Psyched for new paranormal fiction by Juli Caldwell

Today I'm really excited to have a guest blogger (Yay! Blog content I don't have to write! ...I mean...ahem) Juli Caldwell is introducing her first indie novel, Psyched. I'm always interested in what people like about the paranormal genre, so that's what I asked her to talk about. I'm just going to let her take it away now.

 

This is the first time I've tried to write paranormal, and it's not really a typical ghost story or fantasy. It's a mix of the real and the fantastic. I love that, in writing, we can throw out the rules of our world entirely. By removing one little thing from our reality, everything changes. I tried to make Aisi as normal and real as possible and put her in abnormal and fantastical circumstances, just to see how she does. She arrived fully formed and all kinds of sassy in my head one day, and I wanted people to see themselves in her. She puts herself out there and looks so confident, even though inside she's fighting to keep it together and trying not to be completely freaked out by her life. That's something that's very real for a lot of us.

  

One of the first books I read in this genre is The Third Eye by Lois Duncan. I picked it up from my school library one day and probably read it two or three times before I returned it. I was so fascinated with the idea that someone could be so normal and so different all at once. That stayed with me. I wanted to set up Aisi's world a lot like that--she's living this life filled with problems no one else can see, along with all the problems of reality.

I'm the kind of person who likes to be a little scared, but not too much, so Psyched isn't the kind of book that will make you wet your pants. It just so happens that the bad guy in this book is a demon. I like to watch those ghost hunter shows when I bother to watch TV, and I collect books of local ghost stories wherever I travel. My husband thinks I'm nutballs, but I leave it open that there's plenty out there I don't know and anything can happen. The realm of what's possible has a lot more scope for the imagination than the realm of what's probable.

Psyched by Juli Caldwell is now available! 

You can find it on Amazon, and look for it soon in paperback!


Psyched is part ghost story, part suspense, part demon-hunting thriller, part budding romance, the story of a girl named Aisi who's doing her best to keep it together for her wreck of a family. She is smart, sassy, and sarcastic enough to keep things interesting. When she meets Vance on the single worst day of her life, she finds a guy who just might be the first person ever to get her, to believe in her, and to out-random her with bizarre observations at the worst possible moment. There's just something about him that she knows she can trust.

Together, Aisi and Vance wander through the memories of others to unlock the secrets of her past while battling a demon who wants to ensure she never finds what she's looking for. Aisi vanquishes demons all the time, but Malus Indolus is too strong. And he has plans for her...and her family.

Psyched is Juli's second novel and the first as an indie writer, and her first experiment with her true love as a reader: paranormal fiction. Her debut novel Beyond Perfection is also available.

You can find her on her webpage, Twitter, Facebook,  and blog.