Today, Pamela Kinney joins us at Paranormal Watch to talk about her latest book, Haunted Richmond.

Welcome, Pamela!

Thank you for interviewing me, Deborah.

We would love to get to know you. Could you tell us a little bit about yourself?

I’m an author, as Pamela K. Kinney for not only Haunted Richmond, Virginia, but of horror, science fiction and fantasy fiction too. I also write under the pseudonym, Sapphire Phelan, for erotic and sweet paranormal, fantasy and science fiction romance.

I’m happily married—was thirty-one years as of March 12th, have an adult son who will soon be 30 years old, and am owned by two cats (both females), Bast and Ripley. I joined a few months ago, a local paranormal ghost group called Virginia Society for Paranormal Education and Research, and actually done some ghost hunting.

What attracted you to the paranormal and to Richmond, Virginia?

I live in Chesterfield, a suburb of Richmond, so I got to know a lot of the local ghost stories and legends. And I always was into the paranormal, growing up in a family where seeing ghosts were the norm and having a mother who would have dreams that came true exactly on the date she said would. This just made me curious about the paranormal and I started reading books by Hans Holzer and others.

Have you ever seen a ghost? If so, will you share the circumstances of this encounter with us?

Many times. One that I mentioned about in my book’s intro happened years ago and appeared solid just liked you and me. This happened at the Whaley House in San Diego. I was in high school, on a field trip for my geography class. A girlfriend, Debbie Noonan and I, couldn’t afford to take a tour of the place, so after eating at Taco Bell across the street, decided we would check it out by looking through the windows. While Debbie stared through the one that looked into the hallway, I glanced through the one that looked into the courtroom. A tiny lady in an old-fashioned dress and her dark hair in a bun walked between the aisles to the doorway and she was about pass through it. I ran over to Debbie’s window to catch her, but she never came through. Later we saw the front door open and walk up to a couple ladies sitting at a desk, and asked, “Where’s the tour guide in the costume?” One lady said that they didn’t wear costumes. Then I was asked to describe the woman and after I did, was told I had seen the ghost of Mrs. Whaley. Anyone interested, can learn more about this cool haunted house/museum at http://www.hauntedhouses.com/states/ca/whaley_house.cfm . Mrs. Whaley isn’t the only ghost seem there.
Other ghosts I’ve seen was the nasty man I also mention in my intro chapter of my book, he haunted a place my husband and I had rented in El Cajon, California. In college my father passed away and I never saw him, but he haunted the duplex my parents and I lived in for three days after he died. After his funeral, the hauntings stopped. My mother claimed to have seen him.

Have you visited the places you talked about in Haunted Richmond? What was your favorite place to visit?

Most of them. The Jackson Ward one is not a safe place to visit these days and besides, I never an address to the house so wouldn’t been able to trace it down, if it was still there. I’ve been to Hollywood Cemetery and it’s a gorgeous place and I enjoyed it. My other favorite places were Shockoe Bottom, Wrexham Hall (that’s nearby where I live—I can walk to it), Centre Hill Mansion in Petersburg, Byrd Theatre, and Crab Louie’s (it has good food).

Do you have a must-see location that you would like to visit in the future? If so, what is it about that place that attracts you?

Gettysburg battlefield, as I heard loads of paranormal stuff going on there. The British Isles, as I always wanted to go there as a tourist, esp. Ireland, as both great-grandfathers on my father’s side came from there. I ate up and still do, all the ghost books set in Ireland, England and Scotland. I would love to stay in an English haunted castle. There are also places in Virginia I like to visit as I am contracted to write another book on Virginia, this time on folklore, myths and legends of the state for Schiffer. I plan to this summer so can finish the book then and even take some pictures for it.

Where can readers find a copy of your book?

Haunted Richmond, Virginia can be found at Barnes and Noble bookstores and Borders too, plus local, independent bookstores. Actually any bookstore, long as they can order, can get the book in. Here’s the ISBN: 978-0-7643-2712-4. Only Books a Million doesn’t carry them in store, but the book can be ordered at the bookstore and shipped to the your home.
Online (though I’ve seen other places on line, and even at eBay stores too):
Schiffer Books
Amazon.com

Amazon.com.uk

Barnes&Noble

Do you have a website or a blog where we can learn more about your books and your experiences with the paranormal?

http://FantasticDreams.50megs.com is my website. http://PamelaKKinney.blogspot.com and I have a myspace at http://www.myspace.com/PamelaKKinney.

Thank you for visiting us, Pamela. It was a pleasure having you. Best wishes for the success of your book.

“The first time Jude Allman died, he was eight years old.”

This is the first line of Waking Lazarus, a story about a troubled man who becomes an unwilling celebrity after he dies three times over the course of his life. Jude Allman doesn’t know how or why he survived and goes to great lengths to protect himself from the media after he moves to Red Lodge, Montana. Under the assumed name of Ron Gress, Jude works for the local elementary school as a janitor.

He leads a very solitary, paranoia-ridden life until a strange woman named Kristina shows up on his doorstep. Naturally, he thinks she’s a reporter and tries to shoo her away. She convinces him that she is a dying woman looking for answers to the Other Side. In the meantime, children have started disappearing from neighboring towns.

Jude is aware of this and is afraid for his five year-old son, Nathan. He begins experiencing premonitions, first with a suicidal waitress and then with a man he met after a fatal pedestrian accident. When Jude bumps into this man (named Kenneth Sohler) in the men’s bathroom of the local restaurant, he experiences a strong vision that Sohler has someone trapped inside his house against their will. This vision spurns him to Sohler’s house and under the watchful eye of the already paranoid police department.

Suddenly everyone wants to know who Ron Gress really is, including his estranged girlfriend. The police are certain that he is the perpetrator of the child abductions until Nathan is kidnapped with his best friend and his best friend’s mother. Jude is let off the hook, but now he must face his past as he seeks the whereabouts of his son and friend.

T.L. Hines did a great job of weaving this paranormal thriller together. Just when you think you’ve identified the abductor, he throws in another twist to keep you guessing. Highly recommended.

Mayra Calvani writes non-fiction and fiction in a variety of genres, including horror and paranormal romance. I’ve just finished reading her latest book, Dark Lullaby, and would like to welcome Mayra to Paranormal Watch.

1. What fascinates you about the paranormal? What are your favorite subjects within this genre?

The paranormal fascinates me because it’s a mystery, it represents the ‘unknown’, and it’s something that cannot be explained by the established laws of science. But this fascination pretty much ends with my writing and love for paranormal fiction. To be involved with the paranormal beyond this ‘safe’ ground, I would find frightening.

Within this genre, my favorite subjects are vampires and ghosts. I love strongly atmospheric supernatural fiction that is deep in characterization and can offer the reader something beyond a mere scary read. Since this is the type of fiction I enjoy reading, it’s also the type of fiction I try to write. I detest gore, but love the unusual and bizarre.

2. I liked the way you wrote from a man’s perspective. Was that challenging?

It was the first time I did that and I found it very interesting. Since my brother, who happens to be an astrophysicist just like my protagonist, was my model, it wasn’t as difficult as I originally thought it would be. I just kept thinking, ‘How would he react to this situation?’ Of course, because of plot purposes I went a step further and drove the protagonist to extremes, but having someone I actually know as an inspiration helped a lot.

3. When I first started reading Dark Lullaby, I expected Kamilah to be a vampire because it seems that everyone is writing about them these days. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that she was something else. What interests you about Turkish folklore?

Yes, I think that when people start reading Dark Lullaby they make that assumption—to tell you the truth, I did that partly on purpose to mislead the reader up to a point. I thought this way the ending would be more surprising. Certainly some of the passages in the story–Gabriel’s disorientation after ‘kissing’ Kamilah, his helplessness under her power, her alluring beauty and psychic ability, etc.—could be mistaken to be vampire related. Kamilah acts in many ways like a vampire. Since you’ve read the novel, you probably know what I’m referring to—I don’t want to give away any spoilers! The way she ‘feeds’ could be described as a form of vampirism, though not in the regular sense.

I lived almost five years in Turkey, so this was a big influenced on me. There I heard many stories about the cin (pronounced jinn). The whole idea fascinated me. And what’s even stranger is that many, many people believe in these supernatural beings. The cin has similarities to what we call ‘fairy’, but it’s something very different. For the Turkish people, a cin is a being that originates from the forests, though it may appear to people in the cities as well. It is volatile, childish, easily angered, and delights in playing pranks on its victims. These pranks can be from harmless to fatal. They eat the liver of humans (nobody really knows how) and they have backward feet. The image haunted me for a few years before I was able to actually sit down and write the story.

In Dark Lullaby, I used all this folklore but took it a step further, creating my own mythology of the melinka as the souls of aborted infants. So the melinka don’t exist in reality; they were my creation.

I’ve always loved to add an exotic element to my fiction. In my first novel, Embraced by the Shadows, for instance, the vampire was Turkish. The novel I’m working on now, a paranormal thriller about wolves, is set in the French countryside. I’ve always loved to add that foreign element to my work.

4. I almost felt like I was there when Gabriel was running through the Turkish forest. You described it so well, especially one scene that had an interesting take on what happens to the souls of aborted babies. What inspired that scene?

Thank you. I’m glad you liked that scene, because that’s my favorite scene in the whole book. I think it’s by far the creepiest segment as well. I don’t remember exactly what inspired that part. In Turkish folklore, the cin live in trees. I think the idea of the faces on the bark of the trees came to me spontaneously as I was writing. Trees can be beautiful but if they’re huge and in a dark dense forest, they can be eerie too. It felt so right to write that scene, though, as if everything had fallen into place. It made sense.

5. What other books have you written that my readers would be interested in?

My first paranormal novel, Embraced by the Shadows, was published last year. Though there are elements of romance, it’s not a standard romance novel per say. I think mainstream paranormal would be a better way to describe it. Readers may find out more about it on my website, www.MayraCalvani.com.

6. Are you currently working on any future books within the paranormal genre? If so, when will they be released and where?

As I mentioned, I’m currently working on another paranormal novel set in the French countryside. It is about wolves and about a strange cult of wolf-people. I’ve tried to create my own werewolf mythology. Wolves are amazing animals and I intend to put wolves in good light. I have done a lot of research this past year and I’m appalled by the crimes committed against them, especially in France. I even adopted a baby wolf earlier this year! Her name is Chito and you can see her pictures here: http://www.everythingwolf.com/gallery/gallerysearchresults.aspx. My aim is to deliver a good story but at the same time bring the wolves’ situation into the minds of the people. Hopefully, the book will be out in the fall of 2008.