Bella's sleeping next to the keyboard now, but she was helping me with social media and email earlier. She and I are very pleased to announce that THE GHOST OF HER EX has officially been released by Evernight Publishing today, and it is an EDITOR'S PICK.
Bella would not have been pleased if THE GHOST OF HER EX were not an Editor's Pick. She was certain the quality was there, you know? She came into my life just as I was finishing drafting the book, and she's pretty invested in anything that makes me turn on the nice, warm desk lamp next to my computer. She has asked me to tell you that you should buy the book so that I will be encouraged to turn on the nice, warm desk lamp and make more books.
First of all: ghosts. I love ghost stories. I love them so much that I watch cheesy ghost reality TV shows. My own house is haunted and has been investigated by an author friend of mine who specializes in non-fictional ghost stories, a local ghost-hunter. We have two ghosts here. They usually leave us alone, but sometimes, around Halloween, lamps fall over, chandeliers swing, cell phone batteries drain unexpectedly... There's an old Celtic belief that the veil between the living and the dead is thin at this time of year, and I know it's true. We live on a creek that has a little foot bridge over it and I love to go out there at night in late October and listen to the water and watch the moon. That would make a ghost-believer of anyone.
But THE GHOST OF HER EX isn't a darkly serious ghost story. It's really, really funny. When I got the idea for it, I was thinking about old hippies (I am one) and the classic movie and TV series Topper. THE GHOST OF HER EX is kind of Topper on acid: a cast of eccentric sixty-somethings who are tired of being respectable. There's a pot dealer named Santa Claus. (He drives a Land Rover instead of a sleigh.)
And the whole thing is based around a liberal Episcopal parish in upstate New York. My main character, Emily Rauch, is a sixty-something church organist. I've wanted to do a romance with church musicians in it for a while. Church employees are some of the funniest souls on earth. They have to be. Most people come to church when they are celebrating something enormous: the birth of a child, or a wedding--or when they are in awful crisis after an illness or a death. So if you work for a church making music, and I have, you get a slightly twisted view of the world. You're trying to do something demanding under weird circumstances: great joy or sorrow. It makes for surprisingly dark humor. People who see church employees as pious, eyes-to-Heaven types get it wrong. I loved the old Vicar of Dibley show, a British sit com about a woman priest. There's a lot of that in this book.
Plus if you're a choir member or an organist? In-jokes galore, but they fly by fast so read 'em up carefully.
Also: a mother-daughter sub-plot that I'm really proud of AND an Amazon Echo (Alexa) as a minor character. I hope you'll give THE GHOST OF HER EX a read!