Scott Nicholson Blog Tour - Win a Kindle and bunch of E-Books

Hey Guys! I was lucky enough to be picked as part of Scott Nicholson's Blog tour and today is my day with the guy! So scott has kindly written and very interesting guest post for all you lucky reader! Also, giveaway of Kindle's and a bunch of E-books at the end of this post! So read on!

It’s not a secret that I like to tap local legends and spooky stories for my Appalachian thrillers. Or paranormal adventures. Or supernatural mysteries. Or whatever I call them this week.

But there’s one I like to dub a “modern Gothic thriller.” If you ask me what that means, I’ll say “Artists gather at a remote Appalachian manor, where a dormant spirit draws energy from their work.”

It’s inspired by real ghost stories of the Cone Manor in the Blue Ridge Mountains, the estate of a long-dead industrialist, with appropriate liberties taken. The Cone family collected art, and I wanted to isolate the artists at the retreat so they couldn’t pick up a cell phone at the first sign of trouble. I think my original title was “The Colony,” which was pretty bland, and so was the title selected by the publisher when it originally came out in 2004 as “The Manor.”

I wrote a movie script version called “Appalachian Haunting,” which came close to getting optioned. Years later, the producer is still interested, though he sees it as an over-the-top comedy while I was kind of serious. I think. With me, you can never tell for sure.

Though I won’t have the U.S. print rights back for another year, I can sell the book overseas as an e-book, and there’s no reason to miss out on even new one reader. So I revised it quite a bit, including cutting a flashback and moving it to the beginning of the book. That came from the movie script, where sticking in a flashback would have meant a flawed structure. The book employs quite a bit of Appalachian folk magic as the basis for the supernatural events.

Here’s the summary:

After parapsychologist Anna Galloway is diagnosed with metastatic cancer, she has a recurring dream in which she sees her own ghost. The setting of her dream is the historic Korban Manor, which is now an artist's retreat in the remote Appalachian Mountains. Drawn both by the ghost stories surrounding the manor and her own sense of destiny, Anna signs up for the retreat.

Sculptor Mason Jackson has come to Korban Manor to make a final, all-or-nothing attempt at success before giving up his dreams. When he becomes obsessed with carving Ephram Korban's form out of wood, he questions his motivation but is swept up in a creative frenzy unlike any he has ever known.


Sylva Hartley is an old mountain witchwoman who is connected to Ephram Korban both before and after his death. Her knowledge of Appalachian folk spells and potions has bound her to the manor in a deeper and darker way. Sylva harbors a family secret that refuses to stay slumbering in its grave.


The manor itself has secrets, with fires that blaze constantly in the hearths, portraits of Korban in every room, and deceptive mirrors on the walls. The house's brooding atmosphere affects the creative visions of the visiting artists. A mysterious woman in white calls to Anna from the forest, while Mason is driven by the whispers of an unseen critic. With an October blue moon looming, both the living and the dead learn the true power of their dreams.

It's a power that Korban craves for himself, because he walks a shadowy land where passions burn cold and even the ghosts are haunted.

Though the Internet is worldwide, Badass Bookies is an Australian blog. So Lisa the blog host naturally talks about books available to her, and few of mine have been available in Australia before. It’s one of the wonderful ways e-books are breaking down artificial barriers. And a way for me to bring this book back from the dead, better than it was before.

It wasn’t until a couple of years after I wrote the book that I figured out some of its metaphors. No, I don’t go around cramming “theme” into my books, because that comes out in any storytelling form that’s worth the trouble. But Mason’s artistic aspirations and fear of heights (and even his name, a sculptor named “Mason,” that I never understood until recently) probably mirrored some of the feelings I had at the time, when I was just breaking into publishing and facing the pressure of success. It all seems laughable now, since all success is fleeting and ephemeral (Mel Gibson, anyone?) and all you have to worry about is doing your best and not hurting anyone. This is the best I can do as a dead writer.

Creative Spirit. I like that title better.

Scott Nicholson is author of The Skull Ring, Drummer Boy and 10 other novels, five story collections, four comics series, and six screenplays. A journalist and freelance editor in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, he often uses local legends in his work. This tour is sponsored by Amazon, Kindle Nation Daily, and Dellaster Design.

To be eligible for the Kindle DX, simply post a comment below with contact info. Feel free to debate and discuss the topic, but you will only be entered once per blog. Visit all the blogs on the tour and increase your odds. I’m also giving away a Kindle 3 through the tour newsletter and a Pandora’s Box of free e-books to a follower of “hauntedcomputer” on Twitter. And, hey, buy The Red Church and put me in the Top 100 and I’ll throw in another random Kindle 3 giveaway. Thanks for playing. Complete details at http://www.hauntedcomputer.com/blogtour.html

Badass Bookie xx