I am thrilled today to have author Meg Benjamin visiting! I love when authors who’ve never been here with us before stop by. I’m always learning something new…
The Medium and the Skeptic
In book two of my Ramos Family/Medium trilogy, Medium Rare, my heroine (a medium) falls for a professional skeptic. Now it’s a little more complicated than that where the skeptic is concerned, but he is somebody with a long history of debunking supernatural fraud. My heroine most definitely isn’t a fraud, but at first he doesn’t know that. Hijinks, as usual, ensue.
One advantage of having both a full-blown supernatural character and a skeptic in the book was that it allowed me to acknowledge both sides of my own nature. In my daily life, I’m pretty much a thorough-going skeptic. Don’t believe in Big Foot. Totally convinced that the Loch Ness Monster is a hoax. I’m afraid I even doubt the Amityville Horror ever existed (although it was a huge money-maker for all involved). By creating my skeptical hero, Evan Delwin, I can indulge all my own skeptical bent, exposing phony mediums and being outraged at the way they exploit the bereaved.
At the same time, though, I love ghost stories. Always have. And I freely admit to feeling a little…uneasy in places that have a ghostly kind of vibe. Deserted towns high in the mountains, for example. Or the remains of their cemeteries (the Iron City Cemetery outside St. Elmo, CO, is particularly spooky). My heroine, Rose Ramos, lets me lean a little heavily on that side of my psyche. In Rose’s world, when things go bump in the night, it’s rarely just the house settling.
Of course, when Rose and Evan get together, you’ve got a real clash of opposites. Rose wisely figures that Evan’s not going to be exactly sympathetic to her line of work. On the other hand, anyone who hangs out in Rose’s vicinity for any length of time is going to be exposed to a fair amount of weirdness. The Ramos family and its long association with ghoulies, ghosties, long-legged beasties and things that go bump in the night pretty much guarantee it.
Here’s a brief excerpt where Rose is trying her best to distract Evan from her latest supernatural encounter.
His lips drifted down the side of her throat, leaving liquid heat and need where he touched. His hands moved along the sides of her body, stroking lines of fire along her breasts, her belly, her hips.
“Rose,” he murmured against her ear, “Rosie.”
A deep ache began throbbing low in her body, and she cupped her hands on either side of his face, pulling his mouth back to hers.
His lips moved against hers again, his tongue slipping in. She tangled her fingers in his hair, rasping her own tongue along his.
Her heart rate accelerated almost painfully. Her clothes felt too tight, and there were far too many of them. She wanted to pull them off and toss them at her feet. No, she wanted him to pull them off and toss them—anywhere.
She moved her hands to his chest, fingers tugging at the buttons on his chambray shirt. His hands moved to her waist, jerking her T-shirt free and moving to the button on her shorts.
Something hard hit the window with a shuddering thump that seemed to echo throughout the room.
She jerked back from his embrace as Helen galloped into the room beside them, snarling at the curtains.
“What the hell?” Evan flipped his shirt back over his chest, but not before she’d seen a sizzling expanse of muscle and dark hair.
Well, damn!
She turned to check the front windows. A crack ran down the entire length of one of them, smaller cracks radiating from the center.
Helen danced in front of the lacy sheers, barking frantically now.
“Helen, cut it out,” Rose murmured, moving beside her. The fog still swirled, silvery and dense, just beyond the glass. She leaned forward.
A large black object ricocheted off the window next to her, shuddering the glass in the wooden frame.
Here’s the blurb for Medium Rare:
There are no skeletons in her closet…only ghosts
Rose Ramos was a reference librarian, until she inherited her grandmother’s house—and the family talent for connecting with the other side…
Moving into the lovely Victorian in San Antonio’s King William District is a dream come true for Rose—and also a nightmare. That’s the only explanation she has for the man hovering above her bed. But Skag is a ghost who’s been part of Rose’s family for generations. And now he’s all hers.
When Evan Delwin, a reporter out to debunk the city’s newest celebrity, posts an ad looking for a research assistant to investigate a famous medium making his home in San Antonio, Skag suggests that Rose apply for the job. Delving into the dark side has its own dangers for Rose—including trying to resist Delwin’s manly charms. But as the investigation draws them closer together, the deadly currents surrounding the medium threaten to destroy them all…
Buy links:
Meg Benjamin writes contemporary romance for Samhain Publishing and paranormal romance for Berkley InterMix. Her books have won an EPIC Award for Contemporary Romance, the Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Award, the New England Romance Writers Beanpot Award, and the Holt Medallion among other honors. Meg lives in Colorado.
Her Web site is http://www.MegBenjamin.com and her blog is http://megbenj1.wordpress.com/. You can follow her on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/meg.benjamin1), Pinterest (http://pinterest.com/megbenjamin/), and Twitter (http://twitter.com/megbenj1). Meg loves to hear from readers—contact her at meg@megbenjamin.com.
