MoHG Covers Evolve

Author Cautions Key Art May Change

As the subhead disclaimer indicates, the Mansion of High Ghosts covers will continue to evolve… but as of this writing, this key art is getting close. Still to be done is the trade paper version.

Here’s the (evolving) flap copy:

Where these folks are going, bless their hearts, they won’t need roads.

Oh, happy day! It’s awesome here in the doldrums of the post-9/11, pre-smart phone naughty-aughties in crappy Edgewater County, South Carolina. Yes—gasp with us in disbelief as a trio of aging Gen-X malcontents, Devin Rucker, his sister Creedence and their rich friend Billy Steeple, all circle the drain further into fiery dissolution courtesy a crucible of unresolved guilt, neuroses and deception:

Movie-obsessed Billy, for all his family wealth and prodigious physical attributes, chooses to remain in a dead-end academic job as the caretaker of a forgotten film collection. Handsome and articulate, he’s still trying to write the screenplay of his dreams, has a faithful girlfriend, lives well. Oh, and for kicks, he also harbors a deadly secret. He’s no Ted Bundy, however—all the murders were imaginary. Or were they…?

Creedence, hometown girl still hoping for rescue, grapples with a conundrum: either her doofus husband, or else her doofus lover, has knocked her up. Solution? Seduce Billy, with whom she missed her chance years ago, and tell him the baby’s his! What’s a little fib about paternity in making the dream come true at last? No problem-o.

—Back flap—

The tragic linchpin is Devin: an end-stage alcoholic grappling with confabulated memories of a past tragedy involving his lost love Libby Meade, a beloved cat or possibly both, he’s also haunted in remembering how Billy betrayed him in the worst way a best friend can. One of these days ‘Ruck’ will remember it right. And then? He’ll return wielding biblical-scale retribution. Sure. But only once he drinks his fill; only after he downs one more for the road.

Reader be warned: enter ye the MANSION OF HIGH GHOSTS praying that these Edgewater County folk at last grow out of their pathological, stunted adolescent selves. For now it’s enough to say, here’s hoping it isn’t too late; here’s to the grace of God no one else ends up dead like Libby.

A prequel to award-winning South Carolina author James D. McCallister’s DIXIANA saga, join us one final time in Edgewater County as we draw the literary curtain on this fifteen-year series of Neo-Southern gothic novels and stories.