Blog Tour: Open Door by Christine Locke

This virtual book tour is presented by Bewitching Book Tours.

Click HERE to see the tour schedule.

Welcome to The Wormhole and my day on the tour.

It is my pleasure to feature:

Christine Locke and Open Door.

About the Author:

Christine Locke was born in California and grew up in various locations around the United States as a Navy brat. She was the oldest of six children and today is mother and step-mother to seven. She attended Texas A&M University, receiving her Master of Arts degree in Comparative Literature in 1995.

Christine has worked as a writing instructor, a salesperson, and an award-winning retail manager and management trainer, among other things. Today, she co-ordinates makeovers for a local magazine. She and her husband, Mike, live with their children, two dogs, and two cats in Arkansas.

For years, Christine has been writing novels around her work and family life. Open Door is her first published novel. Several other manuscripts are almost ready to follow Open Door onto Amazon KDP, including the Open Door sequel, In Time.

Twitter: @wrtrdoll and @CarinsGriffin

christinelockebooks.blogspot.com

carinatmallacemansion.blogspot.com

http://www.goodreads.com/wrtrdoll

Open Door

By Christine Locke

Book Description:

ENTRANCING OPPORTUNITIES BECKON A YOUNG GIRL...

It's 1987, and 16-year-old Carin White desperately needs her first job.  An elegant woman she's never met appears at her door offering employment.  "Aunt" Helen asks Carin to work for her on the family's rambling, enigmatic estate in the tiny resort town of Eureka Springs.

IN A WORLD WHERE NOTHING IS AS IT SEEMS...

Carin takes little notice of Rafe Allen, Helen's other hired help.  But a brutal assault forces Carin to confront her own capacity for violence.  Carin learns her mother concealed her identity from her, and the mansion hides horrific secrets of its own.

 AND ONLY LOVE CAN SAVE HER.

Carin exposes the truth about her presence on the estate.  Will she be strong enough to recognize love and redeem her family legacy?  Or will the temptations of power and control lure her to the same dark places where others lost themselves?

Amazon

Notes to Readers:

This novel is NOT about werewolves, vampires, or fallen angels.  It is a story about magic.  The gothic Mallace Mansion lives and breathes as a character, and only one woman controls its Legacy.  Is Carin the one? Read OPEN DOOR to find out.

This novel does NOT have a cliffhanger ending.  The author does not believe in them.  The story is complete in itself, and the ending points the way to a new storyline for IN TIME, the second novel in the Legacy Trilogy due out this Halloween.

OPEN DOOR is a full length novel at over 46,000 words.

An Excerpt:

Miss Anne never left the door ajar.  Given tonight’s weather, it was an unsettling find.  The towering oaks at the front of Mallace Estate’s grounds cracked with the plummeting temperature, groaning with the change.  Matthew lowered his chin, fighting the urge to look up.  He resisted his desire for the driver’s seat of his large black sedan and the quick drive to his own comfortable home.  He was here.  He was invited.  He must go in and find Anne; she was nearly ninety and could have come to harm.

                This thought--and all the courage he could summon—enabled Matthew to cross the threshold of Mallace Mansion.  He grasped the great door handle in his firm grip and swung the door, expecting the squeak of old hinges to announce his presence.  The hard sole of his shoe trod the stone floor of the arched entry sending soft echoes throughout.  He scanned the darkness within.  The hall was very cold, as cold as the veranda.  Matthew, worried now, closed the door and turned up his collar.  He had little light by which to investigate.  His misgivings increased as he found the light came from one small lamp in the front living room, just around the corner to his right.

                Perhaps she is asleep, he thought.  He cleared his throat.  “Miss Anne,” he announced, “It’s Matthew.  I’ve come, just as you asked.”  No one answered.  His throat closed a little and a chill other than the winter’s air rushed up his spine.  It tingled the back of his neck where his hair grew gray.  He stepped into the living room.

                Anne might have slept in the chair where she sat, but he knew this was not the case.  The fire dwindled under the andirons, yet her lamp still burned beside her.  Her left hand, frail and thin, rested on the arm of her chair, stretched gently toward the little table.

                Crouching down so that his head was lower than Anne’s quiet face, Matthew lifted the page of her stationary from the table just beyond her fingers.  His name was etched on the outer fold in her old-fashioned handwriting.

                “Matthew,” it said inside, “You are welcome to invite all you will find necessary to take care of things.”

                This did not surprise him.  His father taught him, years ago, to expect something like it.  “We all do this once, my son,” Mr. Thomas explained at the time, “Pray it is no more than that in your lifetime.”  Yet the second part of Miss Anne’s note gave Matthew unanticipated concern, considering his responsibility and his peculiar situation.

                “As for the other matter,” she wrote, “you will not find her.  Henry will, but you must not ask him.  There is too much danger.  Watch for her.  Watch for her mother.  Come to them when they are together in this house.  I invite you.  Anne Mallace”

                Matthew called the doctor and closed up the mansion.  He filed papers and made certain inquiries.  Always, in the months that followed, Matthew Thomas kept the final words of Anne Mallace in the breast pocket of his suit.  Through all that would happen, he pondered her requests, and he watched.