The Home for Halloween Giveaway

 Enter the Rafflecopter to win your choice of a Kindle Fire, Nook HD, or Kobo Glo, as well as signed books and audiobooks in the Home for Halloween giveaway from author Scott Nicholson.

The giveaway celebrates the launch of paranormal thriller The Home. Experiments at a group home for troubled children lead to paranormal activity—and the ghosts are from the home’s dark past as an insane asylum. 

In development as a feature, it’s available in ebook at Amazon US, Amazon UK, BN.com, Kobo, and Smashwords.

EXCERPT: THE HOME

By Scott Nicholson

(From Chapter 8)

Inside Thirteen, the boy’s outline was faintly visible in the darkness. His eyes snapped open and his gasp was audible over the microphone. The heart rate graph rose in intensity. Bondurant clenched his fingers.

Darkness. He’ll think he’s back in the closet. Now he’ll scream.

The boy sat up. On the monitor, the twin lines rose and fell in parallel motion. The brain image glowed in bands of red and indigo.

“See the upper reading?” Kracowski said. “That’s his energy field as measured across the meridian points I devised. Did you notice how erratic the reading was before my treatment?”

“You mean before you gave him electroshock?”

“Mr. Bondurant, that’s a crude comparison. I’m not a psychosurgeon. I don’t try to cure by destroying the brain. I don’t give frontal lobotomies, or whatever term they use these days for systematic depersonalization. I merely drive away the traumatic residue that blocks the normal functioning of the brain’s neurotransmitters.”

Gobbledygook, Bondurant thought. Kracowski’s technobabble was as bad as the counselors’ psychobabble.

Mario looked around, unhurried, curious. It had taken three grown men to restrain the boy during his first night here, when the lights were turned out in the Blue Room and the boy fled for the exit, clawed at the walls, rammed his skull against the steel door. Now the boy sat in the dark as if meditating with open eyes.

“He’s not screaming,” Bondurant said.

“He doesn’t seem to be uncomfortable in the confined space,” Kracowski said.

The monitor showed the top line on the chart had leveled out while the bottom line rose and fell steadily. Kracowski waved a hand to indicate the pattern. “Calm as a nursing infant.”

“I must admit, the treatment is impressive. How long do the effects last?”

“My initial research shows that it may be temporary. But even if the neurotransmitters must be, shall we say, ‘realigned’ every month, that’s a much better success rate than any of your shrinks can claim.”

Mario looked at the mirror, and for a moment, Bondurant was struck with the impression that the boy could see him. “What about potential cardiac damage?”

“No chance. It’s as if a light switch was flipped off and then back on.”

“Let’s hope so. One incident, and the state licensing board and the Social Services investigators will sweep through this place like storm troopers. I don’t think they would find your techniques in the chapter on standard practices.”

“Your job is to keep them away. At least until I’ve finished my work. Then they, like the rest of the world, will finally see the light.”

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Character Interview and $10 GC Giveaway with Scott Nicholson

Character Interview: Sheriff Frank Littlefield

By Scott Nicholson

Frank Littlefield, sheriff of Pickett County in the Appalachian Mountains, appears in two of the books in the three-novel omnibus Ethereal Messenger, on sale at Amazon or BN for $4.99.

In The Red Church, Littlefield’s past comes back to haunt him when a strange preacher returns to town to revive a sinister church. Another supernatural legend, this one of dead Civil War soldiers, threatens Littlefield’s community in Drummer Boy. Here’s an interview:

Q: Sheriff Littlefield, why do supernatural events occur so often in your jurisdiction?

Littlefield: I’d like to remind you that none of the claims have been substantiated. According to the evidence, Archer McFall committed those murders in Whispering Pines, and that little boy’s disappearance in Drummer Boy is still under investigation. Even though, I am sad to say, no new leads have been forthcoming.

Q: But according to local rumors, you yourself believe the Red Church is haunted.

Littlefield: That rumor was likely planted by the Democrat Party. They’ve been trying to knock me off the last two elections, and it just goes to show how dirty those Democrats play when things aren’t to their liking.

Q: Some speculate that Sgt. Sheila Story, your former detective, will return and run against you one day.

Littlefield: Sgt. Story was a good detective and she served the county well. But she’s a city girl. I don’t think the fine people of Pickett County are ready to turn over their safety to an outsider. Plus, as you said, the families up here tend to stick together.

Q: How come no arrests have been made in the McFall case?

Littlefield: We’re still investigating. We believe he went back to California, where cults and such are tolerated. But we have enough physical evidence to put him away if he ever dares show his face around these parts again.

Q: What if he truly is supernatural evil, as some people claim?

Littlefield: You been talking to Cindy Baumhower down at the newspaper? That’s sensationalism and nothing more. Just because she happens to believe in ghosts doesn’t mean they are real. And, you got to admit, gossip sells papers.

Q: But what if he is? How do you kill a supernatural entity?

Littlefield (scratches crewcut): I wouldn’t know. Pray, I reckon. And pray some more. But I’m keeping my revolver loaded, just in case. Now, if you’ll excuse me, old Hardy Eggers has reported some unusual noises up around the Jangling Hole.

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Scott Nicholson is giving away 15 percent of his ebook revenues in September! Details are at http://hauntedcomputer.blogspot.com. His other books include The Skull Ring, Speed Dating with the Dead, Drummer Boy, and nine other novels, seven story collections, and six screenplays. Look for Liquid Fear and Chronic Fear from Amazon on Dec. 20. More at Haunted Computer.

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Ethereal Messenger by Scott Nicholson

"Like Stephen King, he knows how to summon serious scares." -Bentley Little

An omnibus edition of three supernatural novels by bestselling author Scott Nicholson. DRM-free.

THE RED CHURCH: A young boy and a sheriff must solve the mystery of a haunted Appalachian church after a strange preacher returns to town. A 2002 Stoker Award finalist.

DRUMMER BOY: One misfit kid is all that stands between a mountain town and a chilling supernatural force when the past and the present collide.

SPEED DATING WITH THE DEAD: A paranormal conference at the Blue Ridge Mountain's most haunted hotel goes haywire when ghost hunters accidentally stir up demons.

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Scott Nicholson is author of 12 novels, including the #1 Kindle bestseller in mystery and suspense, DISINTEGRATION. Other titles include THE SKULL RING, FOREVER NEVER ENDS, BURIAL TO FOLLOW, and AS I DIE LYING. He's also released the paranormal romance series OCTOBER GIRLS and, with J.R. Rain, the urban fantasy CURSED!, as well as six story collections.

Guest Blog and Kindle Giveaway with Scott Nicholson

Love Scenes: Kissy Face or Full Monty?
By Scott Nicholson
http://www.hauntedcomputer.com/



One of the challenges of writing is learning how much romantic description to include in your stories.

Early in my career, I tended to keep most of the physical love play offstage, either avoiding it or referring to it without direct mentioning of body parts. My characters tended to be in romantic attraction and might kiss, but only rarely did it get to S-E-X. One of those occasions was my story “Constitution,” where a man has died but wills himself to keep his flesh integrated so his wife won’t be alone. At one point in the story, he must come to grips with his crumbling bits on the marital bed.

While I do have a romantic element in most of my novels, sometimes it’s the typical “family under duress” that’s fairly common in thrillers, especially in supernatural tales where normalcy is challenged. Of course, we expect order to be restored and families to bond and everyone to live happily ever after, so that sort of tension is expected (and the resolution is expected, too, which is why so many modern stories are predictable.)

My first real sex scene, in Forever Never Ends, is handled in a stream-of-consciousness flow of sensations and impressions, switching back and forth between the two lovers. It’s a little poetic and unusual for a thriller, and there’s nary a heaving bosom or swollen manhood in sight.

My novel The Manor (now out in UK as Creative Spirit) has trappings of a Gothic romance, with an early tension developing between the two lead characters, Mason and Anna. While as best I remember they don’t so much as kiss throughout the book, by the end there’s the suggestion that they have a possible future together. My book Troubled features a budding romance between two young teens, so obviously I keep their clothes on.



Solom features an important sex scene early on, but it’s the delayed consummation of a second marriage, and the woman basically channels the man’s dead first wife to evoke a response in him. Technically, it’s a nice piece of sexual description and acrobatics, handled well, I believe, though looking back it is kind of creepy because of the woman’s displacement. A local grandmother wrote me a note praising the sex scene, saying it was “nice and unhurried.”

I got a little more cynical by the time They Hunger (now called The Gorge in the UK) came out, and there are at least three sex scenes, and none of them are the products of healthy relationships. There’s the ongoing aloof affair between two characters, a brutish sex scene between a killer and the woman who’s become enthralled and later disgusted by him, and one totally gratuitous hook-up that takes place with little motivation and an unlikely situation—while under threat of imminent death.

The Skull Ring is your basic romantic suspense, with an ongoing subplot of attraction/paranoia, with the two main characters eventually coming to rely upon one other before the climax. Drummer Boy has a scene where a teen confesses his love to his best friend, who freaks out that his friend is gay and almost kissed him—but the entire theme of that book is “otherness,” and that foiled kiss is just a symbol of being a misfit kid.

Speed Dating with the Dead has one sex scene, but it’s a fairly aggressive, demon-spawned bout that I’ll probably rewrite later. At the time I was thinking I needed to write an “adult” thriller, but the most interesting characters are older teens who have attraction but no hanky panky.

I like to think of my books as written at a PG-13 level, but I’m not sure I’d let my daughter read them all at that age.


Maybe we’ll start with October Girls, my YA paranormal romance by LC Glazebrook, and let her go from there. The teen witch Crystal has a serious thing going with her steady beau, but Bone, who has come back from the grave, is determined to make up for all she missed due to her untimely death at 16. And, when you’re dead, you don’t have to worry about pregnancy, disease, or the fallout from bad decisions. Which is good, because the unborn twin of James Dean has the hots for her.

Sex. Romance, Love. How do you like the steaminess of your sex scenes, on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being a firm handshake and 10 being raunchiness that would make Tiger Woods blush?

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Scott Nicholson is author of 12 novels, including the thrillers Speed Dating with the Dead, Drummer Boy, Forever Never Ends, The Skull Ring, As I Die Lying, Burial to Follow ,and They Hunger. His revised novels for the U.K. Kindle are Creative Spirit, Troubled, and Solom. He’s also written four comic series, six screenplays, and more than 60 short stories. His story collections include Ashes, The First, Murdermouth: Zombie Bits, and Flowers.

To be eligible for the Kindle DX, simply post a comment below with contact info.

Feel free to debate and discuss the topic, but you will only be entered once per blog. Visit all the blogs on the tour and increase your odds.

I’m also giving away a Kindle 3 through the tour newsletter and a Pandora’s Box of free e-books to a follower of “hauntedcomputer” on Twitter.

Thanks for playing.

Complete details at http://www.hauntedcomputer.com/blogtour.htm