Monday, October 29, 2012

Spooktacular G!veaway Hop!

This is a stop on the SPOOKTACULAR GIVEAWAY HOP, a festive gathering of over 400 blogs. We've got prizes and posts and lots of Halloween fun!

If you are like me, you like to hit as many blogs as you can...so let's cut right to the giveaway. :)

Fill out the Rafflecopter and enter to win some spooktacular stuff!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

I'll leave you with a few photos I took last week on my Halloween trip to Disney. I love it when Cinderella's Castle gets a sinister makeover.



Return to the blog hop here or select your next stop from the list below...

Hollow BLOGH0P!

Welcome to the Hollow Bloghop!


Photobucket

I'm Ash Krafton, author of the Books of the Demimonde. Book One, BLEEDING HEARTS, was released in March 2012 and Book Two, BLOOD RUSH will be released in March 2013. (Cover reveal tour coming soon!)

You can learn more about my work by visiting my Goodreads page. There are links to great reviews of BLEEDING HEARTS on the review page here in my blog, as well.

You can also find out more about me and my books by entering my Hollow Bloghop giveaway!

Simply fill out the Rafflecopter form below and visit the places I love to haunt (online, of course.) You can win ebooks and a giftcard.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Here's the linky so you can visit the other great blogs participating in this event...

Coffin Hop 2012: Ghosts in Gettysburg

Last year, we took a family vacation to Gettysburg, PA. Lucky for me I have children who are interested in history and educational trips so going to Gettysburg was a no-brainer. (My teen daughter and her dad are also huge fans of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter so, for them, it was a fan event.)

Although we planned all our activities around historical touring, I had a persistent ulterior motive: ghost hunting.

Gettysburg is the site of the three-day battle that ended the Civil War. It was here that Lincoln delivered the famous Gettysburg Address. It was also here that tens of thousands of men died, their lives cut short by the tragedies of war. We saw bullet holes in buildings, field upon field of solemn memorials...and about a gazillion places offering scenic ghost tours.

Do you know how hard it was for me to pass them up? Wednesday is my favorite day of the week because it's a Ghost Hunters marathon on Syfy. I LOVE scaring myself. My family, on the other hand, aren't so much into ghost hunting. I really had to bite my tongue and soldier on through a week of no ghost hunting in one of the most haunted towns in the country.

The ghosts of Gettysburg must have sensed my disappointment, though, because, when we didn't go looking for them, they came looking for us.

Here is one of my favorite ghost stories...

As I said, while in Gettysburg, we planned several historic tours. In addition to a guided bus tour of the battlefields, we also visited each of the many museums in town. There was one particular museum that my daughter did not want to visit: The Soldiers' National Museum.

The Soldiers' National Museum is located in the former home of the National Soldier's Orphan Homestead. It's also the site of a spooktacular ghost tour where the brave (or foolish) can descend into the cellars to collection of battlefield relics. It took us a long time to get through the museum and my darling daughter hated the whole thing.
see where the cruel matron chained her children in crude dank dungeons--and worse. My daughter was NOT interested in running into the ghosts of tortured orphans.

I tried a comforting approach when encouraging her to go through the museum. "When we go in," I told her, "Just tell yourself we are a family who is looking to adopt a new brother or sister. That way, if any spirit attaches itself to us, it will be happy, not scary. When we get back to the door, the spirit will pass through and go on to find peace."

She stuck out her chin in stubborn defiance and grumbled at me.

The museum was neat. It had a life-sized scene of soldiers with cannons at the beginning and then went on to display artifacts, detailed dioramas, and a huge
She declared she had a headache when we first walked in. Then, as we progressed through the tour, she developed a stomach ache. Her maladies progressed to the point where, by the end of the tour, my husband carried her: she was completely flopped over his shoulder. At twelve, she was already long and lanky and her arms and legs just hung, listless. She was a total wreck.

I couldn't get her to look in the dungeon display at the end, literally a hole in the floor over in the corner. It seems to be an afterthought to the museum but, remembering what I'd told my daughter, I wasn't going to leave without at least acknowledging those poor unfortunates. My poor child moaned and groaned until we walked outside...

...and she had an instant, miraculous recovery.

I passed the whole thing off as her way of protesting the whole visit. Until, that is, when I looked at the pictures I took along the way.


This is the first photo I took in the museum, where my daughter's headache began progressing into her almost-coma. Look closely between the second and third figures. Although we passed through a lot of dark and dusty rooms in the museum, this is the only orb image I captured. If it had been dust, it would have appeared in other pictures--and I took close to thirty in areas like this one.

Take another look, this time at the zoomed image.



Could it be? Did my daughter attract a child's trapped spirit with the promise of a new home and new life? Did she lead it to peace when she took it out of the museum with her? I like to think so.

Do you have a ghost story and maybe even a photo to share? I'd love to hear your tales!

The Giveaway

The giveaway is a two-part deal. Fill out the Rafflecopter form to enter a drawing.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Then, if you love ghost hunting as much as I do, leave a comment with your tale. Anyone who leaves a haunting in a comment will be entered to win a special prize: a skeleton to celebrate Dia de los Muertos. I picked up this fella in the Mexican Pavilion of Epcot Center on my trip to Disney last week. To qualify for the calaca giveaway, you need to also need to fill out the Rafflecopter form.

Have fun, good luck, and thanks for ghost hunting with me. To go back to the main list of Coffin Hoppers, go here.



Wednesday, October 10, 2012

QueryTracker Blog: Author Melissa Landers

QueryTracker Blog: Interview with Author Melissa Landers


Recently, I had the opportunity to chat with author Melissa Landers. (Her Query Tracker success story can be found here.)

She writes contemporary romance as Macy Beckett and is celebrating the release of her debut SULTRY WITH A TWIST. (Ms. Landers is also looking forward to the release of ALIENATED, a YA sci-fi novel forthcoming with Disney Hyperion.)

Ms. Landers shares the secrets of her success and offers valuable advice for aspiring authors. Spoiler alert: she makes it sound amazingly easy!

Read more on the Query Tracker blog to learn how Melissa turned writing as a creative outlet into the brilliant start of a double-genre writing career.

Ready to check out Macy Beckett's SULTRY WITH A TWIST?

Find Sultry with a Twist (Sultry Springs)on Amazon

Barnes & Noble

and

Indie Bound

Friday, October 5, 2012

Halloween Keeps Me Hopping

...and, no. It's not because some witch turned me into a frog. Although that might actually be cool for a while--my frog-pond residents are spoiled. :)

It's that time again--the time for ghostlights in the yard and costumes from the cosplay company and blog hops with my Halloweenie writer friends.

This year, I'll be hopping with a couple of different events so mark your calendars. It's going to be a busy week!

2012 Annual COFFIN HOP

Join me and my dark fantasy/horror story-slinging friends for a week of creepy delights. The hop begins October 24, 2012.

Bloggers who would like to participate in the Coffin Hop can sign up at the Coffin Hop Hub. This is my favorite hop of the year so I hope you'll stop by.

HALLOW-BLOG HOP

I'll also be participating in another hop that week. This Halloween blog hop is hosted by Sunset Reader Reviews and Forbidden Passions. You can see the sign-up list and links on this post from Sunset Reader.

SPOOKTACULAR GIVEAWAY HOP

Hosted by I Am a Reader, Not a Writer and The Diary of a Bookworm, this is without doubt the BIGGEST EVENT I've ever joined--there are almost 500 blogs listed in this thing! You definitely want to get your housework done the week before this hop...check out the list right here and see why you don't want to miss out on this hop.



I'll be giving away gift cards and ebooks and swag and who knows what else during these hops so I hope you'll stop by. (I can't wait to see what goodies come home from Disney with me this year!)

Watch the blog for individual posts to announce each event and enter for your chance to WIN, WIN, WIN!