report seeing a woman in a long blue gown walking toward the elevators on the eighth floor. She’s called, of course, The Lady in Blue.  Guests have complaints of freezing rooms.  There have been reports of seeing people in reflections…then you turn and nobody is there.

Another famously haunted hotel would be the Brown .  The original owner, James Graham Brown, is said to have really loved life.  He loved his life and he loved his hotel.  According to Halloween Louisville, he loved these things so much, he just never left.  People complain all the time about the footsteps up on the 15th floor.  But the only thing on the 15th floor is storage.  Weird, yeah?

But the real jewel of the Louisville haunts has got to be Waverly .  This place is amazing and I can tell you this from experience—I’ve been there.  From the towering, crumbling façade to the eerie, echoing silence of the body chute, there is no other place on earth like Waverly Hills Sanatorium.  Thousands of people died here of TB.  There were suicides as well—I believe one of the ghosts supposedly haunting the place is a nurse who killed herself.

Because they didn’t want moral to suffer from the high death rate, a tunnel was built to take bodies away from the hospital.  It’s been called the death tunnel, the body chute, etc.  The tunnel was used to transfer bodies from the hospital down the hill—no, people were just sent rolling down the chute.

And yes…it’s still there.

So, who is up for a road trip?

Thank you Shiloh for giving us such a haunting tour of Louisville!  
To learn more about Shiloh Walker and her books, please visit her website, and don't miss our Q+A with Shiloh Walker here at From the Shadows.  You can add her books here on Goodreads.


Have you visited Louisville, Kentucky?  Ever experience anything of the supernatural kind in and around Louisville?
What did you think of Shiloh's picks for spooky places?
Last week on Paranormal Road Trip we visited Banff, Alberta with Nancy Baker. In case you missed it, we're also having a Paranormal Road Trip Giveaway.  (ending soon)  Win an Amazon Gift Card!

Next week we'll be traveling to Rapid City with Elizabeth Bear.

Join us for another spine-tingling Paranormal Road Trip...
if you dare!

Come on boys and ghouls!  It's time to hop on Route 666 for a spooktacular Paranormal Road Trip.

This week's stop is New York City and our special guide is Susan Wright.  Susan is the author of the Allay urban fantasy series.

Susan's Top 5 Spooky Places in NYC
New York is a city that has it all, including lots of creepy places. That’s why I had a hard time narrowing down my list to just 5!

I’ve picked out the truly weird stuff, the places that stand out even in the Big Apple. There are also plenty of more mildly creepy places like the Chelsea Hotel, which has a reputation for ghosts, or the underground remains of the Lovelace Tavern outside 85 Broad Street, a popular party spot in the early 1800s until Lower Manhattan burned.

These five are my all-time favorite spooky spots in New York City:

Roosevelt Island TB Hospital (map)

Everyone can see the huge ruins of the TB Hospital because they’re exposed on the southern tip of Roosevelt Island. Among the locals, it’s the most discussed spooky site in the city. You used to be able to walk among the fallen-in buildings, and it was best to do it on a rainy day when you could see the clouds and gray water all around you through the open window frames. Then you could feel how incredibly isolated it is, even while you’re completely exposed. Now the last remaining ruins are barricaded off by a chain link fence, but the park goes all the way to the tip of Roosevelt Island so you can walk all the way around the ruins and get a great view of the old place.

City Hall Subway Station (map)

The subway station under City Hall is a glorious place that was closed in 1945. It’s got towering arched ceilings made of patterned brick that are lit up by natural light pouring through the ornate wrought iron and glass skylights placed in the street overhead. You can see it—like it’s been caught in time—by staying on the 6 train past the final stop at Brooklyn Bridge/City Hall station. The train takes a big curving turn-around to go uptown under City Hall, letting you see the slowly moving panorama of a time gone by.

Staten Island Ship Graveyard (map)

It’s the freakiest thing – one minute you’re driving along ordinary road along the Arthur Kill, the waterway that separates Staten Island from New Jersey. Then suddenly the trees part and all you can see is a bay filled with dead ships. Some ships have sunk so the skeletons of their prows stick out, and others are rotting low in the water or turned on their sides in various states of decay. It’s such a sight of ruin and devastation that it’s hard to forget once you see it.

Brooklyn Navy Yard (map)

There are several spooky spots in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. I ran a Trap-Neuter-Return project in the BNY for years, so I saw every nook and cranny. The 300-acre site holds a vast Naval Hospital Annex where a dozen buildings sit frozen and empty because of asbestos. There are also giant skeletons of ship-building warehouses, with the glass all shattered and the deep water slips murky and oily between them. You can take a tour of BNY if you don’t have access to the industrial complex that has grown up on the site in the midst of the ruined buildings.

Ridgewood Reservoir (map)

The reservoir sits oddly enough on a hilltop in Highland Park. It was decommissioned in 1898, but there was still water in it until there were a number of drownings in the 70s. To reach it you have to go past the Cypress Hills National Cemetery with its white tombstones in neat rows undulating over the hillside. Then you have the climb up the crumbling steps to the overgrown forest at the top, emerging into a wilderness that seems like it’s been transported hundreds of miles from New York City in an instant. But be careful – you’ll see signs of people living in there though you rarely see them. It’s not your usual walk in the park!
Thank you Susan for giving us such a haunting tour of New York City!  
To learn more about Susan Wright and her books, please visit her website.  You can add her Allay series here on Goodreads.



Have you visited New York City?  Ever experience anything of the supernatural kind in and around New York City?
What did you think of Susan's picks for spooky places?
Last week on Paranormal Road Trip we visited Australia with Cassandra Page.  Next week we'll be traveling to XXX.

Join us for another spine-tingling Paranormal Road Trip...
if you dare!