COZY PARANORMAL AUTHOR VALONA JONES ON WHY SHE SET HER SERIES IN SAVANNAH

Valona Jones, aka Maggie Toussaint, writes paranormal cozies set in coastal Georgia. She lives in coastal Georgia, where time and tide wait for no one. To learn more about Maggie/Valona and her books, visit her Valona Jones and Maggie Toussaint websites.

Why Savannah? 

For all of my life, Savannah has been the big city, the gleaming “Oz” of coastal Georgia. At just over an hour’s drive from my childhood home, trips to Savannah were Very Big Deals. That’s where we went for school clothes and new shoes, and then we ate out. What a novelty for our family to dine at a restaurant!

 

One Savannah restaurant I enjoyed was Morrison’s Cafeteria because I could get whatever I wanted, and there was no negotiating over vegetables I didn’t want to eat. I loved their macaroni and cheese.

 

The other restaurant I remember fondly was The Pirates’ House with its gloomy basements and spooky history. Built in 1753, the site was first purposed as an inn for sailors. Then it became a restaurant and a meeting place for all who plied the seven seas, seafarers and pirates alike. Situated a block from the Savannah River on Broad Street, tunnels connected this place to River Street. According to legend, men of yesteryear were shanghaied (kidnapped) from this site, awakening on a ship at sea.

 

As with any settlement with a history of nearly 300 years, conflicts and disease took their toll, and ghost stories abound. Savannah is known as the City of the Dead, and it’s one of the oldest cities in America. Factors Walk on the river is where the city received and shipped goods of all kinds. Some say Savannah was built on cotton, rice, and other goods, but I say Savannah was built on her dead.

 

When I decided to write a paranormal cozy mystery series about a candlemaker, I realized this story world had to be set in Savannah. Yellow Fever Epidemics hit the Georgia coast three times: notably in 1820 with 895 deaths, in 1854 with deaths assumed to be similar to the 1820 outbreak (However, reporting of this pandemic was concealed by authorities), and in1876 with more than 1066 dead in two weeks. The vast number of bodies overwhelmed cemeteries and funeral homes, leading to mass graves and corpses laid out in tunnels under the city. One mass grave site is in Colonial Park Cemetery, which contains many of the people from the 1820 outbreak. Some mass grave locations have been lost through time.

 

Speaking of lost graves, two Black cemeteries were paved over to become Calhoun Square and Whitefield Square. The entire downtown historic district, along with The Pirate House, is built atop Native American burial grounds. Also, unmarked settlers’ graves occurred when people buried their dead on their property. Thus, many Savannah homes, parks, businesses, and streets are literally built atop the dead.

 

Since this new series I’m writing is about a family who manipulate energy, I included a mass grave under the site of The Book and Candle Shop on Bristol Street, a fictional shop and street in the historic district, near Johnson Square. This allowed me to meld history and fiction in a way that fit within the paradigm of Savannah’s unmarked gravesites.

 

As a native Georgian, I felt the tidal pull of Savannah for this story, and my lifetime association with the City of the Dead fostered the certainty that Savannah was the perfect venue for the paranormal Magic Candle Shop Mystery series. That’s how this series came to be set in Savannah.

 

Just for fun, leave a comment naming your favorite restaurant side order.

 

In the Wick of Time

A Magic Candle Shop Mystery, Book 2

 

Tabby Winslow will help her twin sister Sage with anything and everything—and that includes putting out the flames of suspicion when Sage’s boss is found murdered in this magical mystery, perfect for fans of Amanda Flower and Sofie Kelly.

 

December in Savannah, Georgia, is a sight to behold. With all the festivities—including the traditional riverfront luminary display during the boat parade—twin sisters Tabby and Sage Winslow are busier than ever setting up for the big celebration. But that isn’t the only thing on the sisters’ minds. Both Sage and her fellow employee Mary Nicole are vying for the sought-after assistant manager job at the plant nursery. But when Loren Lee, their boss, is found dead, and Sage becomes the police’s favorite suspect, both Winslow girls know that they’ll need more than a flicker of magic and their sisterhood to solve the murder and clear Sage’s name.

 

Soon, Tabby realizes that this is just one of the many problems they have. If being a suspect for murder wasn’t enough, there are more magical problems that they have to fix: Sage’s boyfriend is having a paranormal experience of his own he can’t control, there’s an energy vampire searching for his supposedly lost cousin, her cat suddenly dislikes her, and oh—every time Tabby hiccups, she turns completely invisible. The suspect list grows with each day and it seems everyone has a reason or a connection to Loren Lee. 

 

Tabby and Sage are burning the candle at both ends—but will it be enough to keep their friends safe and find this killer? Or will they be burned by their efforts?

 

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COZY PARANORMAL AUTHOR AVERY DANIELS CRAFTS A VAMPIRE SLEUTH WITH A SUNNY OUTLOOK ON LIFE

Paranormal cozy author Avery Daniels resides in Colorado with two brother black cats as her spirited companions and volunteers at a cat shelter. She enjoys scrapbooking, card making, photography, painting and crochet. Learn more about Avery and her books at her website where you'll also find links to her other social media.

Affirmations and a Positive Thought Vampire?

I knew I wanted to write a paranormal cozy mystery, but the standard is to make the main character a witch. I wanted to stand out, so I told myself the witch would make a good sidekick, but not the heroine. So, I went with a vampire.

 

Vampires aren’t very cozy, so I had my work cut out for me. First, I wanted her to counter the standard image of a vampire. I gave her curly blond hair and glasses and named her Misty Summers. She’s like an adult version of Shirley Temple. That’s a good start but I had to make her more unique to break the barrier some folks have against a vampire lead for a cozy mystery.

 

What would be the most against-type characteristic for Misty Summers? What about a vampire who is a positive thought believer, who says affirmations and is working on being the best person she can be, who reads self-help books and has a heart for helping people? She a sunny, fun vampire.

 

In the process I had to get a little more into what affirmations were to have Misty be a believer. But to understand affirmations, we must address the inner critic. Everyone has an inner critic. Some have a more aggressive critic than others. In the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey refers to it as the scripts that have been handed to us by parents, society, cultural influence, friends, co-workers etc. It is the concept of how other’s perception of us and our behavior shapes that inner critic, so we perpetuate that perception with our inner thought life. 

 

Have you ever heard of the "self-fulfilling prophecy?" It’s the theory that, if you believe in a certain outcome, you will act in accordance with your belief of the outcome in such a manner that you actually bring about that outcome. So, if your inner critic keeps telling you that you really don’t deserve such-and-such or people like you don’t get such lucky breaks etc. you are likely to act in a way to make sure you don't get it.

 

Watch your thoughts; they become words.
Watch your words; they become actions.
Watch your actions; they become habits.
Watch your habits; they become character.
Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.
- Patrick Overton

 

Before long that inner critic can become the self-saboteur of our lives. But we can start to address our self-defeating inner thoughts with a technique called Affirmations. And that is what my “look on the sunny side” Misty Summers does. She uses affirmations to deal with her lacking self-esteem from her uninterested parents. 

 

Affirmations are constructive, positive statements that you repeat to yourself aloud at least once daily. More often is better. Many make it part of their morning and evening ritual to incorporate it into their habits. Affirmations don’t work miracles, so if you don’t like yourself or have some deep traumas, this won’t work. Affirmations are a slow reprogramming of established outlooks. It will take a while to work, but it does help shift that negative talk as you become more aware of it and consciously reject them with new constructive thoughts.

 

If you are interested, you can write your own affirmations. The book Self-Esteem for Dummies by S. Renee Smith provides many tips

 

In the first book, Misty Summers uses affirmations to deal with becoming a vampire. She keeps saying them every morning. She will continue to use affirmation in future books, but as she grows and adjusts I’m sure she will develop new ones to help her where she is at in the moment. I really like this aspect of my newly turned vampire dealing with her extreme life changes with as much positivity as she can. Will she still struggle? Absolutely, but she will keep looking for the silver lining and bright side, and those simple affirmations are part of her tool belt to deal with what life throws her.

First Bite

An Accidental Vampire PI Mystery, Book 1

What's a positive thought girl to do when she finds herself one of the undead? Recite plenty of affirmations and use those new toothy skills to assist her PI boss, of course

In 24 hours, Misty Summers had the worst date of her life, was bit by a vampire, and her PI boss may close his business as he goes through a divorce. Looking on the sunny side, she decides to use her new vampire assets and become the investigator to keep her job and income. She doesn’t know what her future holds, but it can’t be any worse! When she starts following up on a missing woman’s case, she finds herself in the middle of murder. Even with her positive thinking and affirmations, she is finding her new reality daunting. But she vows to take a bite out of crime in her small lake resort town.

If you like Duffy Brown, Nancy Warren, Nova Nelson, Dionne Lister, Trixie Silvertale, and Leighann Dobbs, then you'll love this series with a quirky intelligent sleuth, small town lake setting, and tantalizing mysteries. Misty Indigo Summers is a positive thinking kind of gal and a most unlikely vampire and PI. Buy these fun and clean cozy mysteries and start enjoying Misty's adventures today!

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