Showing posts with label Joan Hall Hovey. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Joan Hall Hovey. Show all posts

Monday, March 21, 2016

Books We Love's Tantalizing Talent ~ Author Joan Hall Hovey


I've always been drawn to the dark side of the human psyche, and devoured everything from Edgar Allan Poe to Shirley Jackson growing up. It is no surprise to me I turned out to be a writer of psychological suspense, often with threads of paranormal, mystery and romance.


I like to write about ordinary women who are at a difficult time in their lives, and are suddenly faced with an external evil force. Women who are stronger than they think they are. I didn't think a whole lot about theme until I had written a couple of books, but I realized with the writing of my third novel 'Chill Waters' that my books generally have to do with betrayal and abandonment in some form, and learning to trust again. And more important, learning to trust oneself. Almost any good book will tell you something about the author herself. (Or himself.) You can't avoid it. But first and foremost I want to give readers a roller-coaster ride, one that keeps them on the edge of that proverbial seats and resonates in the imagination long after the last page is read.

In addition to my award-winning novels, my articles and short stories have appeared in any many publications including The Toronto Star, Atlantic Advocate, Seek, Home Life Magazine, Mystery Scene. My short story Dark Reunion was anthologized in investigating Women, Published by Simon & Pierre.

I've held workshops and given talks at various schools and libraries, including New Brunswick Community College, and the University of New Brunswick. I am also a tutor with Winghill School, a distance education school in Ottawa for aspiring writers.

I'm a member of the Writer's Federation of New Brunswick, past regional Vice-President of Crime Writers of Canada and International Thriller Writers.

 

THE DEEPEST DARK   
Amazon


Following the deaths of her husband, Corey, and ten year old daughter Ellie in a traffic accident, author Abby Miller sinks ever deeper into depression. She contemplates suicide as a way to be with them, and to end her unrelenting pain.

In a last desperate effort to find peace, she drives to Loon Lake where they last vacationed together, wanting to believe they will be waiting for her there. At least in spirit. Barring that, the pills Doctor Gregory gave her to help her sleep, are in her purse.

The cabin at Loon Lake was her and Corey’s secret hideaway, and not even Abby’s sister, Karen, to whom she is close, knows where it is.

But someone else does. He is one of three men who have escaped from Pennington prison. They are dangerous predators who will stop at nothing to get what they want - and to keep from going back to prison. Having already committed atrocious crimes, they have nothing to lose.

Unknowingly, Abby is on a collision course with evil itself. And the decision of whether or live or die will soon be wrenched from her hands.


Amazon
THE ABDUCTION OF MARY ROSE
A suspense novel interwoven with threads of romance and paranormal.

Imagine discovering everything you believe about yourself to be a lie. And that the truth could stir a killer from his lair.

Following the death of the woman she believed to be her mother, 28-year-old Naomi Waters learns from a malicious aunt that she is not only adopted, but the product of a brutal rape that left her birth mother, Mary Rose Francis, a teenager of Micmac ancestry, in a coma for 8 months.

Dealing with a sense of betrayal and loss, but with new purpose in her life, Naomi vows to track down Mary Rose's attackers and bring them to justice. She places her story in the local paper, asking for information from residents who might remember something of the case that has been cold for nearly three decades.

She is about to lose hope that her efforts will bear fruit, when she gets an anonymous phone call. Naomi has attracted the attention of one who remembers the case well.

But someone else has also read the article in the paper. The man whose DNA she carries.

And he has Naomi in his sights.

NIGHT CORRIDOR
Amazon

After nine years in Bayshore mental institution, once called The Lunatic Asylum, Caroline is being released.  There will be no one to meet her. Her parents who brought her here are dead.

They have found her a room in a rooming house, a job washing dishes in a restaurant. She will do fine, they said. But no one told her that women in St. Simeon are already dying at the hands of a vicious predator. One, an actress who lived previously in her building.

And now, as Caroline struggles to survive on the outside, she realizes someone is stalking her.But who will believe her? She's a crazy woman after all.

Then, one cold winter's night on her way home from her job, a man follows and is about to assault her when a stranger intercedes.

A stranger who hides his face and whispers her name.











OTHER NOVELS:
TRAGIC SPAWN (previously Defective)
CHILL WATERS
NOWHERE TO HIDE
LISTEN TO THE SHADOWS

JOAN HALL HOVEY
 

Monday, March 9, 2015

Stephen King: My Favorite Teacher by Joan Hall Hovey





The year was 1984, a lovely summer’s day and I was sitting in the packed, buzzed audience waiting for Stephen King to appear.  To say I was excited is an understatement. Uncool? Totally. I’d bought my hardcover copy of his book Different Seasons for him to sign.  I wouldn’t be denied. I had all his books in hardcover – Carrie, Cycle of the Werewolf, Danse Macabre, Salem’s Lot -  there would be  many more to come. He was my hero in a time when I was already much too old to be star-struck.  I’ve read that it is mainly teenagers who are addicted to Stephen King’s work, and I was hardly that.  Though probably immature.  I’m at a much more more advanced age now and that hasn’t changed, and I hope it never does.  Stephen King was  the Elvis Presley of the literary world.


I hadn’t had a novel published yet; that was still a dream, floating somewhere above the horizon. But I’d written and published some articles and short stories, enough to make me eligible for a travel grant through the NB Arts Council to London, England to the writers workshop at Polytechnic Institution  on Marylebone Road, aptly across the street from Madam Tussauds wax museum.  Stephen King would be a panelist, along with authors P.D. James, Robert Parker and some others.  I was eager to hear all the celebrated authors, but I’d flown all this way from New Brunswick, Canada to see and hear Mr. King. 

He came into the large room through the back door and I swear I knew the instant he did.

You couldn’t miss the rising buzz of the audience, of course, the shifting of bodies as people turned to look, but I also felt the change of energy in the air. On stage, Stephen King joked about his ‘big writing engine’ and I had heard (within my third eye – yes, it can hear) its power, its purr.   Or maybe there’s more to it.


As he talked to us about writing, he spoke about seeing with that third eye.  The eye of the imagination.  He told us to imagine a chair.  Then he said it was a blue chair.  I saw it clearer now.  He added the detail of a paint blister on the leg of the chair.  Now I saw it close up, with my zoom lens.  We hung on his every word.  He was funny and brilliant and entertaining, and we learned. Everything he said was not necessarily something brand new, but were reminders to pay close attention to details.  To always tell the truth in our writing.  I even got to ask a couple of questions.   And his answers to all our questions were thoughtful and insightful.   I try to pass along a few of those lessons to my own students.


Stephen King has been teaching creative writing to aspiring and even established writers for decades, long before his wonderful book On Writing came out.  Such a gift to writers that is, regardless of the genre you write in.   I am gushing.  I don’t mind. It’s true. I have been fortunate to have had many highlights in my life –  an anniversary trip to Niagara Falls with my wonderful husband, the births of my children and grandchildren, great-grandchildren – a trip to the Bahamas with my eldest son – my own first novel published and several more after that - and I have to say that that workshop in London, England, where Stephen King spoke to us about writing, is right up there.  Thank you, Mr. King.

I want to leave you with a quote from an interview with contributing writing for the Atlantic, Jessica Lahey, published in The Atlantic,  Sept  2014.  She asked him if teaching was craft or art.


“It’s both,” he said.  “The best teachers are artists.”

Stephen King is an artist on every level.   He tells the truth.  In his fiction.  And in his teachings.

~~

By Joan Hall Hovey, author of The Deepest Dark

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