THE FORTUNE TELLER'S SECRET - My Review, Guest Post & GIVEAWAY!
The Fortune Teller's Secret
A Cavendish Brown Paranormal Mystery Book 2
by Ron D. Voigts
Genre: Paranormal Mystery
A dead man on a Ferris wheel and a cold-case murder take Cavendish Brown into a world of carnival freaks, ghosts, and killers.
The annual carnival comes to Maiden Falls, a small town in the West Virginia Mountains, but everything is not merry.
The ghost of a woman appears to Cavendish Brown, a carnival worker lies dead aboard a car on the Ferris wheel, and a bullied teenager plots to kill people at the carnival with a homemade bomb. More complications arise. Cavendish again butts heads with the local sheriff, Clinton Pike.
Marbella Wellingway, owner of the newspaper where Cavendish works, receives a visit from the Angel of Death. And a Fortune Teller at the carnival knows something that could forever change Cavendish’s life.
With the aid of Jane, a disturbed psychic, and Alexandra, a Goth witch, he must find the killer, help the mystery woman, and risk his life to prevent more deaths.
Goodreads- https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34499865-the-fortune-teller-s-secret
Smashwords- https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/706690
Excerpt 2:
From the darkness came a whisper.
“Help me.”
I heard the woman’s voice clearly. Yet everywhere was black. A void. Impenetrable and empty.
“Help me, please.”
Sounds beyond the woman’s plea filled the vacuum. Somewhere a happy tune played on a pipe organ, the music dancing in the wind, a prelude to a circus parade with clowns and acrobats and a dancing bear. Children and adults laughed and cheered. Wonderful scents lingered in the air. Sweet cotton candy and popcorn elicited memories of happy times.
Something else filled the atmosphere. The smells of dampness and dirt mingled, forcing back the joy. Decaying leaves and rot stung my nose. I retched at the stench of death.
Disjointed images, fuzzy around the edges, traveled toward me then fell away into nothingness. A farm tractor. A wood rail fence. And a sign, blurred except for the words “GATE MUST BE KEPT CLOSED.”
With the snap, the darkness returned.
In the black, a speck of light grew into an image, taking form and shape. A woman stood in front of me, dressed gaily in a short ruffled pink skirt below a yellow long-sleeve shirt with triangles of black print. Leg warmers like a dancer might wear were bunched around her ankles. A blue ribbon tied in a bow kept back wild, unruly hair.
Her wide blue eyes stared at me, unblinking. Her lips, painted bright red, pursed.
“Help me.”
A dark wet spot appeared in her brown hair on the left side of her head, growing like a stain. Blood trickled from the edge of her ear and to her throat. Her head twisted, and a deep gash formed on its side.
She stretched out her arms as if crucified and fell backward in slow motion, tumbling away, then crashing with a deep thud. Her head struck the earth and the blue ribbon came loose. She twisted at an impossible angle, arms and legs bent like a broken doll.
A man in a denim jacket hovered above her, clutching a rock. He stared at the blood covering his hand. A shiver passed through him.
He released the rock, letting it vanish into the shadows that surrounded everything.
Another man with his back toward me sauntered up to the woman and stopped at her feet. He wore a white T-shirt with a cigarette pack rolled into the sleeve. He scratched the back of his head, mussing his hair. “What did you do, Johnny boy?”
“I killed her!” The man in denim fell to his knees.
The one in the T-shirt took a drag on a cigarette and tossed it aside.
“I’ll take care of things.”
Shadows swelled around them and eclipsed everything except the woman’s face. Her eyes opened. Her lips parted. The whisper came once more. “Please, help me.”
“No, no.” I wanted to run and flee this place of death, to be away from these evil men. “No.”
Coming VERY soon! Please stay tuned.
Excerpt 2:
Cavendish and Sheriff Pike were talking about the dead man. She disliked the sheriff. His breath smelled funny, and the light around him was orange and spiky which made her want to stay away. Alex told her the light was called an aura. Alex stood near the two men. She was nice. She and Cavendish didn’t have light, but Jane understood now. She had no light either.
People came closer to see the dead man. She didn’t care because that wasn’t interesting. Other things had her attention.
Tools lay everywhere on the ground. The red-haired man had worked inside the gray box. Grease from fixing the ride made his sleeves dirty. Most of the tools came from him. He’d used one, cussed, thrown it down, and grabbed another. Mama always told Jane to put away her things. The man didn’t. And she knew better than to say bad words.
But one tool was not from his work. She’d watched carefully, and it was already on the ground before he came. Perhaps it held a secret, something important to tell who killed the man.
Most everyone stood by the dead man or stared at him or talked about his body. Jane slipped behind the chain that kept everyone out except for the man who fixed the ride and the boy who ran the ride.
Nobody noticed her. She knelt, took off a glove, then stretched her hand out, moving it above the ground, over the tools. She stopped when her hand came to the wrench. Taking a deep breath, she snatched it up.
For a moment, she fell, even though she knew she wasn’t moving. A loud hum filled her head. She was no longer inside Jane.
Meaty hands in front of her twist something inside the gray box with the wrench. The man hums a tune. Sometimes he says a word or two of the song and then hums more of it. The man is thinking about the music inside his head. She starts to understand what he is singing.
Something about every move you make, every breath you take, I’ll be watching you. Jane thinks the words are funny for a song.
The man stays lost in his song and the work. He doesn’t hear the footsteps behind him—somebody walking on the wood platform leading to where people get on the ride. Whoever it is, stops. Jane wishes the man fixing the ride will look. She realizes he is the dead man, and whoever stands behind him is the killer.
“Yeah, Hersh, I’m working as fast as I can.” He doesn’t turn his head.
Whoever stands behind him says nothing. The man wonders why he’s not being yelled at because the ride is broken, and he hasn’t fixed it yet.
Expecting to be in trouble again, he stops working but doesn’t look.
He’s still thinking it’s someone named Hersh behind him. She gets a flash. Hershel McCabe.
The man releases the wrench.
The wrench lay beyond Jane’s fingertips. She knew who killed the man on the ride and rushed to Cavendish and Pike.
“I know who did it.” She took a deep breath. “I know who killed the man.”
Pike’s brow furrowed as a low growl came from him. “You do?”
“I touched the wrench. The guy who killed him is someone named Hersh. Hershel McCabe.” They’d be happy she solved the crime.
“What the Sam Hill is she talking about?” The sheriff eyed her as if she had done something bad, and she feared he might arrest her.
That scared her.
The man with red hair, who’d been talking to Cavendish and Pike, marched toward her. “My name is Hershel McCabe.”
Suddenly she wanted to throw up and run away.
“Who told you I killed him?” the man called Hersh said. “Are you crazy or stupid?” He turned to Pike. “This is bullshit.”
Pike waved his hand. “Settle down.” He eyed Jane again. “Where did you get a notion like that?”
Jane’s voice vanished. Her legs shook. She wanted to go home.
“Sometimes she gets excited and says things.” Alex touched Jane’s shoulder. “Let’s go wait over here. 0kay?”
She was happy Alex came to help her.
Next time she’d not tell anyone anything.
The Witch's Daughter
A Cavndish Brown Paranormal Mystery Book 1
Investigative reporter and recent widower, Cavendish Brown, is unemployed and floundering. Coerced into returning to his childhood home by the town's eccentric matriarch, Cavendish finds himself involved in murder, deceit, and a not-so-subtle attempt at matchmaking. Joined by Jane, a disturbed psychic, and Alexandra, a young Goth woman with uncanny abilities, they follow leads into the hills of West Virginia to catch the killer. A sheriff who shoots first and asks questions later makes solving the case difficult for the trio. Adding further complications is an ex-girlfriend with a mob hitman on her trail who seeks Cavendish’s help.
Immersed in a never-ending spiral of clues and secrets, he must unlock the darkness that surrounds the enigmatic Jane, stay ahead of the law, and come to terms with his own grief.
Smashwords- https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/706695
Ron D. Voigts lives in Raleigh, North Carolina and sometimes somewhere else. When back in Raleigh, he enjoys time with his family, watches old movies and shoots lots of pool. He has his own private writer’s retreat in La Vale, MD where he spends lots of time working on his next novel while enjoying the mountains and eating ice cream.
Twitter- https://twitter.com/RonDVoigts (@RonDVoigts)
The beginnings of Jane, the psychic, the psycho
By Ron D. Voigts
About seven years ago, I began hatching an idea for “A Cavendish Brown Paranormal Mystery” series. My interest lay with the psychometry--the talent to learn things about an event or person by touching inanimate objects associated with them. The skill is like the mentalist act where a guy says, “I am holding something from a man in the audience.” His partner, the mysterious woman on stage, wearing a blindfold, replies, “It’s a wristwatch with the initials J.R. engraved on the back.” What a wonderful way to find clues in a murder mystery.
I imagined a person out of the ordinary, almost a freak of society. My first attempt was a character named Mr. Greene, a strange man with a head shaped like a lightbulb, wearing a trench coat and fedora, and eating only tuna and crackers. He seemed less like a lead character, and so I developed my main character, Cavendish Brown. Then it struck me a woman would work much better opposite him. Her personality developed into someone simple in thought, able to grasp concrete over abstract better, and frankly quite homely. I wanted her to be someone least desirable in society because she’d be destined for greatness. I named her Jane Smith.
An aspect of Jane was she didn’t realize the value of her talent and took it to a modest level. She’d find people on the street, in public places, and around her neighborhood who’d pay a dollar for her to do the trick. They’d pay up and hand her something carrying hidden information; Jane did her magic trick telling them its secrets. An opportunist named Benson Briggs recognized the talent and used her to find clues to help find a murderer with Cavendish Brown’s help.
In The Fortune Teller’s Secret, she discovers a new talent. While it is common for a witch to move things on a small scale, she finds she can levitate herself as well as other objects. She has not totally mastered the feat but uses it and helps Cavendish near the end of the book. Enough said of that so not to give away anything.
Jane has a reputation for being difficult to be with and a bit weird. Her appearance somewhat resembles the creature in the Munch’s painting, “The Scream.” She sees the world in black and white and can be quite stubborn when she wants things on her terms. Anyone meeting her for the first time would wonder why she wears gloves, not understanding it’s her way coping and keeping out unwanted visions from touched objects. Toss in her perspective to see the world through the eyes of a ten-of-year old makes things a bit rough.
Her character arc over the course of the series will take her from the quirky person to a mature, powerful witch. Along the way, she will develop new skills and ultimately reach her potential. Surprises will come as she learns who she is and what she can do. Stay tuned for upcoming books that take her farther along this journey.
