Virtual Book Tour and Giveaway: The Ghost Hunter's Daughter by Caroline Flarity

Welcome to my stop on the NBtM Virtual Book Tour for The Ghost Hunter's Daughter by Caroline Flarity. This tour was organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. On my stop, I have an excerpt and a very scary guest post for you. There's also a tour wide giveaway. Be sure to follow the rest of the tour for more excerpts, guest posts, author interviews, reviews, and more. Enjoy!

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Title: The Ghost Hunter's Daughter
Author: Caroline Flarity
Publisher: East Side Press
Publication Date: April 13th 2019
Genre: Young Adult, Supernatural, Paranormal

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Sixteen-year-old Anna sees things from another world, the spiritual world, a skill that isn’t exactly useful in high school. It’s bad enough that her mother, possessed by a demon, took her own life when Anna was a child, a loss she remains tortured by. Now her father makes his living “clearing” haunted objects, and Anna’s job as his assistant makes her a social misfit. Most kids in her suburban New Jersey town refer to her just as “Goblin Girl.”

Only Freddy and Dor remain loyal friends. But Anna’s so focused on her own problems, she’s missed that her connection with Freddy is moving beyond the friend zone.

As junior year approaches, a rare solar storm lights up the night skies and the citizens of Bloomtown begin to act strangely: Anna’s teachers lash out, her best friends withdraw, and the school bullies go from mean to murderous. When Anna realizes she can harness this evil power, she sets out to save Bloomtown and the only family she has left.

But to do so, she must keep her own increasingly dark urges at bay.

Goodreads * Amazon

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EXCERPT:

It was possible to zoom in on one of the girl’s closed eyelids until her eyelashes resembled a network of massive black bridges that curved over a far horizon. But why stop there? Tunneling further down to a cavernous follicle at the base of a single lash, there was a cluster of microscopic mites. They had long, sectioned, eight-legged bodies covered with blue scales. One mite was half submerged inside the follicle, feeding, while the others huddled in the shadow of the giant eyelash, avoiding the moonlight. The mites had a hissing focus on mating and territory. Although their language was alien, their joys, rivalries and fierce protectiveness of their young were palpable. Was it possible to zoom in further onto their armored skin and discover even more layers of life? Where would it end? Was there an end? Ha! It was like the what-if game.

Wait. The what-if game? In a great swoosh of images and sensations, the memories came of her and Freddy as kids, lying on the slant of roof outside her bedroom window. That’s right! She had an identity. She was Anna Fagan, also known as Goblin Girl. What was she doing staring at a bunch of microscopic mites on someone’s eyelash? Her awareness expanded outward in great swaths of rushing space, further and further from the mites to the cluster of giant bridge-like eyelashes, until she once again hovered above the body of the girl. A realization rippled through Anna—the girl on the floor was her.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Caroline Flarity is a web content producer living in NYC. Her fascination with fringe topics and love of scary movies led her to begin her writing journey penning creepy screenplays. Her debut novel THE GHOST HUNTER'S DAUGHTER started life as a feature script, placing in the finals of the StoryPros Awards and as a semifinalist in Slamdance Film Festival's writing competition. She enjoys pitting her characters against both supernatural and cultural evils.

Website * Facebook * Instagram * Twitter

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GUEST POST

Have you ever had a spooky encounter? If so, what happened?

* This story took place years ago during a stressful week when I visited a lot of reportedly haunted locations. I kept some details vague to protect the privacy of those involved.

I once traveled to a southern city as a producer of a mini-pilot that was used to pitch a reality series to TV networks (the series was never picked up). The city was known as one of the most haunted in America. A close-knit community of haunted tour guides, paranormal investigators, psychics and Wiccans lived there, isolated by their unique lifestyles in the middle of the so called “Bible Belt”. They needed each other, even though they didn’t always get along. That was the hook of the show: a docu-soap that would follow the drama happening in the group as well as the spooky stuff they were up to.

During the shoot, we gained access to reportedly haunted locations where we filmed interviews with the cast and their paranormal investigations. The locals were generous, and the cast were fascinating people who I liked and admired. Unfortunately, there was one person on the crew who I clashed with regularly. I’m fairly familiar with both reality TV formats and the paranormal, but my ideas were constantly questioned and overruled. I returned to my hotel each night feeling beaten down and disrespected.

One evening toward the end of the shoot, we were in a haunted location interviewing cast members, and this particular crew member became confrontational with me in front of the cast. I pushed on with the interviews even though I was at a low point emotionally and mentally, exactly the state one should not be in while visiting a haunted location.

Later at my hotel I felt something crawling on my back. I tried to brush it off but couldn’t feel anything there. I looked at my back in the mirror but didn’t see a bug. The crawling sensation continued after I settled into bed. I could feel little legs moving as something scuttled around on my back, something with unmistakable form and weight. It scuttled around, stopped for a few moments or minutes, then scuttled some more. Strangely, I wasn’t terrified. The crawling sensation continued even though my back was pressed against the mattress. It didn’t make sense. How could it still be crawling when it should be smashed by my body weight? And why didn’t I feel a strong disgust or fear? It was unsettling, to be sure, but didn’t inspire terror.

The sporadic crawling sensation continued for the rest of the shoot. On the last night the executive producer flew in and hosted a dinner for the cast and crew. I confessed what was happening to a psychic, one of our cast members, and she put her hand on my back. “Yeah, you have something there, a low-intelligence entity, possibly from another dimension,” she said. These types of entities, she explained, and much worse, are often present in haunted locations where the veil between worlds is thin. This rather harmless entity had attached to me because my natural defenses were compromised due to stress and I hadn’t taken the proper precautions (sage, meditations, getting enough sleep, etc.). It would go away after a while, she assured me.

I consider myself well-versed on the paranormal, but I’d never heard of anything like this “bug”. I knew I might experience paranormal activity on the shoot, but I expected maybe a whisper in my ear, shadows moving in my peripheral vision, feeling something watching, etc. Never did I envision a non-threatening inter-dimensional thing crawling on my back. The fact that I never imagined such a creature is important. Because I had no preconceived notion that this phenomenon could occur, it’s less likely that I created or imagined it.

If a real bug comes anywhere near me, I usually stop at nothing to get away from it. But this invisible one didn’t inspire that type of visceral reaction. There was an oddly neutral feeling about it. It stayed on my back for several weeks before fading away completely. I was pensive for a year or so afterwards, thinking it might come back, but it never did. The whole experience taught me something new about the paranormal and myself.

As much as I’m fascinated by ghosts and other phenomena, I’m no longer interested in actively placing myself in their path. I got off relatively easy with the bug-thing, but who knows if I’d be as lucky the next time?

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GIVEAWAY:

Caroline Flarity will be awarding a $50 Amazon or Barnes & Noble gift card to a randomly drawn winner via Rafflecopter after the tour. To increase your chance of winning, leave a comment at a different stop on the tour each day. Good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway