I'm soooo excited. I typed The End on Wild Ghost Chase. Earlier, I'd shipped the story off to agents and garnered quite few requests for fulls. Something obviously didn't click. I realized that as the rejection letters piled up. However, it wasn't until I got a rejection from Jessica Faust (I stalk, oh, I mean, love her...she's one of my dream agents...and after this past rejection, IS my #1 agent of choice, but I digress) that I realized what was wrong. The comment she gave me was the key that showed me where I'd headed up the garden path in the wrong direction. WGC is about two competing teams of ghosthunters. I had a nice black moment for one couple and an HEA...but when I re-read it, the HEA for one of the couples was too easy. Way, way, too easy.
So, I plotted, dreamed, and plotted some more until I had a black moment to die for (almost literally, for my heroine & hero). I put a twist in the tale. Literally.
The original epilogue just tied things up in a neat bow. I unraveled that puppy with glee. Now, the epilogue starts out the same...X did this, Y did that, this is what ABC meant. Then, WHAM. I ramp the story up again and keep pushing to the climax. I'm thrilled to bits with it. Now I can only hope that an editor will love it as much as I do. These are the times when I wish I could send the manuscript back to Ms. Faust...but that's a faux pas I'm not willing to risk. But I can guarantee that she's the first agent I'll query with my zombie historical.
Speaking of which...
Zombie historical may be a misnomer. There will be no eating of brains, and definitely no zombie lovin'. However, there is a hefty dose of voodoo (or voudoo, or voudon, I'm still researching how it was spelled in 1849 and which is really correct for the character I'm using), a handful of zombies, and Edgar Allan Poe...but that's all I'm going to say about it right now.
But in the spirit of sharing...here is the blurb for Wild Ghost Chase. Enjoy!
Two reality-show ghost-busting teams versus one haunted house – the first team to successfully exorcise the spirits wins the renewal of their television contract. It sounds like a pretty straight-forward competition, but something or someone at Harrington House has another agenda.
Siblings Monica and Malcolm McFee comprise the team for Happily Ever Afterlife. The show is a mixture of science and supernatural, for although they are twins, they couldn’t be more different. Monica is a skeptic. She grew up normal in a paranormal family, and she’s never met phenomena yet that couldn’t be explained away by cold hard science – even love. Her brother is a medium who can see and speak to the dead. Ambitious and proud, he's the seventh son of a seventh son and determined to sustain his heritage by only dating women who believe in the paranormal. It's led to some interesting matches, but none so exciting as the one he experienced years ago with a ghost. A ghost who seems to have come to life in the persona of Kylie Harrington, the owner of Harrington House.
Their rivals are Enigma Mysterio and Irene Hopkins. Their show is Bump in the Night, where investigative team participants pay thousands of dollars to be scared to death by either the ghosts or the dramatics. Up until two years ago, Enigma just had a funny name. Dying three times after a car accident changed all that. Now he has the ability to see through the veil separating life from the afterlife. It’s a gift he neither wanted nor asked for, but a man has to make a living somehow, and being the stooge for a beautiful woman on a hit television series isn’t so bad. Or so he thought until he meets Monica and loses his heart to the one woman who can’t see past his psychic ability to the man inside. Irene isn’t a psychic; she just plays one on television. Besides being married to the show’s producer, her one true talent is screaming on cue.
The paranormal investigation was Kylie’s idea; however, the competition wasn’t. All she wants to know is where her ancestor, Amos Harrington, hid his ill-gotten gains so that she can get out from under the mountain of debt she’s inherited along with the supposedly haunted house.
Over the course of the weekend, the two teams with their respective technical advisors, a supposedly impartial network executive, and the beautiful owner of Harrington House find it isn’t just the ghosts who are running amok. A killer is on the loose and if they don’t work together, they could all become permanent residents.
If this sounds like a book you'd love to read, I'm taking applications for a couple of beta readers who have experience critiquing manuscripts and who will promise to be brutally honest (well, perhaps they could go a little easy on the brutal, but I definitely need the honest part). If you're interested, drop me a comment.
Until Friday...or sooner, if something grabs me that I simply must post about...
Ericka
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