Today our guest is Barbara J Hancock, author of yesterday’s book “Darkening Around Me”, here is a link to the post. http://wp.me/p2Eu3u-52h
Let’s Find out more about Barbara.
1) Where is your home town?
I was born in Roanoke, Virginia a very green but growing city in the southwest part of the state in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
2) How long have you been writing?
Writing has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. The first writing I sold was a Nocturne Bites to Harlequin. I sold a gothic vampire romance to Samhain Publishing soon after. To my surprise, no one wanted to buy the Beauty and the Beast fan fiction I wrote when I was eight years old!;)
3) What genres do you enjoy writing most?
Unusual works for me. Out of the ordinary. I like elements of the supernatural or paranormal. When Harlequin E announced the modern gothic Shivers line, I found the perfect place to play…because shadows, mysterious heroes, danger and larger-than-life passion!
4) How long have you been writing for Harlequin?
I sold my first novella to Harlequin in 2008.
5) In Darkening Around Me the statues in the garden were quite haunting, what’s the best bit about writing scary parts?
Sensation! I love to feel what I write and I to try to pass along those feelings to readers. If your pulse picks up, if your breath catches, if your heart flutters…I’m doing my job. If you’re completely taken away from workaday worries and consumed by the suspense or danger or passion I’m creating with my stories and characters, then there’s nothing that pleases me more. Because it’s about escape really. We all have ordinary every day right outside our windows. I write to experience something beyond ordinary and to share that experience with readers.
6) I like the scary dolls that Mary made, what gave you the idea for them?
Dolls are one of those classic horror elements that has always worked to make me nervous whenever I’ve encountered them in stories or movies. Is it their lifelike qualities that make them seem to have a potential for movement? Is it the flutter of those blink-y eyes? In Darkening Around Me a spirit is communicating by causing obsessive compulsive behavior in the people it haunts. For me, the scariest part about Mary’s dolls was the repetition and the fact that even though she obviously spent a lot of time making them, she didn’t take care of them after they were made. They were left to rot in a room full of identical dolls. <pardon me while I cross the room to turn on the light>
7) Tell us about “Lost in Me” your first Shivers book for the HarlequinE series.
Lost in Me was such an exciting opportunity. I’d written the first scene with Chloe in St. Mary’s painting the nearly forgotten man and set it aside years ago. I didn’t know her story yet, but I knew it was going to be powerful. Sometimes an idea has to sit and steep. When my editor asked if I’d like to do a Harlequin Free Online Read to promote the new Shivers line, I knew right away that it was time for Chloe’s story to come to life!
Released from hospital into the care of the man whose eyes have haunted her for a year, a troubled artist returns to Belle Aimée. The antebellum New Orleans mansion is the site of a tragedy Chloe’s mind will not disclose. It’s also home to an unseen presence that traces her steps, visits her studio and lingers near her bedroom.
Waking and sleeping, Chloe grasps at scraps of memory that flutter about her, alighting eventually on her countless canvases. Only under the stormy eyes—and electrifying touch—of Jonathan La Croix does Chloe begin to remember what they once were to each other. What they could be again. Such a man cannot be forgotten forever….
8) I featured Unforgiven book 2 in your Raveneaux series in my April A to Z Challenge, can you tell the readers a little about the plots?
Hunger is book 1 in my Raveneaux gothic vampire series. It tells the story of a golden girl whose life changes in a bloody instant and the hunter who doesn’t give a damn about saving her…at first. The question of Hunger is…What if beauty is the beast?
Unforgiven is Book 2 and it’s the story of the vampire who ruined the heroine’s perfect life in book 1. To this day, Dillon is my most compelling antihero. The question of Unforgiven is…What if the beast is beautiful?
9) Ghost in the machine is described as a Gothic Cyberpunk Romance, that seems to cover several genres, how does that play out?
While Gothic is a genre, it’s also a feeling and a tone. It’s eerie and beautiful. It’s dark and emotional. It can be powerful and transcendent. Woven throughout a gothic is fear of intimacy and whether or not the heroine will have the courage to face that fear. Cyberpunk is often noir or gothic in tone because there’s usually a surreal element of mystery and otherworldliness in cyberpunk stories. Blade Runner would be a well known example of this type of blending. To add another genre to the mix, Ghost in the Machine is Post Apocalyptic as well!
Ghost in the Machine was a first for me in so many ways, but it was also a glimpse into the deepest heart of what I should be writing.
10) Tell us about the other books you have coming out for Shivers Box sets, this year.
I have two kinds of stories coming from Harlequin E Shivers this year. I have standalone novellas and I have a series called Scarlet Falls that takes place in a haunted New England town.
Darkening Around Me is now available as a single title.
Seized by a dark genius, Miles O’Keefe has shut himself away in his ancestral mansion for more than decade. Driven by an unquiet spirit called The Thornleigh Bride, he sculpts masterpiece after masterpiece—and edges ever closer to madness.
His decadent prison is finally breached by Samantha Knox—a woman who has been to the brink of hell and back. She wants—needs—Miles to sculpt her scarred yet strong and beautiful body, to prove she has survived. She sits for him. His hands shape every curve of her body, indulging passion by proxy. Every glance, every word that passes between them brims with desire. With a single touch, it spills over.
But their ecstasy inflames Miles’s ghostly muse, as well. The Bride will neither share her house nor relinquish its heir, whom she has possessed for so long. Not without revealing her deadly secret. Before the end, Samantha will stand once more at the edge of the abyss….
Silent is the House is part of the Volume 2 Box Set released on April 1st
Grief-stricken Angelica Peters finally visits Allen House, the crumbling mansion she once stood to inherit. She’s immediately drawn to the new heir-the family lawyer whose unearthly obsession soon has her questioning reality…and her sanity. Is it Angelica he desires? Or is he only fascinated by her resemblance to the tragic apparition that haunts the estate?
And then my Scarlet Falls series starts with The Girl in Blue which is in the Volume 3 Box Set coming in July
The unexplained is commonplace and everyone fears the dark in Barbara J. Hancock’s SCARLET FALLS.
A secluded hamlet ablaze in autumn splendor, Scarlet Falls is seemingly an idyllic manifestation of the New England countryside… But Trinity Chadwick knows better. The town is undeniably beautiful, but haunted to its very core. For Trinity there has been no escape from the specter of the girl in the blue dress. Her laughter still rides on the mist of the town’s eerie lake. And tragedy always follows in its wake.
Constant vigilance against malevolent forces have worn Trinity down driving her back to the last place on earth she ever expected to step foot again. Hillhaven—her childhood home. Only to encounter Samuel Creed. The last man she ever expected to confront. A long-ago kiss of life kindled an obsession at once sensual and macabre. Trinity is tortured by the memory of her warm lips against his cold ones as she saved him. Or was he forever damned, after all? Trinity finds Creed is as tempting as ever, a man she can neither forget nor entirely trust.
Thank You Barbara and good luck with the books.
Find a copy here from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com
New York, present day, alternate reality. Karen Brown, angry and frightened after a kidnap attempt, has a choice – being eliminated by government enforcer Jeffery Renschman or fleeing to mysterious Roma Nova, her dead mother’s homeland in Europe. Founded sixteen centuries ago by Roman exiles and ruled by women, Roma Nova gives Karen safety, at a price, and a ready-made family. Just as she’s finding her feet, a shocking discovery about her new lover, special forces officer Conrad Tellus, isolates her. But the enforcer has crossed to Europe to pursue her. Unable to rely on anybody else, she undergoes intensive training, develops fighting skills and becomes an undercover cop. But crazy with bitterness at his past failures, Renschman sets a trap for her, knowing she has no choice but to spring it..
Set in the south of England at the beginning of the 1980’s, White Goods is a novel about loss and the search for the truth, told through the eyes of a deceptive twelve-year-old boy. Scot Buckley is a complex young man, living under the shadow of absence: his mother encounters a horrific death at the start of the book. Further, he is haunted by the elusive existence of a relative simply known as ‘Jackie’ – whose very being the rest of his family are determined to keep secret. White Goods opens very dramatically: a child is pushed into the icy, open mouth of a chest freezer and the lid is slammed shut. His identity and fate are central to the story, but remain a mystery until the end. Aside from the imprisoning chest freezer, other domestic goods participate in the drama. Scot recalls that his mother’s death is the result of a gory accident with a dishwasher. However, all is not as it initially seems and, each time Scot recalls her death, the scene and the actual cause are different…
Unsatisfied with the ancient grimoires, the Magus made his own. Unsatisfied with the ancient demons, the Magus made Beatrysel. She was a creature of love, but there is no love without hate, no light without darkness, no loyalty without betrayal. And demons covet flesh. Johnny Worthen’s novel BEATRYSEL is a modern Faust tale set in the American Northwest where the cold winter rain melts the barriers between what is real and what is more real. BEATRYSEL is a terrifying journey through modern metaphysics, High Magic and ancient religions where secret dreams turn to nightmares when Will becomes Form. Power-hungry magicians, serial killers and scorned lovers must contend with the power of the most beautiful and dangerous Magick in creation– for Beatrysel is a creature of love. 
In 1970, The Ford County Times, one of Mississipi’s more colourful weekly newspapers, went bankrupt. To the surprise and dismay of many, ownership was assumed by 23-year-old college drop-out, Willie Traynor. The future of the paper looked grim until a young mother was brutally raped and murdered by a member of the notorious Padgitt family. Traynor reported all the gruesome details, and his newspaper began to prosper. The murderer, Danny Padgitt, was tried before a packed courtroom in Clanton, Mississippi. The trial came to a startling, dramatic end when the defendant threatened revenge against the jurors if they convicted him. Nevertheless, they found him guilty, and he was sentenced to life in prison. But in Mississippi in 1970 ‘life’ didn’t necessarily mean ‘life’, and nine years later Danny Padgitt managed to get himself paroled. He returned to Ford County, and the retribution began. 
When Diana Lescure moves with her young family to the tiny village of Saint Gabriel in the depths of France, it is clear that not all is well amongst its inhabitants. As she settles into her country idyll she uncovers a menace that has shrouded the villagers for generations. Through a 12th century monk and a British agent in WW2 the story of a secret society unfolds. 
From the beloved gardener and romantic novelist comes a tale that moves between the present day and the 19th century with a story of love, betrayal, intrigue, and murder
Jameson Quinn is sick of trying to find herself in the big city. After a gallery opening ends in a trip to the ER and an argument with her self-involved boyfriend, she decides to take off for the peace and quiet of a small town — Ruth Valley. The small town has everything Brooklyn lacked: simple people, peaceful surroundings, and a feeling of safety. Jameson even finds the perfect house to rent from the town’s most eligible bachelor, Sheriff Jack. Life is finally headed in a promising direction. But something isn’t right. A young man is mysteriously injured, then disappears — and Jameson finds he isn’t the only person to suddenly vanish. The suspicious behavior of an abrasive nun and a creepy priest set her off on an investigation of what’s really happening. Will she figure out the secrets of Ruth Valley before she’s the next to go missing? 
Avid mushroom hunters and volunteers with the local Search and Rescue Department, Laura and Julie, who are in their sixties, remember that first encounter in the woods years ago. Four young men who are fun by nature, travel to the woods with high hopes of a hunt they won’t forget. A call to the Search and Rescue Department will bring them shockingly together in the….Black Woods. 
TRUST NO ONE. SUSPECT EVERYONE.
Detective Constable Scott Cullen of Lothian and Borders has only been three months in CID as a full DC. He is assigned a Missing Persons case which has stretched his uniform colleagues. Caroline Adamson – a young, recently divorced mother from Edinburgh – has disappeared whilst on a date. The more Cullen digs into her disappearance, the more he unravels her private life. Who was she on a date with? What happened during her divorce from Rob Thomson? As Cullen’s own private life gets messier and the relationship with his DI deteriorates, Caroline’s body turns up and he finds himself hunting for a ghost in the machine. Book one of the Scott Cullen series.
Rosie Amber 