Welcome to my stop on Shereen Vedam's Virtual Book Tour for A Beastly Scandal. Please leave a comment or question for Shereen below to let her know you stopped by. You can enter her tour wide giveaway by filling out the Rafflecopter form below. My review will post separately tonight.
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Guest Post - Shereen Vedam
Hi there. My name is Shereen Vedam and A Beastly Scandal is my first full-length published novel. Since this is a ghost story, I wanted to ask, Have you ever had a ghostly encounter?
I did, once, and I suspect it was my mom who came to visit me. The problem with such meetings between the spirit world and ours is that you can never tell with complete certainty who came to visit, or even if such an event had really happened. It’s all a guessing game. Coincidences. But the outcome is always the same: your pulse is sent racing, you’re not quite clear on what happened and are left completely changed by the experience. A bit like falling in love.
Back to my mother. She and I were very close, but I doubt we ever got along. She could never come to grips with wanderlust and she left me bewildered by her need to control my restless spirit.
Our ghostly encounter happened on the night she died. I was at university in Guelph, Ontario, some 415 kilometers (~260 miles) away from where she lay on a hospital bed in Ottawa, Ontario. It was late afternoon, I had finished my last exam for the year and ended up alone because the lady from whom I rented my room was away. I decided to fry something for my supper.
All was fine until around 5pm, when the oil burst into flames. I took the burning pan off the stove. I then had the not-so-brilliant idea of carrying it outside to the balcony and letting it burn off. I picked up the pan and some of the burning oil sloshed out and splashed my jean-clad leg and split on the kitchen floor. I did manage to get it outside where I found something big enough with which to cover the flame. House only a little smoky, I breathed a sigh of relief and came back to check on the kitchen floor.
The linoleum was scorched, smelly and pealing. As I knelt to look at it closely and noticed the stain on my jeans where the oil had splashed. The material was soaked but not burned. Neither was my leg even slightly injured. Odd, but I didn’t pay much attention to that since I was more concerned about how tell my landlady that I’d ruined her kitchen floor.
It wasn’t until later that night, close to midnight, when someone knocked on the front door that I began to piece together why that oil hadn’t burned me. The person who came to see me was my brother, who, instead of calling, had driven all the way to Guelph to tell me that our mom had died - around 5pm that day.
I used some of that disturbing feeling from my fiery experience in describing the heroine’s encounter with the ghost at Clearview manor in A Beastly Scandal. Have any of you ever had an inexplicable experience that you’d like to share?
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A Beastly Scandal
Fairytale-inspired
Regency romances
Book 1 of 4
Shereen Vedam
Shereen Vedam
Genre: Regency
Romance
Publisher: ImaJinn
Books
ISBN: 978-1-61026-124-1
Number of pages:
216
Word Count: 90,000
Cover Artist: Josephine Piraneo
Book
Description:
A BELLE OF THE BALL…
Lady Annabelle Marchant was a belle of the ball in
London until she used her psychical senses to save a man’s life. She failed miserably, leaving him dead and
her disgraced. All she wants now is a
chance to comfort his widow by cleansing the woman’s home of her husband’s
restless spirit. But the widow’s son,
the beastly Lord of the Manor, accuses her of coming to the wilds of Cheshire
to snag him as a husband. Thoroughly
disgusted, she is bent on proving him wrong.
…BECOMES
PERSONA NON-GRATA…
Lord Rufus Marlesbury, the Earl of Terrance, is
suspected of murdering his father. He
has come home to clear his name by finding the real killer before the new year
or the king has promised that Rufus will be called in front of the House of
Lords to answer for the crime. He does
not have time to waste fending off a marriage-minded miss who has inveigled an
invitation to his home by playing on his grief-stricken mother’s worst fears.
…WHEN
A MURDERER IS ON THE RAMPAGE
With an unruly manor ghost terrorizing the
occupants and corpses piling up in the village, Belle must find a way to see
the man beneath the beast and Rufus must learn to believe in the love of a
woman who has no reason to trust him.
Only by working together can they stop a vengeful ghost before it
torments the guests or before the killer strikes again.
Book Trailer: http://youtu.be/TzFVC4czHOw
Lord Terrance may have forbid her from coming to his manor house, but she was determined to clear his country home of its resident ghost.
"That is a desolate looking house, is it not?" Winfield said. "I would have it torn down and rebuilt in a more flattering style, but Terrance seems fond of this monstrosity. So what brings you so far north, my lady?"
She faced the gentleman. "I have come for a visit with Lady Terrance. She is my grandfather's friend."
"I had heard the countess still wore dark colors."
Before she could respond, a loud crack sounded. She sensed danger stab from above. With a shouted warning, she pulled Mr. Winfield out of harm's way just as an icicle crashed and shattered where they had stood. She protected her face as splinters flew in all directions.
Mendal screamed. The owl fluttered its one good wing and screeched. The dog barked ferociously.
Mr. MacBride spoke first, his voice quivering and eyes wide with terror. "It is an omen, ah tell ye." "He is right," Mendal said, sounding unusually timorous as she crossed herself. "We should leave. Bad luck comes from going where we are not wanted."
The front doors opened then, and a footman descended. Immediately, the dog raced up the stairs and inside.
"Dog!" Belle called out in alarm. The animal might wreck the place. This was not how she had hoped to introduce herself to the countess.
An older woman, dressed in black, moved to the open doorway. Belle recognized her from a drawing her grandfather had shown her.
This was Lady Terrance. She gave off waves of fear as she looked toward the roofline. Belle's worries drowned beneath the lady's emotional assault, leaving her head pounding with a headache. Through that onslaught, Belle's purpose became crystal clear. This is why she had come here. Lady Terrance needed her.
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Introduced to fantasy at a young age, Shereen's reality is merely a starting point to other realms.
Her world is populated with little people with agendas, elements that talk and spells that rarely work as designed. Her heartwarming historical tales have a healthy dollop of mystery mingled with heart-melting romance, all stirred with a pinch of magic. In her brand new fairytale-inspired Regency romance series, she brings you four beloved fairytales, with a new twist.
Website: www.shereenvedam.com
Blog: http://shereentwo.livejournal.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ShereenVedam
Faceboo: https://www.facebook.com/ShereenVedam
Goodreads author page: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3415603.Shereen_Vedam
Tour Schedule
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Cynthia Harris
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Your ghostly stories are making me even MORE eager to read your book, Shereen! Sorry to hear your mom has passed away. I have no ghost stories to tell, but I'm a firm believer that people from our past are still with us in spirit.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Jacqui. This event happened decades ago. But it was unforgettable. Probably why anything paranormal, in real life or in books, has such a gripping effect on our imagination.
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