Happy Halloween!!!
The excerpt that I'm sharing today is fitting for Halloween, it has a supernatural element to it. Ooohhhh.....
Synopsis:
ENTRANCING OPPORTUNITIES BECKON A YOUNG GIRL...
It's 1987, and 16-year-old Carin White desperately needs her first job. An elegant woman she's never met appears at her door offering employment. "Aunt" Helen asks Carin to work for her on the family's rambling, enigmatic estate in the tiny resort town of Eureka Springs.
IN A WORLD WHERE NOTHING IS AS IT SEEMS...
Carin enjoys her work and falls in love with the beautiful Mallace Mansion. But a brutal assault forces Carin to confront her own capacity for violence. Carin learns her mother concealed her identity from her, and the mansion hides horrific secrets of its own.
AND ONLY LOVE CAN SAVE HER.
Carin exposes the true reason she was asked to summer on the estate. Will she be strong enough to recognize love and redeem her family legacy? Or will the temptations of power and control lure her to the same dark places where others lost themselves?
Exclusive Blurb/Backstory to Open Door:
Amanda White strengthens her grip on the steering wheel as her legs go numb. She feels her foot on the pedal but no seat beneath her. Drawing shallow breaths, she resists the sensation of falling. On the quiet street in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, her car’s sharp-cornered body rumbles and its blinker clicks away her last moments with her daughter.
Carin, nervous and excited, pops the buckle of her seatbelt and grasps the handle of her bag. Her mother never mentioned they had family, let alone family living here. Mallace Mansion flirts with her through the leaves of tall oaks. Carin needs this job, her first. “Aunt” Helen offered her a full summer’s employment—in a mansion, no less!
“I’ll be fine, Mom.” She kisses the lines crossing her mother’s forehead. “So will you. I love you.”
The car door creaks in protest, giving a final thud as Carin slams it and bounds to the fence, the threadbare bag dangling beside her. Carin latches the gate between them. She blows kisses as Amanda waits, smiling without breathing or tears.
The sweltering summer air fails to warm Amanda. She watches a small, blond woman answer the heavy door, and her Carin disappears. It’s done. The car shudders to life again as Amanda prays, whether to God or her dead husband she can’t say.
“Help her; watch over her. Please, Andrew, don’t be wrong.”
In many ways a traditional gothic tale, Open Door toys with the supernatural genre as Carin chooses love in the summer of 1988. Vivid descriptions reveal Mallace Mansion, the gothic character who cannot speak. In love, our heroine will not succumb to a supernatural being’s seduction. Instead, you might say magic falls for her as Carin discovers her secret history and the hidden life within Mallace Mansion’s walls.
About the Author
Christine Locke was born in California and grew up in various locations around the United States as a Navy brat. She was the oldest of six children and today is mother and step-mother to seven. She attended Texas A&M University, receiving her Master of Arts degree in Comparative Literature in 1995.
Christine has worked as a writing instructor, a salesperson, and an award-winning retail manager and management trainer, among other things. Today, she co-ordinates makeovers for a local magazine. She and her husband, Mike, live with their children, two dogs, and two cats in Arkansas.
For years, Christine has been writing novels around her work and family life. Open Door is her first published novel.
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