Genie and the Ghost
(Genie and Adriana Darling Cozy Paranormal Ghost Mysteries)
by Carmen Radtke
About Genie and the Ghost
Genie and the Ghost (Genie and Adriana Darling Cozy Paranormal Ghost Mysteries)
Paranormal Cozy Mystery
1st in the Series
Independently Published (September 18, 2023)
Paperback : 218 pages
ISBN-10 : 1916241077
ISBN-13 : 978-1916241077
Digital ASIN : B0CHFZYLW6
New York jewelry designer Genie Darling has returned to her childhood home in quaint Cobblewood Cove for one reason only: to sort through generations of old family heirlooms and hand anything of historical interest over to the local museum.
But after a failed mugging attempt, and the appearance of a beautiful but ghostly young stranger in a vintage evening dress, Genie realises there’s something suspicious – and spooky – going on.
The glamorous and friendly spectre turns out to be Genie’s own great-great-aunt Adriana, who died in 1929 in mysterious circumstances.
When there are more attempts on Genie and her home and her main suspect dies in a suspicious accident, she decides to get to the bottom of the mystery.
Does it have anything to do with Adriana’s death and reappearance?
With her unflappable, pet-whispering aunt and cat Cleo by her side, Genie sets out to lay this ghost to rest by solving the mystery and unmasking the culprits.
But digging up the past can be deadly …
GUEST POST
What’s in a name? Everything!
I can’t recall the last day I opened my emails or newsfeed without discovering an offer to help me a) plot my next book in a day, b) write a book in a week, c) become a six-figure author (I wish!).
It’s relentless. It’s also not even remotely going to become part of my writer’s life.
To set the record straight, I admire authors who can write a good or even great book in a week. Edgar Wallace, one of the most prolific and successful early British writers of sensational gangster, detective, and adventure novels, before the term pulp fiction existed, sometimes finished a book in three or four days. I read once that those were novels he dictated to a secretary. His collected works are over 170 novels, plus plays and short stories!
If I’m lucky, I reach over 2000 words a day if I have no other writing jobs to do.
As for plotting a book in a day, that’s the easier part. My outlines aren’t overly detailed, and by the time I jot down my notes, I’ve been working on an idea in my head long enough to know most things.
Motive and murder method? Piece of cake, sometimes literally.
What trips me up are the names. They have to be right for the character or nothings falls into place.
A rose by any other name might smell as sweet, but there’s a huge difference between an Hercule Poirot and a Hercules Perry. Hercule is debonair, Hercules a man who could easily suffer from an inferiority complex or megalomania.
My first mystery series, inspired by a true event, has Alyssa Chalmers as a sleuth. Since her adventures are set in the early 1862, she needed a name that fit in with the era. It also had to suit her personality yet be something that could easily be confused with another name like Alice or Ellen, by men who underestimated or dismissed her. Not bothering to learn how a person is called, is a sign of disrespect, or a hint that something is amiss …
I was lucky with Genie and the Ghost because I knew their names. Geneviève aka Genie was equally proud of her first name and resigned to the problems the pronunciation would cause. She’s fiercely independent, yet loyal to her mother who changed the spelling of her own name from Amy to the much more glamorous Aimée.
I don’t know where the name Adriana came from. All I knew was that it was her – slightly different, yet easy to remember.
But the secondary characters kept on causing trouble. The septuagenarian Schuyler sisters went through a couple of metamorphoses. For a few days, they were called Moira and Maisie. That didn’t feel right though, and the names changed to Dora and Daisy. Yet again, that didn’t work for my imagination. Only when they became Primrose and Marigold could I finally come to grips with them.
Most cozy mysteries rely on lovingly crafted puns. They’re part of the fun. My excuse for not embracing that more in my books is that my novels straddle the line between classic mystery and cozy.
So far, I have lots of notes in various notebooks and files that include tantalizing names and bare bones of ideas. I only wish they’d also come with explanations because there hardly ever is any context.
It seems that Agatha Christie, whose works have been my constant companion since I was eleven years old, also tried out names. She made lists in her notebooks and would cross out everything she dismissed.
A few people have been asking me if I ever model my characters after people I know.
I don’t, usually. If I’m acquainted with a person, I’m too close to them to put them through the wringer. It’s different if I observe people I’ve never met before and know nothing about apart from what I can see or hear. Last summer I spotted a man with dollar bills stuck in his hat band. He’s a candidate for a novel character.
Like most writers, I also keep track of those who’ve done me wrong. In one way or another, justice shall be served on the page.
One area where names are no problem for me and characters are taken from real life, is when it comes to animals.
Before I typed the first word, I was well aware that there’s a cat in the Darling household, and that she plays an important part in the life of Genie and Adriana. I called her Cleo in memory of a kind and caring cozy mystery writer who sadly passed away in 2022. Barbara Silkstone was one of the first novelists to reach out to me because she loved my books. When her health deteriorated, her first thought was how to ensure that her cat Cleo would be taken care of.
In my Jack and Frances series, corgi Tinkerbell insisted on appearing unplanned in Murder Makes Waves. He instantly became one of my favorite characters and series regular. His namesake was a hospice dog I used to see every week on a zoom call with a writer’s group. The original Tink made the most of every single day, and so does my fictional Tinkerbell.
So, while I won’t ever write a whole novel in a week, and six-figure author sounds unlikely, I stick to my process. That includes grappling with names. After all, false starts happen to the best of us.
Shakespeare’s troubles with “Romeo and Ethel, the Pirate’s Daughter” are one of my favorite parts in the romcom movie, “Shakespeare in Love”. Even though there’s no way I have of knowing if the bard had ever considered anything remotely outlandish for any of his plays, it sounds about right to me.
Ethel is a sitcom character. Juliet is a love interest for the ages.
And to me, Adriana will forever be a glamorous flapper living her best life almost a century after her demise.
About Carmen Radtke
Carmen 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.
Genie and the Ghost is her first paranormal cozy mystery.
Carmen now lives in Italy with her human and her four-legged family.
Author Links
Website – https://www.carmenradtke.com
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/Carmen-Radtke-1958399947738868/
Twitter: https://www.Twitter.com/@CarmenRadtke1
Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/author/carmenradtke
Purchase Link – Amazon
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