From Jan Grape
Each writer has their own method to begin a book or story. For me, the majority of the time, I hear voices in my head. And the best thing is that no one calls the men in the white coats to carry me away.
In What Doesn’t Kill You, recently released by Five Star, I began hearing a young woman’s voice. Shortly thereafter, I realized this was a grown-up version of a little girl I had actually seen several years ago.
I was in a large chain bookstore when I noticed a little girl, probably eight or nine years old. She was skinny, had a long blonde pony tail and both her ears stuck out like the open back doors on a car. She was with her grandfather and I overheard him asking a clerk for help in locating a reference book on legal documents.
The little girl picked up and looked longingly at several books, but I could tell they probably didn’t have the money to buy one. She finally angled over to the bookmarks and picked out two. But when her grandfather came back he said, “No,” they couldn’t buy anything today.
I wanted to buy the bookmark for her yet I knew that if I offered, the grandfather would be highly insulted. So they left, but I vowed that one day I’d write a book for her.
A young girl who told me her name is Cory is talking to her best friend, Ty-Ty. She, of course, is not that little girl from the bookstore except in my imagination. When both her parents were killed in a car wreck she went to live with her bachelor uncle, Giff Purvis in the small town of Bent Bell, Texas. She loves her Uncle Giff and her horse, Miss Dumpsie, but she can’t help thinking about leaving this small town and heading out into the big wide world.
Cory and her friend Ty-Ty find a body in the old Whalen house and shortly afterwards, Ty-Ty, nineteen and a half-native American, is accused of the murder. Cory is determined to prove otherwise despite all efforts to stop her investigating.
She did give me several moments of apprehension because it has been a very long time since I was Cory’s age. But I grew up in a small West Texas town and knew the wonderful folks that populate small towns so I could relate to the people who popped up in What Doesn’t Kill You and started talking to me.
----------------Carolyn Hart
The late Bailey Ruth Raeburn struggles to protect a beautiful, willful woman determined to play hunt-the-killer in GHOST IN TROUBLE.
Bailey Ruth, an impetuous redheaded ghost, is up to her coppery curls in challenges as she deals with a recalcitrant charge, a fraudulent medium, a mother's heartbreak, old passions and new, and a telltale rawhide dog bone.
Heaven help her!
Merry, Merry Ghost, second in the series, will be available in paperback October 26. Bailey Ruth's debut novel - Ghost at Work - is available in paperback, E book, and Books on Tape.. www.CarolynHart.com
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