Dark and Disorderly: The Adventures of Lillie St. Claire. A paranormal suspense novel.

It began with the ghosts–but it didn’t end there.

Ghosts appear more and more frequently until the sheer number of apparitions across the country constitutes an epidemic. Specters show up on streets and highways and drivers careen over sidewalks and into ditches. Spirits invade homes, businesses and public buildings and drive down property values. These shades represent more than a disorderly nuisance, for some of them are dark and malignant. The public becomes truly and literally spooked.

The town council of Waredale, ignoring equally the pronouncements by assorted experts from portentous psychologists to hysterical World-Enders, decides the proliferation of ghosts within their municipality is basically a property standards issue, and the solution to the problem a form of by-law control, like barking dogs, parking meters and garbage. To this end, they hire a paranormal consultant and ghost-buster.

Meet Lillie St. Claire.

Lillie is one of a new and rare breed of exorcist capable of eliminating ghosts by simple touch. Some people call Lillie a Talent. Some call her the Freak. Her job brings her into regular conflict with both pro-spirit and anti-specter factions and with those citizens who view Talents as one step removed from demons of the dark. Lillie understands these hostilities but she just wants to do her job. It’s the only thing she feels she’s good at—her only value. Lillie also assists the local police department. She can find where the bodies are buried.

Meet Sergeant John Thresher, the big, ugly, psi-crime detective who heads up the recent federal task force on paranormal crime. Other, more threatening paranormal entities have begun to appear. He’d like to recruit Lillie; instead he believes she’s suspect # 1 in her husband’s murder and he’d like to get his hands on her for that. Actually, he’d just like to get his hands on her…but it’s also clear that someone or some thing wants Lillie dead.

“A very nice mouth, on a face like a bag of hammers and jaws like angle irons. Not that he was ugly, exactly, just—rugged—and as impassive and unrelenting as a granite outcrop. I was permanently inoculated against pretty boys, however, so I liked his face. The man was another matter.”

Meet the Nathan-zombie.

“Nathan, it must be Nathan, all torn clothing, rotting flesh and blind malice, all teeth and rictus. A day out of the cold ground and colder coffin hadn’t improved him any.”

Meet Dumbarton, the Black Dog of legend.

“The forms, vague and ephemeral, danced and dispersed when a dark shape outlined by a thin nimbus of fire leaped among them. Dumbarton chasing wraiths again, off gallivanting on a spectral hunt for spectral prey…He tended to treat them like squirrels.”

Incidentally, a Black Dog is associated with my husband’s family, but that’s a story for another time.

Meet Ted Dempster, the by-law control officer. He and Lillie share an office.

“Ted proved an active help, since he was a town native and knew all the local gossip. When one has not grown up in a place, the buildings can appear as a two-dimensional and false-fronted landscape, the people like the pop-up characters in a child’s story book, without history or context. Ted filled me in on area history, connections and people. Especially people. Ted, it seemed, was related to most of them…And he hoped some day I’d get to exorcise his mother-in-law. He said her mean, sparly eyes were sure to haunt him dead as living.””

Meet the bean-sidhe, the Weeper, the Woman-of-the-Fords:

“A small woman in a forest green track suit and a stone-gray windbreaker sleeve-tied around her shoulders like a cloak stood filling the washer next to mine. Ornate, carved combs swept back her hair, brick-red, from a delicate ageless face. Her ears, contrary to popular description were not pointed. She had no aura as such, she was pure shimmer.”

And, of course, there are ghosts…

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In my opinion, I’m not that exciting, but I do get to do some pretty exciting stuff from time to time, like when detonated a bomb that was going to blow up Independence Hall. (Okay, that never happened, but I have a pretty vivid imagination)
So here are some of my favorite and least favorite things.

Favorite Things:
1. Laying in bed with my husband just when we wake up and there’s no where to go, nothing to do and we can lay there for as long as we like.

2. Glee. I LIVE FOR THIS SHOW!

3. Writing. If I didn’t write, I’d drive my self crazy, well, crazier than I already am.

4. Pizza (not the healthiest food in the world, but probably the best thing invented since the wheel)

5. 80′s Music. I am the self-declared 80′s queen, I’m very hard to stump in the 80′s music category.

Least Favorite Things

1. Liver. Ewwwww

2. Beer.

3. Men in thong. Why?

4. Clowns. They freak me out.

**reminder: Commenting on an author’s blog entry/entries for the day will enter you to win a digital copy of their Carina Press title. One winner daily. Commenting on any of the Countdown entries will enter you into the big giveaway for a Carina Press promo prize pack. One winner at end of Countdown.**

“You can’t write a romance series that features the same couple in every book. You just can’t.” I love the word “can’t.” I really do. Telling me I can’t do something is like dangling a red blanket in front of a bull. It just makes me want to scream CAN SO at the top of my lungs. But rather than getting mad after everyone and her sister told me I couldn’t do it, I decided to get even. I wrote FATAL AFFAIR, intending for it to launch a series featuring Washington, D.C. Police Lieutenant Sam Holland and her love interest, U.S. Senator Nick Cappuano. I worked hard in FATAL AFFAIR to surround Sam and Nick with a rich cast of supporting characters, and I put them in a city that will provide endless sources of story and conflict for my fearless duo as well as their friends and family.

I wrote that book, I loved that book, and my agent loved it, too. Knowing the series idea would be a tough sell to romanceland, I decided to start book 2 just to make sure I could get this plan to work the way I thought it would. (Another no-no in the writing world: starting book 2 before you sell book 1. Did someone say, “can’t”? Hmmm, thought so.) We put FATAL AFFAIR out on submission and guess what we were told? You just can’t write a romance series featuring the same couple in every book. You can’t. Ouch. I mean, I knew it, but I still hoped someone might be willing to take a teeny tiny risk that maybe, just maybe, I COULD write a series featuring the same couple in every book. That maybe, just maybe, rabid romance readers would connect with this couple and want more, more, more! That maybe, just maybe, as a rabid romance reader myself, I knew what it took to make this work.

Meanwhile, back at book 2, I was finding it downright difficult to keep up the conflict in the relationship of my newly in love couple. You know that stage—the rose-color glasses phase when everything is hunky dory? Well, of course I couldn’t let them be TOO happy, now could I? I was 50,000 words into FATAL JUSTICE and being challenged like I’d never been challenged before when I got the official word that FATAL AFFAIR hadn’t sold. What’s a girl to do?  Well, scream and yell and punch a few things (not people, don’t worry, although I did give my kids a heads up that it was a good day to steer clear of Mom . After the hissy fit subsided, my mulish Irish pride kicked in, and I set out to finish that second book.

After a significant amount of bone marrow and brain matter was donated to the cause, I finished with a scene that is probably my all-time favorite in any of my books. It took me a full year to write FATAL JUSTICE—four times longer than it took to write FATAL AFFAIR—and I finished with tears on my face because before I even wrote the words “THE END,” this book I loved with my all my heart was dead on arrival. No one would ever see it. A year later, I sold FATAL AFFAIR to Carina, which opened its doors promising to blow the lid off the publishing world. And last week, on the fifth anniversary of the day I wrote “THE END” for the very first time in my life, Carina bought FATAL JUSTICE—eighteen months after the DOA day. Guess what? OH YES, I CAN!

I couldn’t be more delighted to have found a home for these two books, and hopefully more to come in this series. I couldn’t be more delighted to be working with editors who can see the potential and possibilities for Sam, Nick, and their cast of supporting characters (yes, I’m talking to you, Angela James and Jessica Schulte!). I couldn’t be more delighted to be working with the savvy, professional, incredibly author-centric group behind Carina as well as the Harlequin team supporting this effort. Every aspect of my association with Carina has been a delight. And how about that cover? Whoa! They gave me everything I asked for and then some!

So what’s FATAL AFFAIR all about? Come back later today to read a brief synopsis as well as a never-before-seen excerpt. And when someone tells you that you can’t do something? Do it anyway. You just never know where it will lead you.

FATAL AFFAIR is Marie’s first romantic suspense. Book 2 in the Fatal Series, FATAL JUSTICE, is coming soon from Carina Press. Since 1996, Marie has been the communications director for a national organization similar to the Romance Writers of America. She is a member of RWA’s New England, From the Heart, Beau Monde and Published Author Special Interest Chapters. While her husband was in the Navy, Marie lived in Spain, Maryland and Florida, and is now settled in her home state of Rhode Island. She is the mother of two children and a feisty dog named Brandy. Find her on her website, on her blog, on Facebook and on Twitter. Marie loves to hear from readers. Contact her at marie@marieforce.com.

**reminder: Commenting on an author’s blog entry/entries for the day will enter you to win a digital copy of their Carina Press title. One winner daily. Commenting on any of the Countdown entries will enter you into the big giveaway for a Carina Press promo prize pack. One winner at end of Countdown.**