Please help us welcome Claire Gem to the blog today. Claire is here to share her book Electricity. Electricity is a paranormal romance. Welcome, Claire! We are all excited to hear more about Electricity.
Q&A with Claire Gem:
I am thrilled to be hosted on Maddy’s blog today! I write contemporary romance, but specialize in paranormal romance with ghosts, a genre I call supernatural suspense. My Haunted Voices novels have been the most popular, and I’ve just released the fourth one, ELECTRICITY. It takes place on the very grounds where I work: it used to be an insane asylum. There’s one building that has not yet been renovated, and I walk or drive past it every day. A sympathetic facilities manager took me for a tour of the condemned building a few years ago. The pictures in the book trailer are all ones I took. I was inspired on that day to write ELECTRICITY.
Where is your favorite place to write?
I have an office that is an author’s dream. It’s a small room, long and narrow, with a window and a fireplace. I have two tanks with freshwater angelfish, the bubbling providing me with soothing background noise. I also have a monstrous desk with credenza that looks like it belongs in an old castle. Add to that a big-screen iMac, an ergonomic keyboard, and two ancillary monitors, and it truly is a writer’s paradise.
What inspires you as an author?
Old places, abandoned places, mysteries, history. I’m a taphophile, meaning I love graveyards. There’s so much history, so much inspiration in these places. Stories that need to be told.
Why do you write romance and why your genre of romance?
I write romance because I believe in the happy ever after. I’ve been married to the same man for over forty years. I have proof.
What are you working on next and when can we expect to see it?
I am working on a sequel to Electricity, which is as yet unnamed. In it we will follow my hero from Electricity, Daniel’s younger sister’s journey.
What would you do if you couldn’t write?
Drink way too much and get really fat.
How do you spend your free time?
Writing. Marketing. Editing. It really is my life, when I’m not at the dreaded “day job.” And truly, it’s not dreaded. I enjoy my work in scientific research. It’s just a whole different gig than what I’d like to be doing all the time.
Do you listen to music when you write? What is your go-to playlist and why?
I listen to instrumental music, usually medieval. I am fascinated with the middle ages and find a lot of inspiration there.
How do you, your friends and your fans encourage you when you need a pick-me-up?
They offer to take me out for a happy hour 🙂
About Electricity:
She’s an electrician starting over with her son. New job. New town. New life.
He’s a coworker who’s interested in more than her ability to run conduit.
The building they’re rewiring was once an insane asylum…but it appears some of the patients never left.
Mercedes Donohue pulled up roots in Atlanta when her marriage imploded. She’s come back to New England, to the place where she was born. Mercy’s focus is to stabilize her teenage son’s life—he took the breakup pretty hard—and to establish her place, gain the respect of Progressive Electrical’s team.
She never expected so many sparks to fly so soon, both on the job and after hours.
Daniel Gallagher has been alone since his fiancé’s death. He’ll never feel that way about any woman again, and certainly won’t try with another independent, strong-willed one. Then Mercy short-circuits his plans.
Although the asylum closed its doors over thirty-five years ago, Mercy & Daniel quickly realize the abandoned building is very haunted.
If you like a heart-melting romance laced with healthy dose of supernatural thrills and chills, you’ll love Electricity.
Book Links:
- Buy Link: https://amzn.to/2X6MUHC
- Trailer Link: https://youtu.be/K6m8T51ziFU
Claire’s Social Links:
- Website: www.clairegem.com
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/clairegem.author
- Twitter: www.twitter.com/gemwriter
Electricity Excerpt:
It was almost dark by the time Mercy pulled up to the Campus Police building. The sleepy-looking young officer who accompanied her back out into the parking lot seemed almost grateful for the distraction. He tailed her car in his cruiser to Gravely Hall. Mercy followed him up onto the mildewed steps as he used a key from a huge metal ring to open the padlock.
“Do you have a flashlight, Miss?” The young patrolman stepped aside as the door opened, seeming reluctant to accompany Mercy into the old building. The long shadows of evening had already stamped the interior into dense gloom.
“Yeah, no problem,” she grinned at the greenhorn cop. “I’ll be back in just a minute.”
The musty smell and odd air quality seemed amplified in the growing darkness. Mercy strode confidently toward the broad staircase at the end of the great hall and snapped on the flashlight she always kept hooked to a loop on her overalls. She must have left her phone in the small anteroom, she thought. She must have laid it down after Reagan called her earlier that afternoon and failed to pick it up when she was packing up her tools.
Access to the lower level was at the far end of the great central room, and some pale light still slithered in through the greenish glass panes of the windows near the head of the stairs. As she descended the creaking boards, a smothering calm increasingly muffled all sound. Mercy felt an instinctive impulse to reach for a light switch, but of course, there was none, at least none in working order.
In the waning glow of daylight seeping in through the high basement windows, she could make out the shapes of the porcelain tubs, standing in a sentinel row. A damp shiver ran up and down her back. Mercy straightened her shoulders and cleared her throat.
I’ll just go directly into the anteroom where I’d been working, she thought, and retrieve my phone. Then I’m outta here.
She’d gotten to the open doorway of the small space when she heard the sound. A water sound, almost like waves lapping at the edge of a pool. Or on the sides of a bathtub: that soft sound of liquid kissing its solid prison walls. The tubs along the back wall weren’t even connected to a water source anymore. They’d been dry and littered with small chunks of dusty debris when she and Daniel worked around them earlier today. Some still wore their mildewed, leather coverings.
Mercy hurried directly toward the room she’d last worked in, her light flashing wildly through the mostly empty space. She aimed the beam into the gaping hole of the toilet, but it was as dry as it had been earlier in the day. Struggling to ignore the increasingly loud sloshing sound, reverberating now louder and louder all around her, she located the black wedge of her cell phone. It was lying abandoned on the concrete windowsill. She snatched it up, clutching it tight to her chest. The hard-plastic case felt reassuring in her grasp.
As she crossed the central room, the water sound echoed in the space around her, seeming to get louder with every step. Her heart hammered in her chest, and she quickened her pace. Almost there.
Mercy.
Resonating above the sloshing sounds, she could swear she’d heard her name. Mercy jolted to a stop and spun around. The sound had come from behind her, it seemed. Or had she imagined it?
It must be the security officer. He must be calling from the head of the stairs.
“Hello?” Mercy called out. Her voice reverberated so loudly it startled her. “I’ll be right up,” she called again, and flashed her light beam in a path straight toward the stairs.
Mercy!
The voice came again, louder now. Wheezing and feeble, it sounded like that of a very old man, or a very sick one. Had one of the homeless sought refuge here for the night? A jumble of thoughts tumbled through Mercy’s mind, panic obliterating the logical portion.
How would anyone even know her name?
A veil of clammy perspiration blanketed every inch of her skin. Dank basement air threatened to seep right through her. Clutching her phone to her chest, she jabbed the flashlight beam wildly with her other hand, back and forth across the wide expanse of the room. The ray glanced off the white porcelain shapes, transforming them into hulking ghosts standing in ominous formation.
“Who’s there?” she shrieked. Her voice echoed and bounced back to her in empty coldness.
Mercy…
This third time the voice was faint, fading, melting into the mysterious water sounds which ebbed like the receding of an ocean wave. Silence ballooned around her, black and deafening, enveloping all sound except for the wild pounding of her pulse in her ears. Mercy fought the panic rising into her throat and broke into a full run toward the steps. To the exit, where the officer was waiting for her. Toward safety.