Welcome to a special Saturday posting on We Do Write. Today we're featuring fellow writer Lisa Medley, whose novel HAUNT MY HEART just released.
Haunt My Heart by Lisa Medley
Paranormal Romance: Ghost, Witchcraft, Hex
Kindle: http://amzn.to/1Bx3fzQ
Print: http://amzn.to/1Bwurio
Blurb:
A Civil War soldier dies to save his men. Can he find true love to live again?
Sarah Knight has a job she’s good at, a quirky BFF, and a boyfriend who’s bad for her. When Sarah unearths a Civil War artifact on a ghost hunt at Chatham Manor, she brings home more than a souvenir
Lieutenant James “Tanner” Dawson fought for the Union, working as a supernatural liaison for his Major General in a secret Masonic offset called the Brothers of Peril. When he’s hexed by a witch, he learns the only way to save his men is to die himself. But death is not the end. Awakening 150 years later, he knows if he wants to be corporeal again, he has to find true love to break the hex—a task no easier in 21st century than it was in the 19th.
Excerpt from Haunt My Heart: After 150 years hexed to a ring, Tanner is reawakened.
Tanner woke screaming.
Anger, not fear, set him off. The question was what had awakened him in the first place? And after all this time. At least it had seemed like a long time. Being dead made it hard to keep track. He’d counted sunrises for months after he’d died, but even that became too taxing after a while. And when he’d finally been crushed into the ground and damned to the darkness, he’d lost all hope.
His life energy had begun to wane immediately upon his death and his semi-corporeal form—his ghost self—had dissipated a few days after his men removed his body from the battlefield. Not that it would have mattered anyway. No one could see him. He’d tried to make contact as the soldiers crossed by him: screaming, begging, anything to get their attention. To tell them he wasn’t dead. Not really. When he noticed the soldiers could also pass through him without so much as a shiver, he’d given up.
Despair filled him as he realized Sylvia had achieved exactly what she’d promised. He was a stupid man. Maybe he could have loved her. Maybe…
God, what a witch.
No. It would never have worked. He’d have been damned either way. At least he’d saved soldiers’ lives, his own good men, with his decision at Chatham. He’d done the right thing, even if it had cost his life.
He surveyed the room as best he could from his prison.
Clearly he’d traveled from the grounds where he’d lingered for…decades? He wished he knew. Pent-up frustration filled him. Tanner could see energy emanating from something, just out of his reach. A glow—the signature of a living soul. An entity he hadn’t seen for a very long time. The aura, bright and strong, almost reached his prison cell, but not quite.
So close.
Something had sparked him to life. But what?
He startled when a face appeared before him. A non-human face. The face of some creature filled the mirrored prism of his cell.
What fresh hell was this?
The next thing he knew he was falling, falling, falling. The clatter when he landed nearly deafened him. His stomach roiled as if he’d leaped from a great height.
“Bitly. Stop it.”
A voice? A female voice?
Sylvia? Could she still be in possession of him?
Dear God.
“Bad kitty.”
His stomach lurched again as he was returned to his previous perch; the view was exactly the same, except the face that stared into his for the briefest moment was different. A woman’s face.
A woman most assuredly not Sylvia.
Relief flooded him. Of course Sylvia was long dead.
Of course.
And she wouldn’t have followed him into the afterlife. She’d never loved him that much. Not enough to spend eternity with him. Only enough to damn his soul for it.
Lisa Medley writes urban fantasy and paranormal romance about monsters in love, because monsters need love too. Look for Reap & Repent (Bk 1) and Reap & Redeem (Bk 2) of The Reaping Series, available now. A lover of beasties of all sorts, she has a farm full of them in her SW MO home including: one child, one husband, two dogs, two cats, a dozen hens, thousands of Italian bees and a guinea pig. Not so in love with the guinea pig. She can do ten pushups IN A ROW and may or may not have a complete zombie apocalypse bug-out bag in her trunk at all times. Just. In. Case.
