Monday, April 24, 2017

Guest Blog - The Girl from the Woods by Chris Keane


The Ghosts of Our Past

Hello! My name is Chris Keane and I write paranormal romance books. I’m thrilled be joining you here at Fang-tastic Books! Today I will discuss the inner workings of some of the characters in my new novel, The Girl from the Woods. Being in the paranormal romance genre, The Girl from the Woods contains some actual ghosts. But I thought it would be interesting to discuss the metaphorical ghosts that haunt the main characters throughout the story.

Ultimate List of Character Ghosts

Dante is haunted by his parent’s brutal judgment and feelings of abandonment after they dump him at his grandmothers and head to Europe for the summer. As the story progresses, Dante must learn to take care of himself if he is going to survive.

Angie, the girl from the woods, is haunted by a failed romantic relationship. Will she be able to open herself up to love with Dante? Will she ever be able to trust him with the knowledge of her special gifts?

Dr. Sewall, Angie’s father, is haunted by the untimely death of his beloved wife. Her loss left him empty inside and he’s struggling to fill that void. Will he overcome his grief and find happiness again? How far is he willing to go to get it?

Gram, Dante's Grandmother is haunted by a mistake she made as a young adult, when she turned down a college scholarship to get married. Now she is widowed and struggling to survive on pennies while her health rapidly deteriorates. Will she survive? Will Dante be able to care for her, considering he’s never even had to take care of himself?

Kurt, Dante’s older brother, is haunted by memories of high school where he was a popular football star. Now he is partying it up, trying to re-capture the feeling of being on top. Somehow, regularly berating Dante also makes him feel like a king again. Kurt’s plight definitely adds some comic relief to the novel. But will he pull himself together and stop making Dante’s life miserable?

Fight or Flight

So, we’ve learned a little bit about what makes our main characters tick. The interaction of all their unique motivations is at the heart of The Girl from the Woods. Now it’s time to send them on a fantastic journey. And it will be a sight to see! Because when characters are able to overcome the echo of ghosts from their pasts, heroes are born.

Who is your favorite literary protagonist? What ghost is he/she battling with?

The Girl from the Woods
Chris Keane

Genre: Paranormal Romance

Publisher: Pennant Collective

Date of Publication: April 25th, 2017

ISBN: 978-0692832172
ASIN: B06X9Y715F

Number of pages: 144
Word Count: 43,000

Cover Artist: Nick Kiefer

Book Description:

It’s summertime and the last place 19-year-old Dante Elton wants to be is at his grandmother’s in rural upstate New York. But it’s exactly where his parents dump him, as they jet off to Europe. Without a car, cell service, or even basic television, there is nothing to do but wander around the nearby woods just as he had as a small child…

There he meets sexy—and slightly older—Angie Sewall while on a hike. On the surface, she’s a devoted daughter content to be single while she manages her father’s medical practice. Yet deep down, Angie is bored and heartbroken…and is harboring some special gifts that she keeps secret from her father and their backwoods community.

When Dante’s grandmother’s health declines, he reaches out to Angie’s father for help, only to uncover the good doctor’s dark side. When Dante confides in Angie, it drives a spike into their budding relationship. He’s left to wonder if he’s all alone in his quest to save his grandmother



Excerpt:

As the sun splintered through the gaps in the tarp, Dante held Angie in his arms while she slept. He had never felt or even imagined being this happy. He watched her sleeping peacefully, half-expecting she would just vanish like the girl from his dream. She seemed other-worldly, more of a product of his imagination than the surrounding environment. In the real world, a beautiful girl like Angie would barely give him the time of day. She wouldn’t be into reading horror or Japanese anime either. She would probably be rejecting his friend request on Facebook.
He still hadn’t told Angie that she had appeared to him in his dream back in New Jersey. He figured she would probably just laugh at him. The past few weeks, he had assumed he would forget about it. Yet somehow, the thought wouldn’t vacate his brain. If she had actually appeared to him in his dream, this was no ordinary girl, and that frightened him. She seemed normal, but her father did not. He was an eccentric man with a sketchy past. Dante had come across a stack of books on witchcraft in his study. But she brushed it off, saying that he had grown up in Massachusetts, and everyone up that way was into the history of Salem.

About the Author:

Chris is a graduate of Rutgers University and studied the art of storytelling at Gotham Writers' Workshop in New York City. Chris' first publication, "Loot," became a bestselling Kindle Short Read, in the category of Young Adult Fiction.

"Loot," set on Halloween in 1977, tells the tale of three boys who skip Halloween to hunt for cash to purchase an Atari in an old farmhouse belonging to one of their deceased aunts. Adventure ensues in his coming-of-age tale in the spirit of Stand by Me and The Goonies.

In addition to authoring prose, Chris is a screenwriter. In 2013 he wrote the screenplay for a short film, The Baseball Card, about three twelve-year old boys who fight over a Don Mattingly baseball card during the summer of 1984. The Baseball Card was an official selection of the Garden State Film Festival, Hoboken International Film Festival, and Maryland International Film Festival in 2014.

The Girl from the Woods is his debut novel.



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9 comments:

Keano said...

Thanks for having me on Fang-tasticBooks BLOG!

LOVE YOUR SITE!

Best,
Chris Keane

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