Colorado Hauntings – Happy Halloween

IMG_5623Celebrating a spooktacular Halloween all month on My Say What Blog, so today is the final haunting article about Halloween.  What’s not to love about Halloween?  One day out of the year you can dress up and pretend to be anything you want and people don’t think you’re crazy.  Okay, well, not as crazy as if it wasn’t Halloween!

One of the highest haunts in Colorado is the Stanley Hotel at an altitude of over 7,500 feet. Bawawawa!  You know the one that claims to be the 2006-estes-park-the-stanley-hotel-008inspiration for Stephen’s King’s The Shining (REDRUM – MURDER) .  The Hotel was built in 1909 by Freelan and Flora Stanley of Stanley Steamer fortune.  Originally, they came to Colorado in an attempt to alleviate the symptoms of Freelan’s tuberculosis. They fell in love with Colorado and purchased property and built a home. The Stanley was built as a summer resort for guests Freelan and Flora entertained during their extended vacations in Colorado.

2006-estes-park-stanley-hotel-2It’s believed Flora haunts the hotel to this day, enjoying one of her favorite pastimes of playing the piano late at night when no one is around. Tales abound of visitors claiming sounds of revelry occurring in the empty ballroom.  Room 217 is purported to be haunted by the ghost of a long-term housekeeper. If you gain her favor, she’ll help you unpack. If not…. Well…. It is the room allegedly occupied by Stephen King at one time. Inspiring The Shining?

I don’t know about that, but the hair on the back of my neck stood up as I took photos of The Stanley Hotel outside in broad daylight.

Want to know more about haunted places in Colorado? Click on the link.

Speaking of Hauntings!

Did you know, most present day Halloween traditions are traceable to the ancient Celtic day of the dead? Halloween consists of mysterious customs, buthalloween image each has a history, or at least a story behind it.

Take wearing costumes, and roaming from door to door demanding treats. This behavior can be traced to the Celtic period and the first few centuries of the Christian era, when it was thought that the souls of the dead were out and about, along with fairies, witches, and demons. Offerings of food and drink were left out to placate them. As the centuries wore on, people began dressing like these creatures, performing antics in exchange for food and drink. This is where the practice of trick-or-treating began. To this day, vampires, witches, ghosts, and skeletons are among the favorite costumes.

Our Halloween also retains activities from the original harvest holiday of Samhain, such as bobbing for apples and carving vegetables, (pumpkins) as well as the fruits, nuts, and spices for cider associated with the day. Although at my house, hot chocolate is pretty popular, since Halloween almost guarantees the first snow of the year.

AWitchsJourney_w10497_medLooking for a fun Halloween Read? A Witch’s Journey is full of meddling ghosts, shapeshifters, sexy witch, a ruggedly-handsome Navy SEAL. An exciting story of redemption, wildlife rescue and Halloween festivals. Available at Amazon.com, Kobo, and Barnes & Noble.  And I let you in on a little secret.  A Witch’s Journey is available in audiobook, so grab yours!  After you’ve read A Witch’s Journey, you’ll want the sequel, A Witch’s Holiday Wedding, also available in audiobook  Amazon.com, greenwitch

Well, if you’ll excuse me, it’s time to don my vampire costume, custom fitted fangs and pull up a stool in the shadows. With a candy bowl beside me, I sneakily turn on the fog machine. Out of the mist, I’ll greet the little trick or treaters or scare the bejeebers out of the older ones with bats hanging over head and screeching on my command. Won’t you join me? Happy Halloween!

 

 

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Stalk- Author Victoria Danann – Halloween Spooktacular

Give a spooktacular welcome to  Victoria Danann, author of Stalk, just released October 21, 2018.
Pull up a chair, grab a drink of your choice from the cauldron. Take your choice of a bat wing Chocolate Chip or Pumpkin, or Peanut Butter cookie from the plate. Let’s  enjoy a little Halloween Poetry and find out a little about Victoria’s new release, Stalk.
“My mother says
I must not pass       
Too near that glass;         
She is afraid that I will see        
A little witch that looks like
me,
With a red, red mouth to whisper
low 
The very thing I should not
know!”   
         
“Alack for all your mother’s
care!      
A bird of the air,   
A wistful wind, or (I suppose   
Sent by some hapless boy) a rose,              
With breath too sweet, will
whisper low        
Tell us a little about Stalk!

Every breath you take.

 
The first coming of chaos. Twelve
thousand years ago, members of a more advanced race crossed into our dimension
when the barriers temporarily collapsed.
Trapped in our world, the aliens,
who were also shifters, built structures that eventually caused the great flood
and the sinking of Atlantis.
Some of the alien DNA survived in
progeny that carried an untraceable shifter gene, dormant until awakened by
mating with a full blooded werewolf.

A peek between the pages of Stalk: 
Shortly after the incident, the event came to be known as May Day simply because it occurred on the first of May. The term would be forever after altered to represent the pandemonium that followed the dimension overlap that left so many stranded. It worked because it was a good choice because of disassociating the incident with high emotion.
Some from other places were left here. Some that belonged here had disappeared and, even though every city had a centralized location where loved ones could post photos and leave flowers or burning votives, everybody knew somebody who had lost someone. And the world had been turned on end in the blink of an eye.
The conventional wisdom about withholding news panic-inducing news from the public was bypassed. Cover up was impossible in this case and overnight, everyone knew that we experience reality alongside many others, invisible to us. Everyone also learned conclusively that other species exist in those realities.
One of the species that had been stranded in this dimension were canine shifters, werewolves as they were sometimes called in fantasy. Being disinclined to panic, the werewolves, each individually, used their cunning to quickly assess their circumstances and determine what was required to survive. Utilizing their innate talent for strategy, and seduction, they were able to identify missing humans who were a reasonably close match to anthropoid bodies, were without families and were, basically, antisocial. Being shrewd as well as cunning, they made matches with candidates with financial assets.
New lives could be built in a new world without money, but money could go a long way toward building walls of privacy and providing the one thing they needed most, after company, of course. That thing was territory. Freedom.
The government made it almost too easy by publishing an open database of the missing and requested that corrections be made if someone listed was present and accounted for. Each shifter made his choice then notified the government that they were not missing. They were sorry for the misunderstanding, but had been sailing in the Caribbean or fishing in the Gulf or on an archeological expedition in the Amazon.
By the time the dust of the catastrophe began to settle, seven shifters had found each other through a curious intersection of tech and primeval instinct. Each of the seven, while dealing with his own personal disorientation and sense of loss, quickly identified the Pacific Northwest as the most suitable habitat on the North American continent. Millions of acres of national parks and wildlife reserves was attractive. That, and the cooler temperatures, made the locale almost ideal as shifter temperatures run a full three degrees warmer than humans.
It took only a few weeks to come across each other. Shifters in wolf form can cover great distances. In so doing they came across the scent of others who were similar to themselves if not identical, but definitely distinctive from wild wolves. And each felt immeasurable relief to find others. For social animals, abject solitude would be a sentence to hell.
That was one of the reasons why Ken Sahabe was admitted to the pack without hesitation even though he was not a canine, but a spotted hyena. The pack decided Ken’s social and hunting needs were close enough and admitted him.
The hard wiring of pack behavior hadn’t changed for millennia. However, the language used to describe certain facts of pack life was altered for modern times so that it seemed more politic. For example, rather than saying the alpha decided, which was true, the thought would be expressed as ‘the pack decided’. In Ken’s case, though the actual wolves didn’t have a real vote, they accepted him like one of their own species.
About the Author:
Eight times #1 Amazon Paranormal Romance Bestseller
 
OVER ONE MILLION BOOKS SOLD
 
New York Times and USA Today Bestselling author, Victoria Danann, has won the prestigious Reviewers’ Choice Award for BEST PARANORMAL ROMANCE SERIES the past four years in a row! Click follow to get notifications of new releases.
 
Knights of Black Swan – BEST PARANORMAL ROMANCE SERIES (2013, 2014, 2015, 2016)
 
A Summoner’s Tale – BEST PARANORMAL ROMANCE NOVEL (2013)
 
Moonlight – BEST VAMPIRE/SHIFTER NOVEL (2013)
 
Solomon’s Sieve – BEST VAMPIRE NOVEL (2014)
 
Falcon – BEST PARANORMAL ROMANCE NOVEL (2016)
 
In addition to the brave and beautiful vampire hunting knights, Victoria writes other paranormal romances that often touch on scifi/fantasy along with contemporary bikers for those who love it when the bad boys are soooooo good.
 
Victoria co-hosts the popular ROMANCE BETWEEN THE PAGES podcast which can be found on itunes or at www.romancecast.com. She and co-host, Riley J. Ford, interview the biggest names in romance every week. Ever wonder about the personalities behind your favorite books? Some of them just might surprise you with their interests, wit, lifestyles, and sense of humor.
 
www.VictoriaDanann.com
 
www.Facebook.com/VictoriaDanannBooks
 
www.RomanceCast.com  

 

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OHHH...It was Hauntingly Spooktacular having you with us today.  Please feel free to stop by anytime. Good Luck with Stalk! 

 

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Cover Reveal for A Witch’s Holiday Wedding

awitchsholidaywedding_w11070_300Today Author’s Secrets reveals the cover for A Witch’s Holiday Wedding from me, Tena Stetler!  Drum roll if you please!  

Don’t you just love the Christmasy feel of the cover? Release date for A Witch’s Holiday Wedding is December 9, 2016, pre-order information coming soon! 

As a special treat, here’s a sneak peek in to A Witch’s Holiday Wedding:

After she set her glass down, Lathen brushed a couple strands of hair out of her eyes and searched her face. “Are you all right?”

“I’m tired, my wedding is in a couple weeks, I have ghosts fighting over who is going to do what. Guests that have no idea the place is haunted and… Your family and pack, my parents, Gwen… To top it all off, the head of my clan, who is a ghost, is sitting in front of me wanting to know who is coming to the wedding and whether the ghosts will be outed. How could I possibly be all right?”

“When you put it that way.” Lathen chuckled. “It sounds just a bit… I don’t know…crazy?” His right eyebrow winged up. She saw mischief sparkle in his eyes. “We could still elope,” he offered.

 You are going to want to add A Witch’s Holiday Wedding to your holiday shopping list.  Wow, did I just say that?  Holiday shopping list, gotta start one, Christmas is only a wink and a whisper away. LOL

Have you started your holiday shopping list?  When to you usually start shopping?  Are you finished long before December 25th? or one of those out Christmas Eve?  I’l love to hear from you.

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TItle, Cover and Release Date Reveal for Beast of All by JC McKenzie

Today I have a treat for you from author JC McKenzie.  Title, Cover and Release Date forView More: http://photos.pass.us/headshot2 Beast of All. A Carus Novel, Book 5.

I convinced her to give us a sneak peek of Beast of All:

Beast of All cover“Two months ago my world collapsed and the beast reigned. Seven weeks ago the SRD captured me. Nine days ago, they injected me with something vile. Today, I break free. And tomorrow? I’ll make them pay.”

Badass Shifter Andy McNeilly wakes up from a horrible nightmare, only to discover it wasn’t a dream, and she’s no longer quite so badass. Chemically curbed, Andy has lost touch with her feras and beast when she needs them most. Can she regain control of her supernatural abilities in time to reap retribution from her enemies, or will she fall as fodder in a power play for control of Vancouver’s seedy underworld?

I wheedled an excerpt for Beast of All out of her too! Just for you.  Enjoy!

No feras. No beast. Whatever they shot me with blocked my communication with the animals. Did it prevent shifting as well? I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to call a form and change. Only a headache answered. Dread flittered across my skin. Was this permanent?
As the Carus, the genetic throwback to the first demi-god progeny of the beast goddess, I caged a beast with rage and power rivaled by few, and possessed more than one animal familiar to shift into.
At least, I did until the SRD shot me full of chemicals. Would I ever regain my abilities? Hear the indignant screech of the peregrine falcon? Or the lusty purr of the mountain lion? Or soulful howl of the wolf?
My heart hammered, punching bone. A buzzing sensation filled my head. The “wrongness” of my condition grated against my nerves, slicing them into slivers like a planer shucking off wood shavings.
Something in my abdomen swelled, as if the beast pushed against whatever barrier caged and hid her from me.
I’ll get you out, I told her, not knowing if she could hear. We’ll make them pay.

Release Date: October 19, 2016

Cover Art by Debbie Taylor from DCA Graphics

Don’t you love the cover? The talented Debbie Taylor does a wonderful job!  Look forward to getting my hands on the new release.  How about you?  Only 84 more days!

Thanks JC.  Best of luck with Beast of All!

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