Today we are touring Deborah LeBlanc, author of the new ghostly thriller, A House Divided. First of all, I want to say that this is one of the the most fascinating premises for a ghost story that I’ve ever heard!
Keith Lafleur thinks he’s cut the deal of a lifetime. The huge old, two-story house is his for the taking as long as he can move it to a new location. It’s too big to move as is, but Lafleur’s solution is simple: cut it in half. He has no idea, though, that by splitting the house he’ll be dividing a family, a family long dead, a family that still exists in the house…
Angelica Batiste is a young, mentally challenged woman with a unique gift. Her mind, no more advanced than a ten-year-old child’s, sees things before they happen. Not only does she see them, she draws them with extraordinary perfection.
When Angelica moves into part of an old, two-story house with her cousin and a friend, her gift suddenly turns into a terrifying power she can not control. The house feeds it. The house needs it. And only death can make it stop.
How awesome is that, seriously? And the excerpt is riveting. LeBlanc’s own background includes a good deal of ghost hunting and other paranormal investigations, so you know you aren’t going to get a cheesy ghost story here. But don’t just take my word for it:
“A series of haunting events–including bumps in the night, hundreds of dead birds on the lawn and a yard-spanning spider web… her emphasis on characters and their relationships make this an affecting spook story.” – Publisher’s Weekly
“Gruesome, creepy and chock full of jaw-dropping plot twists, LeBlanc’s newest is, above all else, wildly entertaining.”-Paul Goat Allen, BN.com
“LeBlanc’s prose is a flying leap into the labyrinth of madness. Her images are unforgettable.” -CelebrityCafe.com
I’m really looking forward to getting my hands on this one!
I must admit, in preparing this tour, I got a little case of paranormal envy. You see, once upon a time (okay, right before SSG) I myself wrote a haunted hosue story. It rocked. It did the usual contest thing (third in the TARA, second in the Jasmine, fabulously lovely first place in the Molly Contest) and garnered me more requests (and more rejections) than any of my previous manuscripts. In fact, a few days before I got my first offer of representation for SSG, I got a rejection from a really fab agent on the haunted house story. My eventual agent still had the book under consideration, and later, I got a call from another agent about it.
But the weird thing is, now that I see actual haunted house stories out and on the market, I understand why mine, though it did pique interest, never did make the cut. It didn’t have the necessary hook, and it didn’t go to the necessary extremes within its premise, like A HOUSE DIVIDED. What a difference a year makes, huh?
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