Guest Post: The Haunting of a Duke

Title: The Haunting of a Duke
Author: Chasity Bowlin
Publisher: The Wild Rose Press, Inc.
Release Date: July 22, 2012
Pages: 290
Buy Link: Paperback | Kindle

Blurb:

Facing danger from both sides of the grave, will two souls merge to find a love that conquers all? Communing with spirits has been both gift and curse to Emme Walters. Now it's made her a killer's target. Emme knows why the Dowager Duchess of Briarleigh invited her to a house party--to investigate whether the duke, Rhys Brammel, murdered his wife years ago. But Emme never imagined she would fall in love with the brooding duke.

Branded by society as a possible killer, Rhys is suspicious of Emme and her alleged "gift." Then a late night encounter creates awareness of her other, more attractive, aspects. When Emme's life is threatened, Rhys becomes her protector. Emme and Rhys find passion and peril as they join forces to solve the mysteries at Briarleigh. She made him believe in spirits, but can she make him believe in love?

Guest Post

The Story Behind The Haunting of a Duke

I wish I could say it all came to me in a dream and flowed easily from my fingers. It didn’t. I’d had the idea for a long time of a regency miss who was a psychic and would “sleepwalk” when communing with spirits in her dreams. In fact the first scene of the book, which was eventually trimmed down to the first couple of pages in the book during editing, had been written for years. Just sitting there in my documents folder taunting me.

The very simple truth is that I am a published author today because I got swine flu. Quarantined for 11 days, I felt fine, I just had a perpetual fever and could not leave my house. Boredom is very difficult for me, daytime television is horrific, and on day three I ran out of new books to read. So I went back to my own writings.  I read that first scene with Emme creeping about in the dark and inspiration/boredom compelled me to write. By the time I was able to go back to work, I had written around 30,000 words, which was half of the first draft.

I had never finished a book. I have been writing for decades, hoarding ideas. But that leap of finishing a book and then having to share it with the world had always terrified me. But with half of a novel, a damned good novel at that, sitting there in front of me, I was committed. I felt like if I didn’t finish it, I never would. It was simply time to stop talking about one day and make it happen.

I sent out submissions. Got rejections. Revised. Sent out more submissions. Got more rejections. Revised, again.  Submitted and then headed off to the RWA Convention in NYC in 2011. There, I pitched my little book and got a few requests. Shortly after coming home, Wild Rose Press, whom I had queried before, offered me a contract. That is the story of how the Haunting of a Duke came to be. Six months to write, a year to get a contract, and eleven months from signing that contract to release. Each step was agonizing, but ultimately worth it.