This Madness of the Heart
by Blair
Yeatts
GENRE: gothic
mystery/thriller
BLURB:
Bad
religion can be deadly. So Miranda Lamden, small-town religion professor,
discovers in This Madness of the Heart. The dark hollers of Eastern Kentucky
offer fertile soil for shady evangelist Jasper Jarboe, new president of Grace
and Glory Bible College, as he beguiles the small mining town of Canaan Wells
with his snake-oil charm.
When Miranda isn’t teaching at Obadiah Durham
College, she’s investigating paranormal phenomena—or enjoying a turbulent
romantic relationship with backwoods artist Jack Crispen. JJ’s
inquisition-style gospel has alienated her long since, but when he announces
his plan to transform her forest home into an evangelical Mecca, complete with
neon cross and 40-foot Jesus, Miranda girds her loins for war. But JJ isn’t
finished: he goes on to launch an attack on her friend and fellow professor
Djinn Baude with an avalanche of vicious rumors. Not only does he accuse Djinn of
demonic communion with the old Voudon witch whose curse killed the college’s
founding family, but he also smears her with insinuations of lechery and vice.
With JJ’s urging, hate boils over into violence and
tragedy, sweeping Miranda up in its flood. One death follows another as a
miasma of evil overwhelms the tiny community, and only Miranda can see clearly
enough to halt its spread.
This Madness of the Heart is the first in a new
series of Gothic mystery-thrillers featuring Professor Miranda Lamden, whose
spiritual gifts have drawn her beyond university walls to explore the mysteries
of other world beliefs. Her unique vision brings her into repeated
confrontations with evil, where too often she finds herself standing alone
between oblivious onlookers and impending disaster.
Buy Links:
This Madness of the Heart e-book is free @Smashwords.
(CreateSpace
will be up on May 1)
EXCERPT:
The night turned around her, until, in
the darkest watches before dawn, she rose from her knees, abandoning the bloody
altar with its guttering candles. A queen entranced, she paced slowly down the
hill toward the sleeping house, her eyes blind with visions. Through the front
door she walked, into the hall’s center, to the foot of the great staircase.
There she raised her bloody hands and cried aloud in a high-pitched wail,
sinking at last to a low hissing hum.
“Guede-z-araignee! Come a-hungered!
Drink di lifeblood o’ dis evil man! Drink he mem’ry away! Tak he woman int’ di
night, Tak’ he chillun, tak’ dem all! Tak’ dem int’ di darkness! Tak’ dem
all—tak’ dey lives, tak’ dey bodies, tak’ dey souls! Gi di blood o’ di murderer
no rest, not in dis life, not in di next. Spill dey blood on dis bloody land!
Come, Guede-z-araignee! Come an’ drink!”
Like a snake swaying on its coils, a
tendril of smoke emerged from the darkness, swelling and growing, rising and
twisting toward the upper floors of the plantation house. Tiny rainbow-hued
flames licked at the polished floor. Then, with a screaming roar, fire like a
spider’s bloated body engulfed the great hall, swallowing the keening woman and
gathering the curving staircase to its tumid breast. A billowing inferno
exploded into the long upper halls, curling and crisping the fine imported
wood, sealing bedroom doors with sucking flame, feeding on the agonized cries
within: a holocaust offered to a vengeful deity, sated at last with the
charring bodies of the landowner’s family... the whole family, save one, a tiny
boychild, carried sleeping from his father’s house by an old black nurse,
terrified by the fiery havoc she had witnessed in her dreams.
Author
Interview:
What inspired you to write This Madness of the Heart?
I’ve
loved mysteries all my life, beginning with Mary Stewart’s long list of
romantic suspense novels. I read them over and over again, battering the books
into fragile pulp, probably beginning even before my teens. Then there was
Agatha Christie, and all the many other British women of mystery. My favorite
among them was Dorothy L. Sayers, with her character Harriet Vane. More
recently, Nevada Barr and Charles Todd have been favorites. I think it was
inevitable that I’d finally write a mystery of my own: they’ve been my favorite
down-time reading all my life! Madness
in particular is my response to greedy and power-hungry “Christian”
evangelists. It’s admittedly over the top . . . vengeful ghosts don’t play much
of a part in most charlatans’ life stories. But I believe that there’s often
more than we realize happening beneath the surface where evil is present.
When or at what age did you know you
wanted to be a writer?
I’ve
tried to answer this question several times now, and I really don’t know the
answer. I made up stories about my tiny stuffed animals when I was 6 years old,
and was invited by teachers to share them with other primary classes on a
regular basis. I read voraciously, and I know I wrote as well, but there are
many years where I just don’t remember doing it. Maybe it was because my school
skipped me ahead a year from 3rd to 4th grade. I recall
life being very tough there for a while. I wrote my own romantic fiction as a
teenager, but never showed it to anyone, and won a prize or two for writing in
local competitions. But I didn’t realize that I desperately wanted to be a
writer until after my children were born, and I was teaching college religion
classes . . .
What is the earliest age you remember
reading your first book?
I
must have been three or four, because the first book I remember reading was my
brother’s 1st grade primer (in a house we moved out of when I was 4),
with major characters Dick, Jane, Spot, and Puff. I still have almost perfect
visual recall of the book: cover, illustrations, and all.
What genre of books do you enjoy
reading?
Mystery-thrillers
and fantasy are my favorite genres—not surprising, since I’ve chosen to write
gothic mystery-thrillers! I’ve spent most of my life studying and reading
non-fiction, and teaching religion courses in college, and I’m burnt out on
non-fiction. I like fiction with substance and depth, but it also has to create
a world where I’d like to live. Unremitting violence and ugliness put me off.
Choosing books is like eating food: you’re likely to become what you read.
What is your favorite book?
As
long as I keep reading, I’ll keep discovering new favorites, or at least I hope
I will. They change with the years, and I don’t think there’s ever been just
one. Dorothy L. Sayers’ Gaudy Night
is an enduring favorite: brilliant characters, suspense, violence, hate,
romance, and redemption—they’re all there. Charles Williams’ Descent Into Hell is another . . . it’s
a cautionary tale about self-absorption, with intermittent paeans to human
spiritual potential. Lois McMaster Bujold’s Paladin
of Souls. Ursula K. Le Guin’s The
Other Wind.
You know I think we all have a favorite
author. Who is your favorite author and why?
Oh,
dear. Again I have favorites plural,
and like books, they change as I change. Also, different authors appeal to
different moods, different moments. But if I had to choose one lifetime
favorite it would probably be C.S. Lewis, because I still reread all of his
fiction every couple of years—and have been doing so since my teens. He
reinforces my belief in the essential goodness, spiritual richness, and meaning
of the universe, without being obnoxiously proselytizing or pious—or
androcentric. He has his issues, but so do we all.
If you could travel back in time here on
earth to any place or time. Where would you go and why?
Arthurian
Britain, definitely! I’ve had a lifelong love affair with Arthurian literature,
from Mary Stewart’s Merlin books to The
Once and Future King and Camelot,
Mists of Avalon, and on and on. And
that’s only the mainstream popular fiction. Then there are Prophetiae Merlini, Gregory of Monmouth, Black Book of Carmarthen, Morte
d’Arthur, Tennyson, and so on. I suspect the reality might something far
less enchanting, but you never know. To actually glimpse that age in person and
know would be worth any amount of
danger and disenchantment!
When writing a book do you find that
writing comes easy for you or is it a difficult task?
Yes.
LOL Sometimes when I write it’s like riding the crest of a wave. Nothing can
stop the flow. Of course, there’s the inevitable letdown when your nerves are
suddenly scraped raw by the return to the gritty reality of the here and now,
but it’s worth it. And then there are the days of plodding trial and error,
when nothing comes easily and everything feels trite and hackneyed. I find that
the trick is to keep going—unless I reach the point where it all seems like
garbage and I have the overwhelming urge to hit “secure empty trash”! Then I’ve
learned to just close the file and walk away. I can usually tell when I first
open a book file in progress if I’m going to have to deal with revulsion. It’s
probably just a matter of my own moods. But eventually I hear the book
whispering to me again, and I go back.
Do you have any little fuzzy friends?
Like a dog or a cat? Or any pets?
I’m
a dedicated servant of cat-kind. I have two rescue cats, who spend much of
their time taking turns on my lap while I’m writing—until they get too helpful
and start chasing my fingers across the keyboard. They both stay with me in my
office most of the time when I’m writing. They have cat runs above my desk, and
beds in strategic places all around. They’re the models for the two cats in Madness, Shiva and Shakti:
Shiva scowled up at me with his sleepy green eyes, his
thoughts needing no translation:
“Leaving again so soon?” he groused. I walked past him,
running a hand down his orange back, and he hooked a claw into my finger in
response.
“Monster!” I growled. “You need an attitude adjustment.”
That’s what I got for naming a tomcat after a god whose most
conspicuous activity was dancing the universe into bloody chaos and
destruction.
Shakti looked on unconcerned, only curling more tightly into
her stripy grey ball. At least when she was in a bad mood she kept it to
herself.
What is your "to die for",
favorite food/foods to eat?
Shaken
lemon pie (that’s custard with tons of rind), fried Calamari (with all the
crunchy little legs), and Maine lobster-pound fare: steamed clams and lobster,
with deep-dish blueberry pie.
Do you have any advice for anyone that
would like to be an author?
If you love it, fight for it. If you really are a writer at heart, you
won’t be happy if you don’t write—and in the end it’s the writing that matters,
not how many books you sell. But you have to keep at it, hour after hour, day
after day, in fine weather and in foul.
AUTHOR BIO:
Blair Yeatts grew up in the midst of a
large, old southern Virginia family, much like the family of her main
character. She followed her parents into a career in academia and taught
religion at the college level in Kentucky for many years. Her special areas of
expertise are psychology and Earth-based religions, in which she has done
considerable research.
From childhood, Ms. Yeatts has been a fan of mystery fiction,
starting with Nancy Drew and moving through Agatha Christie to twentieth
century giants like Dorothy L. Sayers, P.D. James, and Nevada Barr. She is
fulfilling a life’s dream in writing her own mysteries.
Ms. Yeatts shares her home with her photographer husband, two
cats, and a dog. She has a lifelong love of wild nature, and prefers to set her
stories in rural areas, where threads of old spiritual realities still make
themselves felt. Her first three books take place in different parts of
Kentucky and Tennessee.
Author Links:
Giveaway:
$25 Amazon or B/N GC
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