Echo’s Guide to Dealing With Ghosts

Echo’s Guide to Dealing with Ghosts

On the whole, ghosts suck. In specific cases, they’re quite entertaining.

So what’s the best way to deal with the sucky ones and fun
ones?

Host a webshow, of course!

The Do’s and Don’ts of interviewing ghosts live on the
internet:

DO make sure you’re
protected.

Circle of salt (more than one if you can), thermal scanner (for
those who can’t see the ghostly guests), motion activated cameras (so it’s not
just you saying something happened!), EVP and EMF sensors (again, more proof
you aren’t crazy). Holden and Zara handle most of the electronics, but the salt
circles have saved me more than once!

DON’T make promises.

There’s always the chance the message your ghostly stalker
wants you to deliver isn’t a heartfelt proclamation of love to those they left
behind. Some are out for vengeance. If you promise a ghost you’ll do something,
they’ll hold you to that promise. By force, if necessary. Trust me, you don’t
want the kind of pain and nightmares ghosts can inflict on you.

DO set boundaries.

You’ve all heard the saying, if you give them and inch they’ll
take a mile, right? Ghost will takes ten miles! They won’t stop taking. My
rules are one ghost per show. Three questions from me have to be answered
before the ghost gets a turn. Only positive messages can be shared, unless you’ve
got the proof to back up any accusations. Oh yeah! NO secrets that will get me
in trouble with the FBI, please?

DON’T believe what
everyone else says about you.

Maybe this doesn’t have so much to do with ghost as it does
about surviving an ability almost no one else understands. Maybe it’s a gift.
Maybe it’s a curse. Maybe it’s an X-Men style mutation. It doesn’t matter. It’s
part of you. Accept. Deal. Move on.

Now, do you want to know a little more about The Ghost Host Show,
me (Echo Simmons), my life savers Holden and Zara, and how I got mixed up with
Malachi, his dead great grandmother, Nazi secrets, and the FBI?

Somehow I knew you would 😉 So here’s an excerpt from The Ghost Host.

My dad frowns, his fingers tightening where they’re gripping the door frame. “Any idea why the FBI would be at our house?”

“What?”

Shaking his head, he says, “Turn the game off and come to the living room, please.”

“Sure, of course. I’ll be right there.”

He turns and walks away, leaving me to shut everything down. It takes me a minute to process what he said and start to panic. I shut down the game and stand. Suddenly, my hands feel cold. Breathing is difficult. My thoughts seem jumbled. I’m not even sure how I manage to put one foot in front of the other, but I end up in the living room doorway a minute later. As soon as I appear, two suit-clad people stand. One is a woman with long, straight hair. The other is an older man with silver at his temples.

“Echo, please take a seat,” the woman says.

The fact that they know me by sight really freaks me out. The numbing cold spreads from my

fingertips up my arms. I sit down in an armchair next to the loveseat my parents are parked on. I look over at them, not heartened by the fearful expressions on their faces. My stomach turns as I force myself to face the FBI agents.

“What’s this about?” I ask quietly.

The older guy looks at me. His expression isn’t kind or unkind. It’s firm, but not in an intimidating way. “One of our agents saw your webshow this week, and we had a few questions. I’m Agent Morton and this is Agent Ellington. We were assigned your case.”

“My case?” I feel sick. I can’t be an FBI case. Surely no college will ever take me if I’m on some kind of FBI watch list, right?

“It’s more of an inquiry,” Agent Ellington says. “Just a few questions.”

“About what?” my dad asks. I nod, echoing his question.

The two agents look at each other and it’s Ellington who takes the lead. “We just need to ask you about the stolen secrets.”

“The what?” my dad demands. He looks over to me, like I have all the answers. My mom is staring at me, too. I can see it on both their faces, the panic that this last good year is about to fall apart. It kills me to see the panic in their eyes as they wonder if I’m going to slip back into what I used to be, to the nightmares and failing grades and constant fear. I have to look away from them to escape it all.

Facing the FBI agents, I say the only thing I can. “I don’t really know anything about it. I know you guys probably think my show is just a big joke, but…it’s not.”

I hear my dad groan, barely audible, but it cuts me to the core. Tears pool in my eyes, but I refuse to let them fall. I don’t blame them for not believing me, but it doesn’t stop me from wishing it was different.

“Are you claiming that Madeline Crew actually contacted you in some way, that she gave you the information you wrote on the board during your show?” Agent Ellington asks. I nod slowly and she frowns. “It wasn’t information you found online somewhere?”

Shaking my head, I try really hard to hold onto my composure. “No. I mean, I tried to look it up later, to see if I could validate anything, but I couldn’t find anything about the Nazi secrets. That sort of thing shouldn’t be on the web, right?”

“That’s exactly the problem,” Morton says.

My heads starts shaking back and forth. I certainly wasn’t trying to cause any trouble when I asked Madeline that question. It’s the same question I ask most of my ghost guests. She just happened to have a better answer than most. “She shared it with me,” I say quietly, knowing they don’t believe a word of what I’m saying.

“You’ve been in contact with Madeline’s great grandson, correct?” Ellington asks. “Malachi Fields?”

The room goes absolutely silent. I can practically feel my dad’s breathing pick up in anger even though he’s a few feet away. I don’t have to ask to know he remembers Malachi’s name from the text he saw the other night. He’s going to kill me. And ground me. I’m so dead.

“Echo?” Agent Morton asks.

“Yes,” I whisper. “He emailed my friend Holden after the show. He saw the show and heard his great grandma’s name mentioned.”

“Then Malachi didn’t tell you about his great grandmother’s service during the war?” Ellington asks.

Suddenly angry at them, I fold my arms across my chest and glare at the both of them. “If you know I’ve been talking to Malachi, then surely you know I’d never even met him before the show.”

“Then how do you explain the information about the Nazi secrets?” Agent Morton asks.

“I already told you!” I shout. My parents both look mortified, and really freaked out, but I don’t care.

“You don’t believe me? Fine. You said yourself that there’s no way I could have known that stuff without access to whatever secret files you guys have. Even if I did, why would I steal information like that and blab about it on the internet?”

Agent Ellington is keeping her cool better than I might expect, but she obviously thinks I’m lying, or just plain crazy. “You honestly expect us to believe the ghost of Madeline Crew told you she stole Nazi secrets.”

“You can believe whatever you want. I don’t have any other answers for you. Make me take a polygraph if you want. I don’t even know why this matters! It was decades ago.”

“It matters because you have information you shouldn’t,” Agent Morton says calmly.

Scared, angry, and ready to bolt, it takes everything I have not to run away. “Well, in the future, I’ll make sure to politely ask the ghosts who follow me around all day not to share any state secrets with me, okay?”

The Ghost Host is available now for Pre-Order on Kindle and will release on October 6th!

KINDLE

PAPERBACK

April Fools or Serious Ghost Issues?

Have you ever had someone tell you something that was simply too difficult to believe without proof? The last thing Echo Simmons wants to do is willingly interact with ghosts, but this isn’t an April Fool’s joke. If she wants help, she’ll have to prove the ghosts are real.

~*~

Unedited Excerpt From

THE GHOST HOST

~*~

“Echo, I’m Dr. Rosemond. I’ll be assisting Agent Morton with your testing. I have some paperwork to go over with you before we begin.”
As Dr. Rosemond explains the risks of each test—which are minimal—and goes over some stuff about confidential information and all that. She seems to honestly enjoy what she does. Clearly, she’s never had to deal with ghosts face to face or she’d have different feelings on the matter. Finally, I sign my name three or four times.
There’s open space around me with about a dozen different devices positioned in a ring around me. One of the interns, or whoever they are, sticks a bunch of monitor wires all over me, and then we seem to be set. “So, what exactly do you want me to do?” I ask Agent Morton.
“Basically, we’ll run you through a few exercises to see how accurate you are in locating spirits.”
I scrunch my face at him because that seems like a stupid thing to ask me to do since I can see them, but I realize they have to “prove” I can see them.
“Are there any spirits present now?” Agent Morton asks. Dr. Rosemond’s eyes are as bright and alert as a dog waiting to have the ball thrown.
I don’t really need to look, but I do a quick scan to see how many are hanging about. I’m only vaguely surprised to see five ghosts present—some of my regulars—are hanging back behind the monitoring equipment. I can’t help wondering if they know what this is all about.
“There are five here right now, but they’re all standing outside the range of the equipment,” I explain.
“Can you encourage them to come closer,” Dr. Rosemond asks.
Grimacing, I want to tell her that’s the last thing I want to do, but this will all be for nothing if I don’t. Lifting one of my hands, I point to one of the ghosts that has been with me the longest. She used to stand over my crib when I was little and make me laugh. I motion for her to come forward. She hesitates, and I wonder if any of this stuff hurts ghosts. I can’t imagine how it would, so I say, “Liza, it’s okay. They just want to run a few tests.”
I trust Liza not to do something crazy, and apparently she trusts me enough not to try and hurt her. She steps into the circle and approaches me slowly. No alarm bells go off to indicate there’s a ghost inside the circle, but from the corner of my eye I see several members of the team getting excited.
“Echo, can you give us the exact location of Liza?” Agent Morton asks.
“She’s standing to my left, by my knee, about a foot away,” I tell him. He writes something down and nods.
That’s pretty much how the rest of the morning goes. Hours later, I’m about to ask if we’re almost done when the one ghost I didn’t want to see today steps into view.
“No, no, no, no, no,” I start whispering frantically. I don’t say it out loud, but in my head I’m begging him to go away, to just disappear for a while. As if he knows exactly what I’m asking for, he cocks his head to the side and ignores me.
Heads pop up as one of the cameras fritzes out with a pop and puff of smoke. Something starts beeping as he crosses into the circle. Thanks to the monitors stuck all over me, I’m sure they can all see my pulse skyrocketing.
“Echo, what’s going on?” Agent Morton asks.
I want to answer him, but I press myself into the back of my chair when Archer keeps coming toward me. “Go away, please,” I beg him, which seems to be the exact wrong thing to say.
A blast of cold hits me. Frost begins to forms beneath his insubstantial feet. One blurry arm reaches forward. I want to scream, but I keep my mouth shut as tightly as I can. He doesn’t touch me, but he touches one of the wires connected to me and I yelp as it shorts out and zaps me.
Almost as though he’s startled, he pulls back and drops the wire. “That hurt,” I snap as I glare at him. He cocks his head to the side again. I’m not sure if he’s confused, or just staring at me. When his hand reaches out again, I really start to panic. “Don’t touch me. Please don’t touch me again.”
I’m begging, but I don’t care. My eyes squeeze shut as his hand moves closer. Don’t scream. Don’t scream. I hold my body rigid, waiting for the assault, but all I feel is ice against my cheek. My eyes snap open when it vanishes, hoping he’s left, but instead, I see him standing in front of me, a frozen tear balanced on his finger. My hand presses to my cheek to find a few more frozen and quickly melting tears.
Archer bows his head, and then he’s gone. I look around, startled and afraid he isn’t really gone, but he’s nowhere to be seen. I start yanking wires off my body as I struggle to breathe normally. Malachi is there in a flash, ripping off sticky tabs and pulling me into his arms. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. I’m fine,” I say in a rush. I close my eyes, wanting to block out everything but Malachi. Agent Morton’s voice pulls me out of his protective embrace.
“Echo, what just happened? The readings we got were nothing like earlier.” Dr. Rosemond looks flat out excited, but Agent Morton is clearly concerned.

~*~

Keep Checking back for Updates on The Ghost Host!!

The Plus Side of Insomnia

I had some book goals for the beginning of 2015…and then my husband and I decided to sell our house, so everything book related happily got put on hold in the face of the excitement of moving.

We’re all pretty pumped about moving next month. Fingers crossed everything goes smoothly!

So, back to insomnia.

Moving is stressful. Well, trying to sell your house and keep it clean with two kids and a dog who is constantly eating crap he should and having…shall we call it intestinal troubles?…that’s stressful. My hubby and I had a tough time keeping up with that in addition to all the other craziness of inspections, offers, surveying, and on and on.

You’d think all that would make you fall asleep as soon as you hit the pillow, but not so much. When I get stressed, I don’t sleep well.

What do I do while I’m lying there staring into the darkness?

PLOT

Sounds ominous, right? I’m not talking revenge or mayhem. I’m talking BOOKS.

With all the hoopla of the last few months…

I haven’t done much writing, or marketing, or anything actually book related. The last week or so, with all the insomnia I’ve been having, I have at least had the chance to work out the kinks I had been stumped with on The Ghost Host.

What’s been bugging me about The Ghost Host?

Trying to capture the decision making skills of a troubled 18-year-old girl on her own for the first time.

She thinks she has things under control. Her friends are with her. A guy she really likes has promised to protect her. She and the ghost who’s stalking her seem to be on decent terms for the moment, and the FBI is actually looking like a good move.

Echo doesn’t actually have anything under control, and I was too the point in the story where things needed to start unraveling but I wasn’t sure how to do that. How exactly does a girl in that situation react when her first boyfriend, first time on her own, first kind of job, and first time trying to handle the ghosts on her own?

I finally figured it out.

She makes a lot of mistakes.

So, now that I’m finally making progress on The Ghost Host again, I can hopefully finish the last quarter of the book a start making plans for a summer release.

So, keep checking back to see what trouble Echo and the ghosts manage to get themselves into.