A Ghost of a Chance (The Ghost Series Books) A Spooky Romantic Comedy of Disasters by Minnette Meador ➱ Join us for the Book Tour with Rafflecopter
A Ghost of a Chance
A Ghost Series Novel Book 1
by Minnette Meador
Genre: A Spooky Romantic Comedy of Disasters
Keenan is just your typical, everyday graphic designer. He eats, he drinks, he loves... and he lives with hundreds of pesky ghosts that only he can see. They make his life interesting in a Chinese curse sort of way. Enter Isabella, a witty, smoking hot co-worker who turns him into mush every time he gets near her. He's got it bad. But how can he win her over when he knows his fun-loving “friends” won’t leave it alone? Introduce a horny succubus who visits him on a nightly basis, an angry entity that's trying to kill him, and a burly city cop who wants to arrest him, and you have a comedy of disasters that takes this reluctant psychic and turns him into an even more reluctant hero.
A Ghost Series Novel by Minnette Meador
EXCERPTS FROM A GHOST OF A CHANCE:
As he passed through, twenty or so ghosts littered his living room, watching the last few minutes of the news. Keenan pulled air into his lungs before picking up the remote.
They were costing him a fortune. The TV, the radio, and even his computers were always on. Lights went off and on constantly. The heat would soar to eighty degrees in the middle of the summer and then plunge to fifty when the winter freeze set in. He couldn’t keep any pets; the instant they came into the house, they hissed or yelped in terror and ran away. The neighborhood was full of cats that had once belonged to Keenan.
He couldn’t keep girlfriends, either. The closer they got, the more convinced they were that he was on drugs, a serial killer, or terminally cracked. He hadn’t had a girl at his house in years; for some reason, they got all heebie-jeebies on him when things started flying around or icy blasts of air unexpectedly lifted their skirts. One girl even had her panties removed, but not by Keenan. He was in the kitchen at the time.
Friends? Forget it. They tended to search for the exit when he told them he saw dead people… and not in the good way. Moviemakers had it all wrong. These weren’t people who wanted release; they were freeloaders who wanted nothing more than to torture the living, especially those who could see them. Keenan had lost count of how many pranks he had endured over the years. Somewhere in the thousands, he was sure.
When Keenan clicked off the power to the TV, the crowd of specters growled em mass. The box sizzled back on. Keenan held the remote defiantly toward the set and banged the power button again. It hissed off. Three male ghosts, a solid and two transes, pounded on their chests like apes, and the TV came back on.
“Leave the God damned thing off,” he bellowed, thumb wrestling the remote one last time. The few spirits visible faded away, but not before four of them flipped him off. A barrage of couch pillows and cushions appeared out of nowhere, knocking him to the ground.
When Keenan shot back to his feet, the ghosts were gone.
Keenan’s eyes fluttered open, expecting to be in his bed. Instead, he had his face buried in the porcelain altar, throwing up his guts, listening to Reggie cooing encouragements.
“There you go, old bugger. Get all of it out. That’s the lad.”
Coughing until he thought his lungs would come up, Keenan tried to figure out what had just happened. All he could focus on was the splattered white inside of his toilet, his splitting head, and a persistent ringing in his ears. The sexual encounter was very fuzzy.
“What the fuck?” His voice was sandpaper against his throat.
He pulled his head out of the toilet and drew as much air into his lungs as they would take. Sitting on his haunches, he held his stomach and rocked, giving Reggie the dirtiest look he could muster. The shining specter smiled down at him, floating nonchalantly by the sink. Everything else was black. A random thought scampered through Keenan’s addled brain. I wish I glowed in the dark.
“Are you better, my friend?”
“What the fuck?” Keenan repeated more forcefully and lurched to his feet.
“You asked that already.”
Keenan stumbled to the sink. Turning on the tap lighted only by Reggie’s ghostly glow, he put his head under the water and tried to drown himself in it.
The cold made the ringing and the muddle go away, but his head still pounded like murder. Keenan grabbed the towel from the shower curtain rod and ran it violently over his head and face, hoping the weird sickness would saturate the towel instead of his brain.
He felt dirty, violated, as if someone had pulled his pants down in front of cheerleaders. Yet, there was another part of him that wallowed in fulfillment, satisfied, satiated. It made him want to puke again.
Keenan threw the towel through the specter, stomped into his bedroom, and then stopped with a jolt. Reggie almost ran “into” him.
In the soft light from his window, he could see the bed. The mattress tilted sideways and touched the ground like a beached whale. Everything not otherwise tied down was on the floor. Three pictures looked like someone had pitched them against the wall. Worse, except for the window, there was not a single piece of glass in the room that had not been shattered, including the screen to his ancient rabbit-eared TV. The fragmented remnants covered everything.
“I think you need a drink, my friend.” Reggie pirouetted across Keenan’s path and glided to the door, but Keenan only blinked at him.
“What?”
“A drink. You know… ice, booze, perhaps soda or a wedge of lime.”
Keenan shook his head long enough to get the daze out of it, then tip-toed through the minefield of glass to pull on his coat and step into his sneakers. He didn’t even bother to untie them. Miraculously, the shoes were glass-free, and the coat was right side out, though, in his state, it probably didn’t matter.
It dawned on Keenan as he followed Reggie out to the living room that the familiar disembodied noise was back. Arguments, low conversations, whispers, and even a little song flitted in and out of the surrounding air. It was reassuring.
The group of visible ghosts was light: three screamers Keenan couldn’t see clearly, a Hindi named Nihar who was standing on his head amongst fake flowers on the windowsill, and a crowd of loggers dancing on the kitchen table. Three of them were swilling pale mugs of beer. The stringent smell of faded incense and warm beer made Keenan’s eyes water.
Keenan searched the room. “Constance?”
Reggie spun around and gave him a ghostly wink. “Sorry, old chap. Not here tonight. Besides…” He floated over to the door and made a grand gesture with his arm. “… for this, you’ll need a gentleman’s perspective, I think.”
“What do you—”
“I’ll explain all of it after you’ve had a drink or two. Off we go.”
He scurried through the darkness to find his pants and pull out his wallet, crunching glass under his rubber soles. Disentangling it from the inside-out jeans with shaking fingers took forever, but it finally gave with a good tug. The stuffed old leather overflowed with cards of all kinds, some expired, some not, along with lots of miscellaneous junk. Buried in the back somewhere, it took Keenan a few seconds to extract his driver’s license from the tight wad.
When he handed it over, the burly man in blue rumbled at the ID under his flashlight and finally handed it back. That was when he leveled a stern look at Keenan. He played his light over the broken glass, disheveled bed, and scattered remnants of Keenan’s personal life.
“Would you care to explain this?” he growled.
Keenan did some dancing.
“Mice,” he said. “Big ones.”
Apparently, Officer Thompson had no sense of humor since he didn’t even crack a smile. He tucked his flashlight into his belt, then put one hand on his holster and the other on his nightstick, obviously trying to figure out which he should use first.
Keenan put up his hands and tried to smile. “Kidding… sorry. Chasing the cat…”
Thompson shook his head and turned for the door. Keenan barely made his way past the officer to show him through the house.
When Keenan led him to the front door, the officer gave his house a professional once over with his eyes and left without saying another word.
Keenan closed the door carefully, turned his back to it, and slid to the floor. This had been one hell of a night.
A GHOST OF A CHANCE
By Minnette Meador
Chapter Four
The Spirit Is Willing… The Flash Is Weak
After finishing his beer, Keenan left Taps and pulled his collar up around his ears. The heat from earlier had leaked out of his arms and legs. He was freezing. Walking fast seemed the best solution until the wind meandered up his legs and into his balls. But, baby, it’s cold outside…
Eventually, the moving muscles started to warm up and by the time he rounded the pathway to his front door, it was bearable. He took the painted cement steps two at a time and then stopped dead in his tracks.
His keys were in his jean’s pocket, sitting on top of his laundry, inside the locked house.
He tried the door but it was locked tight.
“Son of a bitch,” he said to the tall green door. The sinking feeling mingled with his frozen head and blasted a pang of panic between his ears.
Keenan scurried around the house, rubbing his hands together, trying to figure out what he should do next. The cold was getting worse. He searched the blank wall, forgetting there weren’t any entrances on this side. Running more to get his legs warmed up, he sped around the back of the house and then the other side testing every window. No luck.
When he got to his bedroom, he stopped. From outside, the beached mattress looked like a giant teeter-totter, but it wasn’t obstructing the window. The beer chose that moment to take over Keenan’s reasoning. It apparently figured a little more glass on the floor wasn’t going to hurt anything.
Grabbing his right fist in his left hand, Keenan lifted his elbow and slammed it against the window as hard as he could. As was expected, the glass gave way and shattered into the room. As was unexpected, pain bolted up Keenan’s arm, set bells and whistles off in his eardrums, and burst out of the top of his head.
He jumped up and down holding the injured arm, sending scattered profanities out into the street. When he saw a light go on in his neighbor’s house, he stopped. Steady, boy. The beer decided it had done enough. Keenan was instantly sober.
He flexed his arm carefully several times and knew it was still intact. He couldn’t see any blood (small comfort), but he knew it was going to be black and blue for a while.
It looks so flippin’ easy on TV. Pain radiated in a tidal wave through his arm.
The shards of glass in the window beamed back at him like funhouse teeth. He pushed one back and forth until it loosened and then pulled it out, careful not to cut himself. When he got the second and third out, he was feeling a little better, but it didn’t last long. A blinding white light threw a gigantic Keenan shadow against the outside of the house.
“Freeze. Put your hands out where I can see them.”
“Fuck.” The elongated word floated out of Keenan’s mouth like a boiling teakettle and he carefully put his hands out on the wall next to the window.
THE WICKED SIDE OF RESEARCH
by Minnette Meador
People ask me all the time how I research for love scenes and keep them hot. To tell you the truth, the answer is not as sexy as the scenes, unfortunately. It takes hours of arduous testing, exhausting marathons, risky experimentation, backbreaking repetition, over and over and over again. And then there are those long hot nights of sweating, groaning, and screaming. Honestly, it’s grueling. My poor husbands has to put up with so much.
Now that I have your attention, the truth is I read erotic stories and, secretly, LOVE them. I have many author friends who write erotica very well and try, unsuccessfully, to bring me over to the dark side. It has been tempting and one day I may try my hand at it. For the time being, the closest I’ve gotten is in my current romantic paranormal comedy, A GHOST OF A CHANCE. The second chapter consists of Keenan succumbing to a very sexy succubus in the most graphic way. It actually earned me a slot on an erotic site instead of its sister romance site. My corrupters would be so proud!
Someone asked me the other day if my husband and I do something that inspires certain… situations in my books. Actually, it’s the other way around. I’m telling you, if my DH wasn’t 7 years younger than me, I don’t know what we’d do. He’s such a good sport. Does it bother him? When I get the wide grin off his face, I’ll ask him.
I wish I could tell you that writing the scene sets off bells and whistles… well, okay, it does the first time around, but after a dozen revisions, it’s just… well, okay it still does, but then there are the galley proofs. Oh hell! Who am I kidding? It does… every… single…time. ~SIGH~ If you ever want to add a little sizzle into your love life sit down and write an erotic scene, the closest to your fantasies and the more graphic, the better. Then read it to your husband… you know, just to get his, uh… input. Trust me, if he’s alive, you’ll get all the input you can handle.
Anyway, if you want to read a real example of the above, there are two great ones in my new book, A GHOST OF A CHANCE. You be the judge.
Somewhere between thirty and dust...red hair, blue eyes...six kids, one slightly used husband, and any number of pets from time to time... wanttabe hippy... wanttheirmoney yuppie... pro musician and actress for 20 Years... native Oregonian... lover of music, beauty, and all things green. Willing slave to the venerable muse. Minnette currently resides in Lincoln City, Oregon with her husband, having replaced the children with one dog and two cats. The dog, Milo, pretty much runs the show.
Her novels include:
Starsight, Volume I, II, epic fantasy, (Amazon)
The Centurion & The Queen, Book I in the Centurion Series, historical romance (Amazon)
The Edge of Honor, historical romance, Book II in the Centurion Series (Amazon)
The Gladiator Prince, historical romance, Book III in the Centurion Series (Amazon)
A Ghost of a Chance, paranormal romantic comedy, Book I in the Ghost Series (Amazon)
The Belle Stalker, urban fantasy thriller (Amazon)
Nogero, alternate universe fantasy (Amazon Kindle Villa)
Phantom Hearts, paranormal romantic comedy, a Ghost Series Book (Amazon Kindle
Villa)
Coming Soon:
The Pirate Prince, historical romance, Book IV (Amazon) 2023
Haunted Hearts, Book III in the Ghost Series, paranormal romantic comedy (Amazon) 2023
Wy'East, urban fantasy thriller (TBD) 2023
Argeggios in the Dark, sci-fi 2023
Wy'East, Book II, urban fantasy thriller 2024
Starsight, The God Wars (prequel), epic fantasy - 2024
Starsight, The Restless Seed (sequel), epic fantasy - 2025
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Virtual Tea with Minnette including ebook & signed paperback – 1 winner,
Signed Paperback of any of Minnette's other books – 4 winners
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