I just saw this press release from a young woman who lives in my community here in Seattle (West Seattle). I'm hopeful her book will be a huge success.
PRESS RELEASE - April 3, 2009 - Seattle, WA (USA) -
West Seattle author Molly Ringle debuts in paperback this month with The Ghost Downstairs, a paranormal romance novel depicting an unusual workplace relationship in a house whose spirits refuse to rest.
The idea of setting the story in a former sorority house stemmed from Ringle's college days. She was a Tri-Delta in a huge old house that was, according to some members, haunted.
"The idea of who would be haunting a sorority and why stuck in my mind," Ringle says. Her house position as recording secretary led her to the file archives one day, where she discovered meeting minutes from the early twentieth century. She was intrigued by the strict rules the house once had regarding houseboys, college men who work in sorority kitchens. "The girls were expressly forbidden to interact with them, but I'm sure they did anyway," says Ringle. "So I took that, plus the ghost idea, and made up a story."
Though Ringle's sorority was at the University of Oregon in Eugene, she relocated the story to her adopted hometown of Seattle, and gave the fictional former sorority new life as a nursing home. Into this facility arrives the main character, Lina, a nurse moving in to assist the elderly residents.
Lina finds anything but peace. She soon hears of ghosts haunting the house, and of two tragic deaths that took place in the 1930s, when the house was still a sorority. Unexplained events lead her to ask questions of a handsome younger coworker named Ren. But Ren holds his own secrets, and the closer Lina gets to him, the worse the paranormal activity grows.
"In my own mind it's like a modern, supernatural Jane Eyre," Ringle says. "But others have told me it's like Twilight for grown-ups--with ghosts instead of vampires."
And at that old sorority house in Eugene, did Ringle herself ever see any ghosts or mysteriously levitating books? She smiles. "None. I apparently don't have the sixth sense. That's fine with me. My imagination's enough."
More about Ringle and her writing can be found at her site, http://www.mollyringle.com.
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