Hallowe'en Thrills, Technological Spills by Mari Biella

Picture credit: laobc, via openclipart.org

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my life, it’s that it just doesn’t do to rely too much on technology. Just when you get to that point at which everything depends on a gadget, invention or app, what happens? Why, the blasted thing fails to work, of course!

Our regular poster on the 26^th, Ruby Barnes, has very recently found this out to his cost. A combination of computer woes and travel plans have made it impossible for him to publish his regular post, so I’ve stepped in at the last minute. And, ironically enough, my replacement post will, after a fashion, concern technology.

Two things have, of late, been taking up my meagre mental resources: firstly, the Authors Electric newsletter, of which I am the administrator; and secondly, my favourite festival, the fast-approaching Hallowe’en. I’m at that age where I should regard All Hallows’ Eve as a bit of fun for kids, but come this time of year I’m often to be found carving pumpkins and selecting my favourite horror films. I just can’t help it: the annual festival of all things foul is one of the great joys of my life.

Luckily, I’ve found a way to combine these two preoccupations.

For a limited time, all new subscribers to the AE newsletter will get a free gift: a copy of my ghost novel The Quickening, on the house. Here’s some information to whet your appetite:

England, 1897. When botanist Lawrence Fairweather returns to his lonely Fenland home after an extended trip to Europe, he hopes for a time of peace and tranquillity. The Fairweathers are a family in need of healing, having experienced a tragedy that has left Lawrence’s wife Julia immersed in grief and their daughter Hazel unable to speak.

As Fairweather soon finds out, however, Halfway House is not the peaceful place it once was. Its lonely rooms and empty halls are thick with shadows and secrets, while the surrounding Fen crawls with menace. Julia and Hazel both seem to sense something gathering beneath the surface calm, and even Fairweather finds his rationalism challenged by a series of inexplicable events. But are the Fairweathers haunted by their own memories, or by something altogether more sinister?

A traditional haunted house story set in the Victorian Age, The Quickening explores the boundaries between perception and reality, religion and science, and truth and mystery.

To claim your free book, all you have to do is click here, or on the sign-up form in the top right-hand corner of this page, and follow the instructions. That’s if the technology doesn’t let us down, or the newsletter hasn’t fallen under some kind of diabolical Hallowe'en curse...

Happy Hallowe'en!