Thursday, May 5, 2022

Ghost Notes by Beth Henderson

           Jace Hastings, rising music star, is presumed dead in a vehicle collision, courtesy of a stalker with deadly designs. Ten years later, P.I. Gaelen Wyndom can’t believe someone wants her to find him.

          Pelham Flannery rejoined the world from ICU, fully aware someone had tried to kill him. To live, he went under the radar, distanced himself from music, and disguised everything that would give away his identity as Jace. After a decade, is it safe to come out of hiding?

          Gaelen, delighted to be trained as a professional investigator by her new husband, continued in her new career after he was killed. Assigned to locate Jace Hastings, she isn’t told who wants to find him, but she puzzles it out. If she’s right, it’s the man who tried to kill him before. Which means she needs to find Jace Hastings and save him.

 Wild Women Authors features author Beth Henderson who is celebrating the release of her latest novel: Ghost Notes. With Beth is musician Pel Flannery who will go first.

 Welcome, Pel. Thanks for joining us today. Let’s start with where you are from. You could say that’s hard to say. I was born in LA. My mother was in the midst of cutting a record (she’s a vocalist) when she went into labor. But as both my parents are on the road separately, I grew up in the D.C. area where I lived with my mother’s parents.

Tell us a bit about Ghost Notes. The title itself is a term in the music world, but it suits well because a decade ago, just as my career was taking off, one where I called myself Jace Hastings, a maniacal stalker tried to kill me to keep me away from the woman I was stuck doing duets and photo ops with. I was trying to shake free of her. And that nearly happened, but not before the stalker rammed a semi into my sportscar. Which she was driving at the time. She was killed, I barely survived, but her death just upped his desire to off me. So, I gave up music. Downsized my life to that of a drifter with all his possessions in a duffle bag and kept on the move. But ten years have gone by. I hadn’t felt the eyes of his pals on me for six months. I still wasn’t going to go back to my life as Jace Hastings, just in case, though. Instead, I funded a jazz club/restaurant in a mostly retired community outside of Phoenix. My mother, C.C. was ready to get off the road but still wanted to be able to sing. We made it her place, I was just the accompanist at the piano and the guy funding and managing it. Then the stalker hired a PI to find me. A beautiful one. I was a goner, whether it was love felling me or the stalker because realized she’d found me. The clock was ticking but toward what, I had no clue.

What did you think the first time you saw Gaelen Wyndom? That just maybe I could be a regular guy again and follow through on the unconscious pull she was broadcasting.

What was your second thought? There was music in her voice, and I should keep my distance for safety’s sake.

Do you feel it was love at first sight? I’d call it down and dirty lust, actually. I’d been celibate for a long time.

What do you like most about Gaelen? That she’s a kind and decent person, that she’s good at her job, and that she wants me as much as I want her. We are both fighting our own demons, so there’s always a chance they’ll best us.

How would you describe her? I’m a guy. Gorgeous, though she doesn’t think so. Sexy as hell even though she dresses to blend into crowds rather than stand out. Except for one particular bright red dress that clings to her like I’d like to.

How would she describe you? I’d sorta hope it was as irresistible. She did, after all, or so she confessed, have a massive crush on me back when she was in college as a music major and I was racking up accolades for the way I arranged old standards for a 21st century audience. However, she didn’t know I had once been Jace Hastings when we met. I was just a 35 year old music guy disguised as a self-made millionaire who wore expensive custom made suits when he tickled the ivories.

What made you choose music for a career? If you listen to my mother, C.C. Pelham, I was born into it. She’s a frequently nominated but never won a Grammy songstress. Dad, Jay Flannery, is a famous trombone man. And I was nearly born in a recording studio. Being a performer is all I ever wanted to be, though I didn’t want to trade on their success, which is why I came up with a stage name.

What is your biggest fear?  Oddly enough, not that the stalker will kill me, though that’s still a worry. I don’t want Gaelen to walk out of my life.

With all this going on, how do you relax? How else? I sit at a keyboard and play whatever niche of jazz that suits the eats tension away. But honestly, sex with Gaelen works even better.

Who is your favorite fictional character? Hmm… The movie version of Nick Charles, Dash Hammett’s detective, maybe. Odd that it isn’t a fictional musician, isn’t it? But I watched a lot of really, really old movies while convalescing after the first attempt on my life.

What is the best piece of advice you ever received? Forget the music—go win the girl.

Thanks for taking time away from your work, Pel. Now we’d like to chat with your creator, Beth Henderson.

What movies or books have had an impact on your career as a writer? My favorite movies tend to be Marvel movies these days, but I love Indiana Jones, and still replay the CDs of Remington Steele—in fact, that TV series probably feeds some of the romantic comedy as well as mystery that I tend to write, though Ghost Notes isn’t a romantic comedy, some of the same byplay is there. As for books, I loved Elizabeth Peter’s Vicki Bliss mystery comedy series. Currently I’m hooked on Sabrina Flynn’s Ravenwood Mysteries set in San Francisco before the 1906 earthquake.

Is there an event in your private life that you were able to bring to this story and how do you feel it impacted the novel? Oddly enough, yes. When I was 25, a lady ran a red light and t-boned my Mustang. I landed in the hospital for three weeks, but as I went into shock in the ambulance, they couldn’t operate on my broken hip until four days after the accident. Four days that I have absolutely no memory of, nor of the accident itself. In Ghost Notes, the backstory has a 25-year-old Pel Flannery getting rammed when the semi barrels through a red light. As the semi was much bigger than the sedan that creamed me, his injuries (though in the passenger seat, rather than the driver’s seat) still take him nearly a year to recover from. My recovery was shorter, but it still required six months on crutches. Probably the frustration at that age of being reduced to depending on others to take care of so many thing you took for granted probably seeped into the story, or at least Pel’s backstory.

Tell us a bit about your publisher: how did you hear about them and what influenced your decision to submit to them? The Wild Rose Press published Ghost Notes in May. Actually, I fell in with them when looking for a traditional publisher interested in American West historical romance with mystery and adventure. The publisher I’d had in the past had either changed what they were looking for or gone out of business, so it was back to the drawing board for a publisher. In 2021 Wild Rose Press released my western historical romance, Until . . ., but Pel and Gaelen’s story was already on the drawing board, and I finished writing it during the pandemic. Fortunately, my wonderful editor at Wild Rose, Nan Swanson, loved it, too!

What book[s] currently rest on your TBR pile? A variety of things: C.S. Harris’s latest Sebastian St. Cyr Regency mystery, Ben Aaronovich’s latest Rivers of London urban fantasy police procedural mystery comedy, Jodi Taylor’s latest St. Mary’s time travel adventure comedy, and I also pulled out an old Nora Roberts’ book to reread, Hot Ice.

Lastly, what's up next and when can we expect to see it on the shelves? Honestly, I’m not sure. I’m torn between another contemporary romantic suspense with a stage magician hero who fears that he might be the serial killer targeting lone women vacationing in Las Vegas because he dreams about each death, seeing it as though he is the one killing the woman. He isn’t, of course. But I’m also toying with another historical romantic mystery adventure set in 1852 in the California Gold Rush. My schedule though has me “booked” to turn in two more urban fantasy stories for my Raven Tales series that I write as J.B. Dane for a different publisher.

 

To learn more about Beth Henderson and the stories she creates, go to:

Website: www.4TaleTellers.com

Facebook: http://bit.ly/2GvFyog

Twitter:  @Beth__Henderson

Pinterest:  www.pinterest.com/bhendbks

 

To purchase Ghost Notes, go to:

Amazon: getbook.at/GhostNotes

Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/ghost-notes-beth-henderson/1141022856?ean=9781509241798

 

Also available for Kobo, Apple, and GooglePlays

 

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