Ghost and the Haunted House
(Genie and Adriana Darling Cozy Paranormal Ghost Mysteries)
by Carmen Radtke
About Ghost and the Haunted House
Ghost and the Haunted House (Genie and Adriana Darling Cozy Paranormal Ghost Mysteries)
Paranormal Cozy Mystery
4th in Series
Setting – Fictional small town in New England
Independently Published (May 29, 2024)
Print length : 194 pages
Digital ASIN : B0D47ZLQWP
Could quaint Cobblewood Cove be a hotbed for black magic?
Genie and her ghostly great-great-aunt Adriana have been too busy with their gelato business and helping with the restoration of the old speakeasy to notice that something isn’t quite right in their small town.
Until pranks with touch of the macabre haunt the neighborhood, right before Halloween.
But it gets worse.
When a locked room murder case points straight at a connection to dark forces, the sleuthing duo fears for the living – and the not-quite so departed.
Can they root out the evil in their midst before it ends Adriana’s happy afterlife – forever?
About Carmen Radtke
Carmen Radtke has spent most of her life with ink on her fingers and a dangerously high pile of books and newspapers by her side.
She has worked as a newspaper reporter on two continents and always dreamt of becoming a novelist and screenwriter.
When she found herself crouched under her dining table, typing away on a novel between two earthquakes in Christchurch, New Zealand, she realised she was hooked for life.
The shaken but stirring novel made it to the longlist of the Mslexia competition, and her next book and first mystery, The Case Of The Missing Bride, was a finalist in the Malice Domestic competition in a year without a winner. Since then she has penned several more cozy mysteries, including the Jack and Frances series set in the 1930s and the Genie and Adriana Darling series.
Carmen now lives in Italy with her human and her four-legged family.
GUEST POST
How (not) to write
Picture this. A quiet, airy room, with a mood board for pictures on the wall, a noticeboard with plot points, character names and a rough chapter outline next to it. The scent of freshly brewed coffee refreshes my senses, and peace reigns supreme while I create a whole world with the touch of my fingertips.
Except, it’s all fiction.
This is how I would love to work ideally, although my first choice will forever be scribbling away in my notebooks in the cafés of Montparnasse in the early 1920s, and then go home and type up my masterworks. Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein have a lot to answer for.
At least my workspace is also slightly on the bohemian (translate: messy) side, and that no matter its size or location.
Reference books are piled up, in case my memory fails me. Crumpled pieces of paper with illegible notes abound – note to self: buy decent pens or work on your handwriting for goodness’ sake. Half a dozen small notebooks in which I keep notes on – well, anything.
Their actual usefulness is highly suspect due to the myriad of entries that make no longer sense.
One example: The source? An excellent question, you will agree. If you know the context. The source of the Nile? The source of money? That flaky pastry I can still taste on my tongue and feel on my hips? I’ve got no idea.
Alas, if I ever throw away these notebooks, their importance will reveal itself the instant the recycling van speeds away. At least it’s in a good tradition; wasn’t it J.K. Rowling who jotted down the original Harry Potter idea on a napkin?
The coffee mug is filled with herbal tea, to tell my brain once and for all that the coffee-break is over and a little bit of help would be nice, thank you very much.
Oooh, there’s a leftover biscuit. I’ll munch it, and then I’ll seriously get down to work. I promise. Now let me just find the spoon to stir my tea, and check my emails one last time.
The funny thing is, on a good day it still takes me close to an hour from intending to write to physically put words onto the screen, but then I get lured in to this world that I not so much create as give in to. I write until my eyes blur, or the cat, an elderly rescue with lots of serious health issues, cries for attention.
That’s the hardest bit, the struggle to end a writing session. I’ve developed a way to write with the cat on my lap for a while, but there’s only so much time I can twist myself into a human pretzel before everything aches.
On a bad day, when all the words appear clumsy and ring wrong in my ears, I argue with my characters, and myself, and I curse myself for the mess on my too small desk. Because I can’t possibly be expected to create magic on the page under these challenging circumstances, right?
Now, if I could have that quiet, airy room, where no cat scratches at the door to complain about being shut out, or amble through the leafy streets of Paris on my way to my favourite writing jaunt or a congenial drink with like-minded people of style, wit and sophistication, surely it would be different. Instead, I sip the by now cold tea, give a bitter laugh, and walk away.
Luckily, I have something Hemingway didn’t have; a group of supportive writers who constantly check emails and Facebook to commiserate with me and others or cheer me on.
Which is why you find me still here, at my creatively arranged desk, marvelling at the worlds I can create, and the wonders I can find in my bohemian arrangement. I think I spotted a stapler I’ve been searching for ages.
It’s hard to believe I’ve written more than ten novels under these conditions, but there they are, ranging from period mysteries to contemporary, traditional to ghost cozy, and one work of literary fiction.
Over the course of penning the Alyssa Chalmers mysteries, Jack and Frances mysteries, Eve Holdsworth mysteries, and now the Genie and Adriana Darling mysteries, I’ve researched different eras, different towns and countries, upper class and working class, and lived vicariously through my characters (including a certain amount of envy).
Yet I’m always excited to return to them. They’re my friends. Sometimes they defy me, or exasperate me, or lead me astray, but they’re always there. Even if I can’t chronicle their adventures in a café in Montparnasse.
My latest move allowed me to upgrade from a tray to a room with a mood-board on the wall. Alas, it’s also freezing in winter, stifling in summer, and too far from the cat to spend more than an hour or two there . . .
Author Links:
Website – www.carmenradtke.com
Facebook – www.facebook.com/Carmen-Radtke-1958399947738868/
Twitter/X – https://www.Twitter.com/CarmenRadtke1
Purchase Links: Amazon
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Ruff Drafts 
Sounds like a great book.
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