Fantasy author Marsha A. Moore stops by today on the release of her latest paranormal romance, in her series, Coon Hollow Coven Tales, to tell us a little bit about her new release, WITCH’S CURSED CABIN. You know how much we love witches, around here, so I asked her to tell us a little about their her heroine’s newest adventure! Take it away, Marsha.
Would you dare to visit Coon Hollow Coven’s haunted carriage house?
by
Marsha A. Moore
Coon Hollow is the setting for Witch’s Cursed Cabin, the second of my series, Coon Hollow Coven Tales, and there are a lot of strange happenings going on down in the Hollow.
The Hollow is a fictitious small valley in southern Indiana, south of Bloomington. Somewhere in Brown County near Nashville and Bean Blossom, if you’re from around those parts. It’s Hoosier hill-country at its finest.
The coven was founded on strict rules of adherence to lifestyle and customs that existed at the time of the coven’s conception, in the mid-1930s. The rationale: to keep the transmission of witchcraft from one generation to the next as pure as possible. Members dress in styles of that period and drive long sleek Packards, Studebakers, and Nashes.
Coon Hollow’s coven members stay to themselves but sometimes need to do business in the nearby small town of Bentbone. When witches and townies mingle, all sorts of trouble and fun can happen.
Several times during the year, the coven puts on magical events open to the public as charity fundraisers for their schools and eldercare. Witch’s Cursed Cabin opens with the coven preparing for their annual Halloween haunted house. Real spiders are enchanted to drop onto guests’ faces. Bespelled live rats run the length of the halls, not stopping for human feet, legs, or other body parts. Ick! Floorboards randomly are set to give way and take selected guests to unknown destinations. Common bedroom objects, such as brushes, nightgowns, and toys, are empowered to chase guests. The scares are so real, people come from all over the state to see these attractions!
You’re invited to enjoy the thrills and magic at the coven’s haunted house, and while you’re in the Hollow, stay for the chilling Samhain celebration in Witch’s Cursed Cabin!
Thank you, Juli, for featuring my new release today on your blog!
Thank you, Marsha. Spiders dropping onto people’s faces? EEKK! Thanks for the warning. I think maybe I’ll try to find another path through the haunted house, this year. 😉 Want to check out Witch’s Cursed Cabin? Here’s the synopsis:
Witch’s Cursed Cabin
Coon Hollow Coven Tales
Book Two
Marsha A. Moore
Genre: Paranormal romance
Date of Publication: 4-27-16
Number of pages: 380
Word Count: 111,000
Cover Artist: Marsha A. Moore
Book Description:
Eager to be on her own away from home, twenty-year-old Aggie Anders accepts a relative’s invitation to live in Coon Hollow Coven. Although she’s a witch from a different coven, what locals say about the Hollow confuses her. How can witchcraft there live and breathe through souls of the dead?
Aggie’s new residence in this strange southern Indiana world is a deserted homestead cabin. The property’s carriage house serves as the coven’s haunted Halloween fundraiser. It’s a great opportunity for her to make new friends, especially with the coven’s sexy new High Priest Logan.
But living in the homestead also brings Aggie enemies. Outsiders aren’t welcome. A cantankerous, old neighbor tries to frighten her off by warning her that the homestead is cursed. Local witches who practice black magic attempt to use their evil to drive Aggie away and rid their coven of her unusual powers as a sun witch.
Determined to stay and fit in, Aggie discovers not only that the cabin is cursed, but she alone is destined to break the curse before moonrise on Samhain. If she fails, neither the living nor the dead will be safe.
About the Coon Hollow Coven Tales Series
The series is about a coven of witches in a fictitious southern Indiana community, south of Bloomington, the neck of the woods where I spent my favorite childhood years surrounded by the love of a big family. The books are rich with a warm Hoosier down-home feel. There are interesting interactions between coven members and locals from the nearby small town of Bentbone. If magic wasn’t enough of a difference between the two groups, the coven folk adhere to the 1930s lifestyle that existed when the coven formed.
Excerpt from Chapter One: The Homestead
A shove of my shoulder pried the rusty hinges on the heavy log cabin door loose. I flung my blond braid to my back and peered inside. Beings and critters, alive and furry as well as undead and translucent, flew, crawled, or slithered across dark recesses of the hallway, sitting room, and stairwell.
“You weren’t kidding. This place is haunted.” I shuddered and looked over my shoulder at Cerise. She looked perky as always with her dark bobbed hair and lively brown eyes beneath horn-rimmed eyeglasses. “Were those things relations or varmints?” I took a cautious step over the threshold to escape the blustery weather and unbuttoned my corduroy jacket.
“Oh, both, Aggie. Ghosts of witch kin and their talking animal familiars,” she said and moved past me to lift sheets off the sitting room furniture.
I raised a brow, curious about what talking familiars were but was too afraid to ask. She didn’t seem to think they were bad, and I needed a place to stay.
Cerise dropped the sheets in a pile and wiped her dusty hands on her skirt. “Those sorts of ghosts are in all the homes here in Coon Hollow Coven. Maybe some animal spirits, too, from the surrounding woods. This property has at least fifty acres of forest. The ghosts are harmless, part of the family. At least no neighbors have complained, that I’ve heard.”
Eyeing corners of the parlor and the length of the hall, I wondered if I could ever get used to living with ghosts of people who’d lived here before. In New Wish, Indiana, where I’d spent my entire twenty years, we only had an occasional ghost. Usually lost souls who, for some reason, hadn’t found their peace before death took them. Most times, those folks had been tormented by darkness and experimented with black magic while they’d lived. Or so Mom told me, but I always thought that was just her way of keeping me in line.
I pushed those thoughts out of my head. I wanted a place of my own more than anything else, and not in the tiny town of New Wish where everyone knew me…or thought they did. They all said I was the spitting image of my Aunt Faye, with the same light blond straight hair, deep blue eyes, dark brows, and quiet personality. Everyone thought I’d grow up to be like her with a houseful of kids, seven or more. Fact was, they didn’t know me. I wasn’t sure I even knew myself. There was so much I wanted to learn and do that wouldn’t happen if I stayed at my parents’ home.
Cerise struggled to open the stuck window. “Aggie, can you help me here? Some fresh air might tempt a few spirits outside. This place has been vacant since my mother passed in 2009. We might find just about anything in here after five years.”
ALSO IN THIS SERIES:
WITCH’S MOONSTONE LOCKET, A Coon Hollow Coven Tale (book 1)
Synopsis:
Twenty-three-year-old Jancie Sadler was out of the room when her mother died, and her heart still longs for their lost goodbye. Aching to ease her sorrow, Aunt Starla gives Jancie a diary that changes her entire life. In entries from the 1930s, her great grandmother revealed how she coped with her own painful loss by seeking out a witch from nearby Coon Hollow Coven. The witch wore the griever’s moonstone locket, which allowed whoever could unlock its enchantment to talk with the dead.
Determined to find that locket, Jancie goes to the coven’s annual carnival held in her small southern Indiana town of Bentbone. This opposes her father’s strict rule: stay away from witches. But she’s an adult now and can make her own decisions. She meets Rowe McCoy, the kind and handsome witch who wears the moonstone. He agrees to let her try to open the locket, but they’re opposed by High Priestess Adara and her jealous desire to possess him. Desperate for closure with her mother, Jancie persists and cannot turn away from a perilous path filled with magic, romance, and danger.
Also available on Kindle and in paperback.
About the Author:
Marsha A. Moore loves to write fantasy and paranormal romance. Much of her life feeds the creative flow she uses to weave highly imaginative tales.
The magic of art and nature spark life into her writing, as well as other pursuits of watercolor painting and drawing. She’s been a yoga enthusiast for over a decade and is a registered yoga teacher. Her practice helps weave the mystical into her writing. After a move from Toledo to Tampa in 2008, she’s happily transformed into a Floridian, in love with the outdoors where she’s always on the lookout for portals to other worlds. Marsha is crazy about cycling. She lives with her husband on a large saltwater lagoon, where taking her kayak out is a real treat. She never has enough days spent at the beach, usually scribbling away at stories with toes wiggling in the sand. Every day at the beach is magical!
Website: http://MarshaAMoore.com
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Amazon author page: http://www.amazon.com/author/marshaamoore
Goodreads author page http://www.goodreads.com/marshaamoore
Thanks lots for featuring my book, Juli!
Thank you for being with us, Marsha! I can’t wait to read Witch’s Cursed Cabin! 🙂