Greetings, everyone. Welcome to my humble site. I really appreciate you stopping by. For new visitors, my name is James Garcia Jr - or Jimmy to my friends. I write horror and paranormal novels, usually with a crossover slant. That means me being a Christian influences the work, but I would not label them as such, considering how dark they can get.
I began to swallow up horror novels in my teens, and then eventually began to work on penning my own stories until life sort of got in the way. In any event, just short of my 40th birthday - realizing the regret I was staring at - I returned to my dusty manuscript and saw it to completion. It is called Dance on Fire. It was the story of a vampire who saves a family from another - the one who made him what he is today. The woman is convinced that there is good in him, and that God can indeed use him. I then wrote the sequel. It is called, Dance on Fire: Flash Point. In that chapter, a third vampire who had escaped the end of book one returns for revenge, armed with four other vampires. I am currently editing the third book in the series and I will provide more of those details before the year is over. In that chapter, the devil himself will emerge from the shadows, armed with over one hundred vampires - because a vampire that seeks God cannot be allowed to walk the earth.
After the second book in the series was published, I took a time-out from the vampires and penned a ghost story. It is called, Seeing Ghosts. I do not label it a paranormal romance, but it definitely does contain a healthy dose of romance. It came about from my love of haunted house books and movies like An Affair to Remember. What follows is the blurb:
Paul Herrera finds himself bequeathed a mysterious old house near the California central coast by a deceased aunt he never knew. The woman who shows it to him is the spitting image of his wife, taken from him three years before in a senseless car accident which also took his unborn son. While he deals with the ghosts of a past he cannot let go, there are new ghosts Paul must deal with - alone for the week in the expansive two-story house that he will soon discover holds many secrets. Eventually, he will see that he is surrounded by ghosts as he struggles to hold onto the only thing that he has left in this world - his sanity.
The following is an excerpt. The woman who looks like Paul's dead wife and her son have become stranded at his house and he isn't dealing with their extended stay very well...
“You’re throwing us out?” she asked and
turned away from me. She took one unsteady step and then turned back. “Where…?
Where can we go?”
“I don’t know,” I said, holding my head as
the pressure was mounting. I felt terrible, but completely powerless to stop
the avalanche of emotion from bringing everything down around us.
Anne suddenly jumped into my face. “Where can
we go?” she snapped, raising her voice to me for the first time ever.
“I
don’t know!” I matched her with a yell of my own—not mad
at her, but at the world. “Anywhere but
here!”
“So, you’d have us live in the car until we
can get help!” she continued. “I really don’t believe you! You’re incredible!”
She walked away from me. I looked at her and studied everything as if I were
frozen in place. She spun back. “You’ve never liked me!” she said now. “I don’t
know what I ever did to you but be nice and professional. I thought today we
had gotten past all of that, turned a corner. Now I see I was wrong!”
“Angie, wait!”
As if she couldn’t get any louder, Anne
snapped at me. “My name is Anne, damn it! Get it straight!”
Just then I felt something give, like a
weight being lifted off of me.
Anne grabbed Jason by the wrist and pulled
him out of his seat by the doorway to the hall. He never uttered a word or
attempted to enter the fray, but other than that I couldn’t tell what his
expression had been. All this time I simply held Anne in my sights.
“Wait!” I said. The both of them turned and
stared at me. “Just wait.” I walked over to them slowly, but stopped short of
entering their space. “I’m being a total ass, I know, but there’s a reason for
it.”
“What reason could there possibly be?” Anne asked
loudly.
“Please,” I asked, raising my hands
unthreateningly before me. “I can promise you that this is nothing personal. I
have never disliked you.”
“That’s bullshit!” Anne said, as if she
didn’t realize that her young son was standing beside her. I’m sure it wasn’t
the first time in his life he’d been introduced to the ugly expression. “From
the first day you have been nothing but cold to me…”
Anne continued to say a collection of other
things concerning how I’d been anything but cordial to her, but by this point I
was tuning her out while contemplating how I could possibly win this argument.
In the end, I realized there was only one way.
“Please,” I interrupted her. “You’re free to
hate me if you want, but let me show you something first before you do.” I
walked around them and headed into the hall, and the stairs beyond. “Follow me.”
I turned back and asked them. I waited a moment on the second step while
neither of them seemed inclined to budge an inch. “Please, both of you.” I
didn’t wait for any reply. I turned and methodically headed up the stairs
toward my bedroom.
I sat on the bed near my nightstand and
waited for them to arrive. It took them a while, but they slowly followed. They
stopped at the doorway to the bedroom.
I reached for my wallet that sat there near
the lamp and plucked out the object I intended to offer them both. “Here,
Jason,” I said softly, without looking up. As much as I’d been staring at Anne
previously, I now stared just as hard at the photograph. Jason walked over
alone. I dutifully handed it over to him and then watched as he took in the
image of my dead wife—his eyes ballooning. He spun away from me.
“Mom!” he cried out. “It’s you!”
“What?” she asked incredulously as she
approached us. He handed her the picture.
I thought I noticed her legs buckle just a
bit. I totally understood the feeling. “That’s exactly how I felt when you
walked into the hotel lobby that morning. I knew you weren’t Angie, but it was
very hard to have her walk back into my life, even for only a millisecond.”
“I don’t understand this,”
she said. “How can this be? I look just like her.”I would very much like to send you either an e-copy or a signed paperback. You don't have to jump through a bunch of flaming hoops or anything... Just tell me you want to read it, and leave a way for me to get a hold of you. The winners will be chosen at the end of the event and I will quickly contact the winners.
In the meantime, follow the Fall into Fantasy link and take a look at all of the other books that are available. There are plenty of great books out there to be had, and from what I understand, plenty of swag.
Thanks again for stopping by. We'll talk soon.
I'd love a signed signed if I'm lucky enough to win. You can reach me at lin@ldmasterson.com
ReplyDeleteWell, that's lovely. I'm the only comment so far and I somehow typed "signed signed" for "signed copy". I really should stop and reread before I hit the Publish button.
ReplyDeleteI would love to win a signed copy of your book! That would make my month!
ReplyDeletevideoclimber(at) yahoo DOT com