Another insanely busy weekend but a good one. It was the regional science fair on Saturday and I’m one of the judges. Plenty of joy and innovation in these young folk, great to see. They had some very good projects.
I also had an Ostara festival that I went to. some of the participants are some of my paranormal investigating friends and all of us have an interest in it. So yeah, definitely These Haunted Hills came from somewhere. Some of the early reviews have been very positive so I’m very happy about that.
This is Old Man’s Cave also in the Hocking Hills which is where the main object of Josh and Brendan’s investigation can be found as can Brendan’s cabin. While Old Man’s Cave isn’t heavily featured in the story (and I do recommend hiking here, the trail is relatively easy judging by the fact I can do it) the Hocking Hills are the titular hills for this. So have a little snippet of the guys coming up to the haunted hotel.
Josh slowed the truck, bouncing them over a deeply rutted part of the ghost of a road. As he made a sharp turn around a copse of trees, Brendan expected Sleeping Beauty’s castle to appear or at least a magical thorn patch. Instead, a ramshackle building popped into view. Smaller than he expected, more rectangular than artistic, the Crooked Pines Lodge stood surrounded by trees, many of them pines. Shreds of white paint clung to the gray wooden bones of the hotel. Most of the windows had been reduced to ragged teeth of glass, and some sort of climbing vine claimed one end of the building as its own.
Blurb:
Young wildlife conservation professor, Joshua Zimmerman, adores foxes, steampunk, and paranormal investigation. As a geek of the first order, Josh is a collector of nerdy memorabilia and tattoos, and he’s an avid steampunk cosplayer. When his favorite author hires him for some ghost hunting for his new project, Josh can hardly believe his luck.
As an author of the wildly successful urban fantasy series, The Green Tablet, Brendan Halloran should have it all. And he did until his young son, Connor, died of cancer. Heartbroken and drowning in grief, Brendan stops writing, stops living his life. His marriage has disintegrated, leaving Brendan trapped in the moment Connor died.
When Brendan rents a cabin in Ohio’s Hocking Hills, it’s ostensibly to research his next book, an adult paranormal tale. Brendan hires a local professor who is an expert on the paranormal, thinking if he does pull out of his tail spin and makes good on his plan to write a new book, he might as well do it right. And the perfect place to investigate could be the remains of an old hotel constructed to suit the serial killer who built it.
Brendan finds himself swept away, completely unprepared for the joy and enthusiasm Josh brings to everything he does. Step by step, Brendan reenters life. His head might not be convinced he’s ready to love again, but his heart disagrees. Unfortunately for him, the ghost is every bit as vicious as the killer was in life, and he and Joshua have a target on their backs.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day. There is a connection to that in These Haunted Hills. Brendan is Irish American and lives in Dublin, Ohio, home to one of the largest Irish festivals anywhere (which I sadly no longer go to much because it’s the first week of August so it’s boiling with very little shade and too many people). He and Josh do get into a sporting discussion about who makes better beer the Irish or the German. (Both is the answer).
One of the earliest places Josh takes Brendan to is to see the Weeping Angel in one of Athens’s cemeteries. Here she is. Her story is well known in the area (points to the linked up YouTube on it). This of course is the perfect opener for Josh to be the enormous geek that he is (with Brendan close behind) launching right into the Weeping Angels from Doctor Who.
YouTube about the weeping angel cemetery in Athens OH
I could take you up to the weeping angel statue, right up from the coffee shop we were in, but she’s not the cool Doctor Who kind of angel.”
“You are such a geek.” Brendan crowed.
“As advertised.” Josh thumped his chest.
“I’ll be happy she’s not a Whovian angel. I’m not up for quantum-locked villains on our first day.”
“I’m definitely not the only geek climbing this hill.”
Blurb:
Young wildlife conservation professor, Joshua Zimmerman, adores foxes, steampunk, and paranormal investigation. As a geek of the first order, Josh is a collector of nerdy memorabilia and tattoos, and he’s an avid steampunk cosplayer. When his favorite author hires him for some ghost hunting for his new project, Josh can hardly believe his luck.
As an author of the wildly successful urban fantasy series, The Green Tablet, Brendan Halloran should have it all. And he did until his young son, Connor, died of cancer. Heartbroken and drowning in grief, Brendan stops writing, stops living his life. His marriage has disintegrated, leaving Brendan trapped in the moment Connor died.
When Brendan rents a cabin in Ohio’s Hocking Hills, it’s ostensibly to research his next book, an adult paranormal tale. Brendan hires a local professor who is an expert on the paranormal, thinking if he does pull out of his tail spin and makes good on his plan to write a new book, he might as well do it right. And the perfect place to investigate could be the remains of an old hotel constructed to suit the serial killer who built it.
Brendan finds himself swept away, completely unprepared for the joy and enthusiasm Josh brings to everything he does. Step by step, Brendan reenters life. His head might not be convinced he’s ready to love again, but his heart disagrees. Unfortunately for him, the ghost is every bit as vicious as the killer was in life, and he and Joshua have a target on their backs.
My friend J. Scott Coatsworth has a new book coming out tomorrow: The Hencha Queen. Check it out. It looks great.
Book Blurb:
SILYA COMES INTO HER OWN, BUT WILL SHE BE ENOUGH?
Silya finally has everything she always wanted. She’s the Hencha Queen, head of the Temple, and is working to master her newfound talents. So why does the world pick now to fall apart?
Her once-nemesis Raven is off riding dragons, and their mutual friend (and her ex) Aik is nowhere to be found. Meanwhile, a new threat menaces the Heartland from the East, and if she can’t convince a reluctant Gullton city council to prepare for the worst, she may lose everyone and everything she’s ever cared about.
As she uses her magic-like abilities, wit and sheer determination to try to save the city, she’s joined by Raven and his new friends. Will their help tip the scales? And will they finally find out what happened to Aik as a dark storm threatens to sweep them all away?
Forget messy. Things just got apocalyptic.
Series Blurb:
The Tharassas Cycle is a four book sci-fantasy series set on the recently colonized world of Tharassas. When humans first arrived on planet, they thought they were alone until the hencha mind made itself known. But now a new threat has arisen to challenge both humankind and their new allies on this alien world.
First Two Books On Sale (& Get a Free Book)
Books 1 & 2 are on sale through March 31st for just 99¢ each (eBooks, all vendors). And if you buy one (or all three) of the main series books, email scott@jscottcoatsworth.com and let him know and he’ll send you a free copy of Tales From Tharassas, the prequel.
A sharp crack filled the wine cellar. Kerrick swung the heavy mallet back and then assailed the flopwood boards that blocked the tunnel entrance again. The ancient wood splintered under the blow, sending shards clattering across the stone-paved floor.
It felt good to work out his frustrations. Still, the stubborn wood held out against his assault.
He rested the mallet on the black-tiled stone floor, wiping the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand. Even after a hundred years, the barrier was strong. He’d tried to pry the boards out of the solid stone, but they’d been fastened in too tightly. Brute force it is.
“You’re doing great!” Cor’Lea’s voice was artificially bright, and she was as tall as he was, maybe a little taller, peering over his shoulder at the sealed tunnel entrance.
Silya had tasked her with bringing him down here to check out these hidden caverns under the Temple, in preparation for the coming war. Important, sure, but also clearly an excuse to get him out from underfoot while she prepared for her official Raising.
He grunted. “Thanks. These boards are hard as iron.” And hard as Silya’s will.
One day things would be different between them, once this crisis was over. I just have to be patient.
Coral laughed. “I’m sure a big, strong man like you can break through them easily.” She squeezed his bicep appreciatively.
He shrugged her off. He wasn’t sure if the gawky initiate was flirting with him or just trying to encourage him to get on with it, but either way, he wasn’t interested. “Stand back.” He hefted the hammer again, and she scurried out of his way.
He suppressed a smile, swinging the mallet around for another heavy blow.
Craack.
This time the board buckled inward visibly. Another few hits should do it.
He pulled back the heavy iron hammer again and hit the same spot with blow after blow. Craack. Craack. Craack.
The mallet broke through and a board fell away into splinters, clattering across the stone floor. One down, three more to go. “Why did they seal this cavern up?”
Cor’Lea gestured at the natural chamber. “There was a winery here before the Temple. Sister Dor said they used to use it for extra wine storage.” She looked around the natural chamber, which was now filled with wooden shelving holding a variety of bottled food stores. “When Jas ordered the Temple to be constructed, they kept this wide cavern and blocked off the rest of the tunnels.”
“Just in case the gully rats got in?” That thief Raven had apparently made his home in one of the underground tunnels. Who knew who else—or what else—lived down there?
Cor’Lea snorted. “Maybe.”
Are tunnels all connected, somehow? That was one of Silya’s most urgent projects, to map out the network of caverns beneath the city. Another reason she sent me down here—to get me out from under her robes.
A few more whacks at the next board served to both break it and let out his frustrations at the situation preventing him from doing his sworn job and keeping them apart. And at what she said was coming.
Craack. Craack. Craack.
The board snapped in half, and he judged that he’d cleared enough space to step through into the blocked-off tunnel. “Hand me that lantern?
Cor’Lea complied, taking the opportunity to brush his hand.
He rolled his eyes. I should be flattered. But his heart was already taken.
It was times like these he wished his brother Enrick were still alive. He’d know what to do. He’d been absurdly confident about everything, even though he’d been younger than Kerrick.
Kerrick wasn’t great with women.
He took the lantern and stepped over the bottom board, holding it in front of him. The bright light temporarily blinded him as he sought to get his bearings.
“What do you see?” Cor’Lea peered through the hole behind him.
His sight adjusted, and the tunnel’s walls came into focus.
He whistled. Stacked along the side of the tunnel were hundreds of crates, all strapped together in groups and sealed. “It’s… I don’t know what it is. But I’ll bet Silya will be surprised.” They’d have to find a place to put all this stuff—whatever it was, it was likely rotten after all this time. Silya needed somewhere to store people, not ancient goods.
Cor’Lea stepped carefully over the splintered boards to join him. “What do you think’s inside them?”
The long row of crates disappeared into the darkness. Who knew what the ancients had considered valuable enough to stash down here. Coin? Lost treasure? “One way to find out. Does the Temple have a crowbar?”
Scott lives with his husband Mark in a yellow bungalow in Sacramento. He was indoctrinated into fantasy and sci fi by his mother at the tender age of nine. He devoured her library, but as he grew up, he wondered where all the people like him were.
He decided that if there weren’t queer characters in his favorite genres, he would remake them to his own ends.
A Rainbow Award winning author, he runs Queer Sci Fi, QueeRomance Ink, Liminal Fiction, and Other Worlds Ink with Mark, sites that celebrate fiction reflecting queer reality, and is the committee chair for the Indie Authors Committee at the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA).
Running late t his week thanks to spring break. If nothing else, Josh and Brendan were whispering new ideas on the drive.
Strouds Run/Dow Lake and the haunted Anthony Cabin nearby also briefly made These Haunted Hills. The haunting at Dow Lake is tragic whether or not you actually believe in ghosts. There was a real live murder there in the sixties.
Regardless, it’s a beautiful spot. Today’s snippet is Josh and his BFF, Cassia, discussing where to take Brendan ghost hunting.
So, I was thinking we could head out to either Strouds Run or the Anthony cabin at Hocking College earlier in the day, and I’ve cleared it for us to be at the Opera House. They have a group rehearsing, so we can’t disturb them, but if we’re relatively quiet, they don’t see a problem.”
“Let’s make it the Anthony cabin since it’s closer to the Opera House. I doubt he’d say no to going out to eat.”
“Sounds good to me. I’m jealous of all the time you get to spend with him, but I’m happy he’s not an ass.
“He’s been astonishingly ego-free so far. I’m sure he’ll love this plan.”
Blurb:
Young wildlife conservation professor, Joshua Zimmerman, adores foxes, steampunk, and paranormal investigation. As a geek of the first order, Josh is a collector of nerdy memorabilia and tattoos, and he’s an avid steampunk cosplayer. When his favorite author hires him for some ghost hunting for his new project, Josh can hardly believe his luck.
As an author of the wildly successful urban fantasy series, The Green Tablet, Brendan Halloran should have it all. And he did until his young son, Connor, died of cancer. Heartbroken and drowning in grief, Brendan stops writing, stops living his life. His marriage has disintegrated, leaving Brendan trapped in the moment Connor died.
When Brendan rents a cabin in Ohio’s Hocking Hills, it’s ostensibly to research his next book, an adult paranormal tale. Brendan hires a local professor who is an expert on the paranormal, thinking if he does pull out of his tail spin and makes good on his plan to write a new book, he might as well do it right. And the perfect place to investigate could be the remains of an old hotel constructed to suit the serial killer who built it.
Brendan finds himself swept away, completely unprepared for the joy and enthusiasm Josh brings to everything he does. Step by step, Brendan reenters life. His head might not be convinced he’s ready to love again, but his heart disagrees. Unfortunately for him, the ghost is every bit as vicious as the killer was in life, and he and Joshua have a target on their backs.
I’m at the Loveland Frogman Festival keeping it weird (it is any wonder Josh is how Josh is in These Haunted Hills? I wonder where he gets it from).
For those already buying and reviewing this novel, I appreciate you so much. Thank you.
The above is the Harvey Wells home in Wellston OH (We’re now getting really close to where I live) This house has a sad history filled with death, including suicide. It does make its way into the book. I have gone out there to do some EVP sessions but there is this dog that won’t shut up (he’s in the book too)
Snippet:
From there, they went into Wellston to Harvey Wells’s home. Brendan frowned, seeing the large house, perched on a hill, all boarded up. It seemed a shame. He trailed after Josh up the stairs to the home.
“I’ve gotten some good EVPs here,” Josh said as a neighbor dog started losing its mind about them being there.
“Tell me about it.”
Josh scowled. “The EVPs are creepy
Blurb:
Young wildlife conservation professor, Joshua Zimmerman, adores foxes, steampunk, and paranormal investigation. As a geek of the first order, Josh is a collector of nerdy memorabilia and tattoos, and he’s an avid steampunk cosplayer. When his favorite author hires him for some ghost hunting for his new project, Josh can hardly believe his luck.
As an author of the wildly successful urban fantasy series, The Green Tablet, Brendan Halloran should have it all. And he did until his young son, Connor, died of cancer. Heartbroken and drowning in grief, Brendan stops writing, stops living his life. His marriage has disintegrated, leaving Brendan trapped in the moment Connor died.
When Brendan rents a cabin in Ohio’s Hocking Hills, it’s ostensibly to research his next book, an adult paranormal tale. Brendan hires a local professor who is an expert on the paranormal, thinking if he does pull out of his tail spin and makes good on his plan to write a new book, he might as well do it right. And the perfect place to investigate could be the remains of an old hotel constructed to suit the serial killer who built it.
Brendan finds himself swept away, completely unprepared for the joy and enthusiasm Josh brings to everything he does. Step by step, Brendan reenters life. His head might not be convinced he’s ready to love again, but his heart disagrees. Unfortunately for him, the ghost is every bit as vicious as the killer was in life, and he and Joshua have a target on their backs.
Jana Denardo 