Review and Excerpt Of Hollow's End by Marianne Morea

                                                  
                                      Author: Marianne Morea
                                    Genres: YA
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                                               Description

The dark water of the Hudson River isn’t the only blackness looming in the distance of the quaint river town of Sleepy Hollow. Two hundred years of secrets and lies are bleeding into the present, and high school seniors, Hunter Morrissey and Rowen Corbett, find themselves linked with unseen forces shrouded in mystery and violence.

Truths, buried and long forgotten, have risen at a time when the veil between the living and the dead is at its thinnest. Only Hunter and Rowen hold the key to locking the past in the past, and setting old wrongs to right. Can justice be served? Can the two find a way to straddle both worlds and solve the mystery when they don’t understand the clues? Inspired by true historical events that surround the village of Sleepy Hollow and the famous legend that shares its name, this Young Adult Horror takes you on a journey full of history and suspense with a splash of romance and the paranormal.

                                    Excerpt

Excerpt from HOLLOW’S END by Marianne Morea


The basement opened into a large rectangular space with small egress windows that gave a ground level view of the gravel parking lot to the side of the historic house. A narrow corridor led to a series of rooms, each housing different sets of antiques—from furniture and clothing to artifacts from the infamous capture of Major Andre and the treasonous plot hatched by American turncoat, Benedict Arnold.

Libby had drawn a makeshift map, showing which artifacts were stored in what room. She had even set up a long folding table for us to use while examining each piece.
 There were swords and dirks from the time of the revolution, as well as bits of pottery, candlesticks, choir books and even a collection plate from the Old Dutch Church. In one box there were dozens of grave rubbings, buttons, shoe buckles, and bits of lace from the 18th century.



We carried a few items to the table and laid them out. I took a turn examining the grave rubbings, while Hunter busied himself with the weaponry.

He held up one of the regimental dirks, holding it in the flat of his palm. The blade was ten inches long with an intricately carved handle inlaid with silver. "This is amazing," he said, wrapping his hand around the hilt. "It fits so perfectly into the palm of your hand."

I sorted through the tray with the buttons. The items were mostly brass and dull, tarnished silver, but one caught my eye. It was a single cufflink, most likely silver, but what piqued my interest was the crest embossed into the front circle.

"Hey, take a look at this," I said, tapping Hunter on his sleeve.

He looked up, craning his neck slightly. "That’s the Van Tassell crest." He put the knife on the table and took the cufflink. "I remember seeing this in my grandfather’s house," he said, turning the small rounded discus over in his hand.

After a moment, he glanced up. "It’s a miracle this survived in such good condition. I know it’s a long shot, but take a look and see if its match is in the box, as well."

I rummaged around, picking up and discarding item after item, but luck was with us and at the bottom I found its mate. "Whaddya know!"

Holding up the second one, it was my turn to examine the design, from the engraved banner flags and plumed helmet, to the baroque lion at the center.

Hunter put the cufflink down and picked up the knife again. "You don’t suppose Libby would let me take the pair home, do you?"

I shrugged, watching as he examined the dagger again. "She might, after all it’s your family crest. Here, you’d better keep the two together," I offered, handing him the one I had.

Our fingers touched and a wave of vertigo hit me hard. I gasped, squeezing Hunter’s fingers, the cufflink pressing painfully into both our hands.

Hunter’s face changed, and his breathing became shallow and rapid. Beads of sweat formed on his forehead and his knuckles whitened around the hilt of the dagger in his opposite hand.

I let go, the cufflink dropping to the table with a dull plink, and rushed around to the opposite side of the table.

"I can’t let go," he rasped. His eyes were saucers as his other hand came up of its own volition and wrapped around the hilt, forming a double fisted grip.

I didn’t know what to do, my eyes glancing between him and the stairs. "I’m going to get Cameron." I took two steps away from the table, only to have Hunter whine in pain.

"Don’t. Leave. Me," he struggled out.

I stood frozen in fear, realizing what Hunter must have felt being on the watching end of my visions. He was fighting some unseen force, and I didn’t know what to do.

Pressing my lips together, I reached for my phone in my back pocket. "I’m calling my mother." I announced it as if I were calling in the marines, only to find I had no signal.

"Crap on toast!"

Hunter’s eyes grew even wider, and we both watched as the blade turned in his hands, his forearms shaking with the effort to stop it as it pushed its tip downward, tilting straight for his heart.

"Oh, my God!" I rushed to the table and tried to pry his fingers loose from the hilt. His hands were a vice grip, and I looked at him, my heart sinking at the fear in his eyes.

I dragged in a breath and tried to think of everything my mother ever taught me about directing and redirecting energy. Why didn’t I pay more attention?

Regardless of who raised the energy, the source needed a conduit in order to travel. It was the same in the physical world as in the magical. Power formed in a spiral either from the earth upward, or in reverse from the universal crown, but either way it could always be directed back into the earth.

"Hunter, listen to me. We have to pool our energy and form a block, a wall of will, and send whatever this is into the ground."

His lips were dried and cracking. His tongue darted out to try and wet them. "Hurry, Rowen. I can’t hold on much longer."

Ugh. This place was solid concrete. My eyes searched the floor and the base of the walls, finally moving up to the egress window. Alarm tape covered the corners as well as the connecting alarm wire, but I was sure Cameron had turned the system off with us down here.

The window was street level and butted against landscaping, which meant dirt. With a hiss of, "yes!" I grabbed Hunter’s chair and pushed against it with all my might, turning him around to face the window. With no time to worry about the consequence, I grabbed one of the other blades from the table and dragged my chair to the base of the window. Hopping up, I sliced through the connection tape, severing the alarm wires and opened the window.

Fresh air drifted in, and the cool feel fortified me as I pushed the hair away from my sweaty forehead.

"Okay, let’s do this. Like Gran said, I’m a conduit and you’re a magnet, so let’s send whatever this is back to hell."

Hunter moaned and I swallowed back on the panic squeezing my throat. I wrapped my hands around his, digging my fingers beneath his as far as they could go. My fingernails tore at his skin and he hissed at the pain, but I ignored the pang of guilt that washed passed, concentrating all my energy into breaking whatever it was that held him in thrall. His grip gave slightly, and I slid my fingers even further in, breaking the invisible hold at bit more.

Our eyes locked and I pressed my forehead to his. "Together," I murmured, and kissed the bridge of his nose.

I concentrated, gathering my thoughts and my desires, focusing on my longing for Hunter, my want of him, both physical and emotional. The air around us chilled to freezing, and I knew it wasn’t from the open window. My breath sucked inward, the sharp intake almost knocking me backward. Hunter was trembling, and I squeezed his fingers, not caring if I broke them in the process.

The air swirled around us, and vertigo took me, nausea biting into my throat and I tasted bile. Images danced on the periphery, and I pressed my forehead harder into Hunter’s, willing the vision to take us both.

We weren’t in the basement store rooms any longer. The wind howled, and the icy cold bit into our arms. Across a winter barren front garden, fire billowed from the cottage farmhouse I saw in an earlier vision. A woman was on the ground in her nightclothes, and I felt the snow turning her exposed flesh red and raw. Anguish and fear lashed through me, and suddenly I knew her child was inside the inferno.

Watching from a distance, I cried out, as her husband was beaten and dragged through the snow and muck, a dagger at his throat as his captors lashed him to the back of a cow.

"Hunter, can you see this?" I asked in a low hiss, but he shook his head. I pulled one of my hands free and lifted his chin so I could see his face, screaming when I saw his eyes had been hollowed.

Helpless tears stung my cheeks in the cold, and I turned back, watching as the woman begged on her knees in the snow for the life of her children, only to be backhanded and sent sprawling to the ground. Cruel laughter and drunken jeers followed as she landed with her night dress pushed around her naked thighs.

A single soldier took off his coat and offered it to her, but she shook her head, instead pointing to the house, a plea of desperation in her voice as she begged again. The man looked to his commanding officer, but he stood laughing with the others. Disregarding orders, the soldier plunged his coat into the well and tossed the soaked garment over his head, rushing headlong into the burning house.

Injured and coughing from the smoke, the man emerged holding the toddler in his arms. The soldier’s eyes held such pity as he

wrapped them together in a feather bed, but his empathy was short lived, as his commander seized a whip from the confiscated barn and beat him, a curse on his lips with each lash.

Vertigo whirled again and we were back in the basement, but the entity’s hold on Hunter hadn’t lessened. The air churned in the room, whipping up papers and sending artifacts flying.

In the depths of the din a voice called out as if struggling to be heard. "Revenge and justice only found if blood and truth meet." The voice was ethereal, nothing more than a moan in the swirl of the air, yet its words were clear.

The howling stopped and the room settled, but just as I thought it was over, the concrete groaned and the thick basement walls breathed in an out, and the air was heavy and loathsome. I drew in a deep breath and focused everything, all my fears and hopes, and issued a final and definite demand. "Leave. Us. Alone!"
 Enjoyed the excerpt? Want more?
 HOLLOW’S END by Marianne Morea



Available in eBook and Paperback!

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                                    Review

With it being the season of all things paranormal and spooky. I thought I would start the month off right and do a review of on of my favorite books that is set during the Halloween season.  As a huge fan of the Legend of Sleepy Hollow I went started this story with high hopes. I have to say I wasn't disappointed. Once I opened Hollow's End I couldn't put it down. I was so taken in by Marianne's plot and the actual history of the legend that she wove into an amazing story. This one of those stories that you just connect to the characters and can see a bit if not a lot of yourself in them.  I have to be honest I actually bought this book around a year ago and I have since read it several times. I just can't get enough of Hunter and Rowen. I can't wait to read the next book in this awesome series to see where Marianne takes it to next.

                                                                  

                                     

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                               Description

 

Rowen threw her arms in the air. “What am I supposed to say when I move into my dorm? Hi. I’m, Rowen. I’m a Liberal Arts major. I like music and hiking, and by the way I’m also a witch and really good with weird…”

Sparring with the fates.
Rowen Corbett and Hunter Morrissey are no strangers to powerful magic. Their senior year was a baptism by fire, caught in the paranormal crosshairs of a two hundred year old battle for justice and retribution. Now, weeks before college life is set to begin, the two are desperate to put to rest past events too hard to fathom and too painful to forget…so they head to the mountains for an innocent weekend of fun…

…But destiny isn’t finished with them.
Beckoning visions haunt Rowen’s dreams until unseen forces hurl her back in time to a colonial world of betrayal, revolutionary intrigue, and death. She finds herself face to face with people and events with a dark history not written in any textbook.
The power that summons her has unfinished business to complete and Rowen is the key. If she refuses, she faces far reaching consequences in the future where Hunter struggles to find a way to bring her back. With only her wits and a basic knowledge of the past, she must survive long enough to earn her way home or die before she was ever born.

                        

 

                                            Excerpt

   

Excerpt from TIME TURNER by Marianne Morea

Mom laughed, pulling me from my bed. "Get cleaned up." A soft shove and a love tap on my butt directed me toward the bathroom. "When you’re dressed, come downstairs and have something to eat. Gran has an early birthday present for you."

"Birthday? What, is she planning a world cruise or something? My birthday isn’t until September.
 My mother picked up my duvet and fluffed it, giving me a noncommittal shrug. Her, you know better than to question Gran, expression was almost comical it was so true.



I snorted. "Last year her big surprise was telling me my aura was bleeding. Maybe this year she’ll tell me the stars have aligned and I’m destined to be Miss Teen New York."

She folded the blue cotton down over my footboard and turned with a frown as she surveyed the rest of my messy room. "Get moving smarty pants. Ten minutes," she instructed tapping her wrist.
 Mom closed the door behind her and I stretched, one last yawn giving up the ghost on my last vestige of sleep. Gran was up to something. My birthday, really?



Eighteen. It didn’t seem possible, but there it was looming right along with college dorm shopping I had yet to start. To the casual observer, my future seemed bright. Except for the little hiccup of having two friends die and another ostensibly trapped in a purgatorial no man’s land, I had a lot going for me. Despite my heavy grief I managed to earn a decent scholarship to good school, and of course there was Hunter.
 A derisive snort left my mouth. Defying evil and setting old wrongs to right while nearly dying in the process makes for quite a bonding experience. Either you end up marrow deep in love or you end up psychotic, and considering my residual nightmares and self-imposed seclusion impersonating Miss. Havisham from Dickens’s Great Expectations, crazy was still on the table.



I stripped and turned on the shower, stepping into the spray trying not to think about my mother’s ten minute mark. Not that she would hold me to it, but Gran would. Something was up for her to be here on a weekday afternoon, birthday gift or not. Then again, Gran had reasons for everything she did.

I washed my long dark hair, giving my curly locks an extra shot of conditioner in the lather, rinse and repeat. July was no one’s friend when it came to frizz. Finishing up, I rinsed off, slicking a quick layer of baby oil gel over my wet skin before reaching for a towel.

I avoided the sink as much as possible these days, choosing instead to brush my teeth in the shower. Most of my friends thought it weird or gross, but then again they never had visions of blood pouring from their bathroom tap.

Wrapping my hair in a towel, I shrugged on a three-quarter sports bra and a pair of terrycloth shorts before wiping a hand through the steam gathered on my mirror. Condensation dripped in small rivulets down the glass. I peered at myself, running my fingers over my high cheekbones in the streaky reflection. My face was thinner, but with all the sleep I’d forced on myself lately at least my dark circles were gone.

I took my makeup bag from the side drawer, but put it to the side. It was just lunch with Gran, so there was no need to primp. I’d save the effort for later and towel dried my hair instead, smiling in anticipation of Hunter’s face when he saw me waiting at the end of the gateway.

Dropping the damp towel on the vanity I lifted my head and pushed the tangled mess from my eyes. A wide toothed comb made fast work of the snarls in my hair as I decided what to do with dark mass. A flat iron was of no long term use when it came to summer humidity, so straightening my riotous locks was not an option. But a little anti-frizz gel and a tight bun would do the trick to combat the weather and leave my hair in soft waves for later. I wound my rapidly curling hair and held it with one hand while I searched for my clip. I hunted around the sink, in my toiletry drawer, and even bent to look on the floor next to the toilet. Nothing.
 Great. Now I’ll be a giant frizz ball when I meet Hunter.
 A tinkle of wind chimes jerked my attention from my narcissism. I had one hand on my head holding my hair and the other flat against the wide midriff band on my top. My stomach flip-flopped because I knew the sound didn’t belong in my bathroom. I pushed the door open and checked my bedroom windows hoping for my own neat, little box of truth. Nope. Both windows were shut tight and the telltale hum from the central air the only discernable sound.
 My hands shook and my stomach clenched against the familiar spike in adrenaline. I pressed my lips together. Collateral damage? Try Post Traumatic Stress Disorder for the rest of my life…



Annoyed, I let a rough exhale out through my teeth, dismissing the sound as imagined and turned back the task of taming my hair.

The wind chimes tinkled again, only this time the sound was accompanied by the scent of smoke. Not a fire and brimstone stench, but a pleasant campfire aroma thick with a sense of peace and woodland solitude. I closed my eyes, ignoring what I knew was not my imagination.

Whispers called my name, the voices as subtle as a summer breeze.
 Oh God...
 From the visions that hit months ago, I knew God had nothing to do with it and I cringed. The lilt from the chimes became frenetic, their pitch increasing in volume and speed. The air around me whipped and blew in a torrent. I covered my ears, my hair dropping to my back as my shoulder muscles bunched against the blasts sending my curls flying around my face, the still wet ends stinging my cheeks.

My back was to the mirror, and I knew whatever or whoever caused this used the reflective glass as its portal.

"Enough! You’ve got my attention, now what do you want?" I shouted, my voice lost to the squall.

The wind stopped and the chimes resumed their fairylike serenade. Whoever or whatever had heard me despite its tantrum in a tempest. I turned, swallowing hard against my rising fear. I thought about Gran. She heeded the cosmos, acknowledging the supernatural play by a different set of rules, yet never discounted her own power and strength of will. I was from the same unbroken line, and the universe needed to remember that as much as I did.
 "Rowen…"
 I exhaled the breath caught in my throat.
 "Look at me, child…"
 I opened my eyes to find a milky blue pair staring back at me from the mirror. My stomach clenched again, but at least I didn’t flinch. I refused to allow myself to be an otherworldly pawn…again.

The eyes were clear but the face obscured, as if peering through smoke or fog. Wisps blurred most of the features, yet I caught a glimpse of steel gray hair poking out from beneath soot smudged white lace giving the impression my visitor was female. Her eyes crinkled and I knew they did so in an acknowledged smile.
 "It is time…"
 Layered whispers formed the words and the woman in the mirror turned, her hand beckoning me from the glass, but the vision went dark before I could respond. Different set of rules, remember?

Outside, my mother’s footsteps took the stairs two at a time and I heard Gran’s voice yelling after her from the kitchen.

"Rowen! Are you alright?" She shoved my bedroom door open and found me standing with my hands clutched over my stomach. She sniffed the air, her eyes scanning me completely before shifting to the mirror. "What happened?"

"I…I don’t know exactly. I think it was a spirit of some kind."

She stepped I front of me, holding her hand over the mirror. Her gaze narrowing even as her fingers closed into her palm.

"Do you smell that?"

I nodded. "There was smoke in the vision.

"Downstairs. Now."

I swallowed. Mom wanted Gran to weigh in on what she sensed from the glass and a sense of foreboding crawled over my chest…
 Enjoy the excerpt? Want more?
 TIME TURNER by Marianne Morea





Book two in the Legend Series
   Now available for Preorder on Amazon
  

                                                   Author

The Professional...Well, people. As far as my professional career as a published author goes, you're lookin' at it. It's beginning right here, right now. That's right. You're witnessing my history in the making. This website is just the start...hopefully.

I've always been what some people would call a scribbler. From the time I could write my name I've been making up stories. In fact, I often have conversations in my head with the characters I create. Some people might call that part of the creative temperament...others just call it crazy. It's probably a little of both.

I do however, have a B.A. in Journalism and an MFA in Fine Art. So the gal can blather with the best of them! 

 I spent years knocking on doors, honing my craft, and as always, writing. I'm proud to say that while most editors respond solely with form letters, enough responded to my work personally, giving me hope that I truly did have talent.

So here I am...living my dream and still hoping for a fabulous future...for all of us.   

 

 

The Woman..
Who am I? Well, that's a good question. When most people think of romance authors, the image of Kathleen Turner as Joan Wilder in 'Romancing the Stone' usually comes to mind.  A lonely woman sitting in a bathrobe and fuzzy slippers, conjuring lovers and adventure in her imagination. In other words, one step away from being the neighborhood cat lady.

If that description just made you go "eeewww", then you know how we writer's must feel. Thankfully, for most of us that image is far from accurate.

I myself am 40-something. I have been married for 19 years, have three beautiful kids, two dogs and a cat. I am a 2nd degree black belt in traditional Japanese karate, and as I've said, I love to travel, and my romantic and spontaneous husband shares that passion with me, so my stories get plenty of inspiration!  

In the meantime I am also a founding member, previous President and current co-event coordinator of The Paranormal Romance Guild, a not-for-profit organization for readers and authors of the genre. Of course, I’m still writing, and when I’m not ‘bichok’ (but in a chair hands on keyboard), I'm off with my hubby and our kids to exciting destinations.

Cat lady? I don't think so.

While my world may not be as daring as those I create, the ones I love certainly make it an adventure. 

You can follow Marianne on her blog, Facebook and Goodreads.