Fire Whisperer & Circle of Souls: Two Novellas of the Supernatural

The Plaid Raccoon Press is pleased to announce the publication of Fire Whisperer & Circle of Souls: Two Novellas of the Supernatural  by Lynn L. Clark. It is now in paperback and can be ordered from Amazon.com, and will be available in electronic format very shortly. Like The Home Child, the new book is set in eastern Ontario and is supernatural fiction interwoven with historical details.

Here are brief synopses of the two novellas:

"Fire Whisperer" - Injured in a hotel fire, Keva Tait experiences auditory and visual hallucinations and is diagnosed with schizophrenia. But is this illness really at the root of her constant encounters with a young, dark-haired woman and an elder who materializes at night on her bed? With the tenth anniversary of the fire looming, Keva wants to take back her life by confronting what really happened when she was seventeen years old.

"Circle of Souls" - A young woman doing research at a small museum in Ottawa is almost pushed down a set of stairs. Her sister-in-law, who restores fossils at a museum of natural history, is touched by an unseen presence. A videographer glimpses unsettling images in his work. A paranormal team leader encounters the inexplicable as he investigates an old mill. A student working part time at an old jail experiences the despair of its former inmates. All of these locations are said to be haunted, but who exactly is the ghost? Or are there many ghosts seeking human intervention?


Fire Whisperer & Circle of Souls: Two Novellas of the Supernatural is currently a Goodreads Giveaway and is also listed in the Early Reviewers Program of LibraryThing.

If you are a reviewer of supernatural fiction and would like an electronic copy of the book for review purposes, please send an e-mail request to llclark136@hotmail.com.

Stay tuned for additional updates!

The Home Child: A New Release from The Plaid Raccoon Press

The Plaid Raccoon Press is pleased to announce the publication of The Home Child by Lynn L. Clark. The novel tells the story of Jake Hall, a transplanted city dweller who is trying to adjust to the realities of country life. Jake knows it isn't going to be an easy transition, and he's prepared for major renovations to the old farm house he's purchased. But what he hasn't counted on is finding a former resident still inhabiting the house in spirit form!

 Synopsis

Set in eastern Ontario, Canada, against the backdrop of a rural town in transition, the novel combines historical detail and the supernatural in the poignant story of a Scottish home child who wants simply to be reunited with the family he lost so many years ago.

Historical Context
 
Starting in 1869 and continuing to the mid-twentieth century, approximately 100,000 children were sent to Canada from the United Kingdom. Although the majority of the children were from England, approximately 7,000 children came from the Quarrier orphan homes in Scotland. Organized as a mission of mercy, this child migration was supposed to allow poverty-stricken children to have a better life abroad. But only two per cent of the home children were in fact orphans. Separated from their parents and siblings, many of these children were abused and exploited as a source of cheap labour when they came to Canada.

 

 Author Biography

Lynn L. Clark was born in Woodstock, New Brunswick. She received her B.A. and M.A. from Acadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia. Prior to her retirement in 2011, she worked for the federal government in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. She lives in a small town in eastern Ontario with her husband, crime fiction writer Michael J. McCann. Lynn is currently working on her second supernatural novel. 

  
Excerpt and Buy Links

To read an excerpt from The Home Child, please click here.

The paperback version is available from Amazon.com or Amazon.ca. 
The e-book version for your Amazon Kindle is available at http://www.amazon.com/Home-Child-supernatural-novel-ebook/dp/B00QEBQNPK/. 
 For all other e-readers and devices, please click here: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/497674. 

To enter a Goodreads giveaway for this book, please click here.

 
A Final Note

Now that Lynn has published her first novel of the supernatural, she has agreed to assume full editorial control of Behind the Walls of Nightmare, which will continue to focus on the horror genre, including topics related to my supernatural thriller, The Ghost Man. Meanwhile, I'll be managing The Overnight Bestseller blog on crime fiction, writing, and other adventures.

Lynn also has a new Goodreads blog, Writing in Retirement, which is available at https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/10057406.Lynn_L_Clark/blog. 

The Haunted Legacy of Alcatraz

The Spanish first explored the island which was later to house the infamous prison. The name “Alcatraz” is an English adaptation of the Spanish word for “pelicans”. The island passed into U.S. hands with its acquisition of California from Mexico following the Mexican-American War. 

In 1850 the U.S. military took over the island of Alcatraz and used it to house long-term prisoners until 1934 when it became too costly to maintain. In 1934 it became a federal prison which was intended as a place of last resort for inmates who were considered troublemakers in other federal penitentiaries. Among the most notorious of its prisoners were the racketeers Al “Scarface” Capone, George “Machine Gun” Kelly, Alvin “Creepy” Karvis, and Arthur “Doc” Barker of the Ma Barker gang.

The prison was intended to be escape-proof. Until it closed in 1963, there were fourteen separate escape attempts by thirty-four men. In almost all cases, the men were killed or recaptured. The last escape attempt was depicted in the 1979 film Escape from Alcatraz starring Clint Eastwood. The fate of the three men involved in the escape was never determined: they were never recaptured and were presumed drowned.

The prison on Alcatraz, often referred to as “The Rock,” was known as a cruel place with its notorious “holes”: a series of cells that were used to punish non-complying inmates by keeping them in complete isolation with minimal or no clothing, bread and water for sustenance, and no toilet facilities—sometimes for up to nineteen days.

Alcatraz was closed as a federal prison in 1963 by Attorney General Robert Kennedy due to the costs of its upkeep and the deterioration of its buildings. It was placed under the National Park Service in 1972, and was opened to the public the following year. Since that time it has become extremely popular as a tourist attraction with regular tours of the facilities.

Alcatraz has captured the popular imagination as the subject of innumerable books and movies, and a television series in 2012.

It has been fifty years since Alcatraz was closed as a prison. To listen to the memories of a former prison guard and a former prisoner, as well as to see photographs, please visit the NPR website at http://www.npr.org/2013/03/31/175847684/living-memories-from-the-last-days-of-alcatraz.

Is Alcatraz haunted? Clanging sounds, footsteps, voices, sobbing, and screams have been reported by both park employees and visitors. Perhaps one of the eeriest stories is the report of the sound of faint banjo music coming from the shower room. Al Capone spent hours strumming his banjo there rather than exercising in the yard and facing assaults by fellow prisoners.

If the evil that men do and the misery they suffer lives after them, Alcatraz is a natural haunting place.