October rolls in with it’s amazing colors and scents. Fresh falling leaves, pumpkin spice, and campfires. We all love them, well there is some debate about pumpkin spice. The next thing we start thinking about are things that go bump in the night. I’m not a huge horror movie fan, so I spend a lot of time avoiding tv channels that play them every single night. Though, I do love a scary read once in awhile.

We’ve all heard ghost stories around the campfire and probably told one or two ourselves. When I was a little girl visiting my grandparents in the Appalachian mountains, there were all kinds of stories. Like the chair that walked across the floor in my grandmothers house during the night. Or, the woodsman that got lost and still walks the mountain side trying to find his way home. My favorites were always about the Ghost Trains. Spooky specters that raced through the night on tracks with their whistles blowing out an eerie call to all the souls that needed a ride.

Those stories influenced The Legend of the Ghost Train series that I started writing this year. Each story is a stand alone with a different theme. All taking place in Appalachian communities.

Smoky Mist takes place in Townsend TN in the 1920’s. It follows the story of two doomed lovers who were lumberjacks and the murder of one of them. Present day characters meet and feel drawn to each other and through the help of journals kept by the surviving lover in the past, they discover what happened to separate them back in the 1920’s. The story ends with ghosts walking through fire and an HEA. All the stories have an HEA.

Cannon Fire takes place during the Civil War just outside of where Jonesville, VA sits today. I saw the house described in this story as a child, and I’ve never forgotten it. The house on the cover is very similar to the one that still stands. A woman scorned becomes a shrew that is determined that no two men will ever find happiness together, not in the past or the future. Present time one man is losing his families ancestral home to a stranger who wants to remodel and turn it into a bed and breakfast. Neither of them plans on falling for the other, and a female ghost is determined to keep them apart at any cost.

Coal Dust takes place in Harlan County KY in the 1930’s. It was a time of unrest for miners, and a time and place where being gay meant death. This story contains crooked mine owners, bloody battles between miners and company men, cave ins, and a love story that ends in tragedy. After an accidental fall down an air shaft, one man returns to the past to see what happened to a long lost relative. In the present, he joins with his new love interest to solve the mystery of the missing man and what really happened in the mine the day it caved in leaving men and boys to die. (This story will be released on October 28.)

I love a good ghost story. There are many to be found in the M/M world. This October is a great time to seek out these stories, grab a cup of your favorite coffee, sit by the fire and scare yourself silly.

You can find my stories on Amazon or my web page http://www.cjbaty.com

Scary Reading,

CJ Baty