Publisher: The Wild Rose Press
Cover blurb: Caught with pot in her dorm room, Bailey Randolph is exiled to a relative's ancestral home in Virginia to straighten herself out. Banishment to Maple Hill is dismal, until a ghost appears requesting her help. Bailey is frightened but intrigued. Then her girlhood crush, Eric Burke, arrives and suddenly Maple Hill isn't so bad.
To Eric, wounded in Vietnam, his military career shattered, this homecoming feels no less like exile. But when he finds Bailey at Maple Hill, her fairy-like beauty gives him reason to hope--until she tells him about the ghost haunting the house. Then he wonders if her one experiment with pot has made her crazy.
As Bailey and Eric draw closer, he agrees to help her find a long-forgotten Christmas gift the ghost wants. But will the magic of Christmas be enough to make Eric believe--in Bailey and the ghost--before the Christmas bells ring?
1) How did this story come to you?
In a vivid dream that took place in the beautiful old Virginia home place where my father grew up and I visited during the holidays about a young woman, a guest in the house at Christmas, and the mysterious gentleman she met. That dream nagged at me until I wrote the story. I’m also very nostalgic about the late 1960’s, thus the time period the story is set in, and an even earlier era 1918 and the end of WW1--that accounts for the flashbacks.
2) Tell us about the journey to getting this book published.
Writing it. My Faery Rose (light paranormal) editor loved the story, so the journey was all in the creation.
3) Tell me three things about yourself that would surprise your readers.
I’m a wee bit psychic. Stories and characters often come to me in dreams, also events I’d rather not know about sometimes. I pray a lot.
4) What are you working on now and what's next for you?
The next story in my ‘Somewhere’ series, the sequel to Scottish time travel romance Somewhere My Lass, while I wait to hear back from my historical editor about a manuscript I turned in, the third in my colonial frontier trilogy and the sequel to Through the Fire. I write for two different lines at the Wild Rose Press.
5) Parting comments?
If you enjoy an intriguing mystery with Gothic overtones and heart-tugging romance set in vintage America then Somewhere the Bells Ring is for you. And did I mention the ghost?
6) Where can fans find you on the internet?
My blog is the happening place and has links to everything else: http://bethtrissel.wordpress.com/
