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Wow – I can’t begin to tell you how excited I was when Michelle Rowen invited me along to do a guest spot on The Midnight Hour. Though I must admit that my excitement wore off a bit when I realized that unlike my own, rambling, uninformative blog, I might actually be expected to say something witty and insightful, and the truth is that when the witty and insightful gene was being handed out, I was too busy watching Buffy repeats at the back of class and sort of missed out.

My other slight concern was that while my book, You Had Me at Halo, is called a paranormal romance, there are no vampires, werewolves, demons or anything that people have come to expect from the genre. All I’ve got is a pissed-off dead girl who gets kicked out heaven and stuck in the body of a geeky co-worker to try and sort out her earthly issues before she can go move up through the heavenly levels (which, can she just say, are not all that they’re cracked up to be).

Of course, part of the problem is that when I wrote the book I didn’t even know there was such a genre as paranormal romance. I was living in the UK and trying to be the next Sophie Kinsella (as one does). Unfortunately, every romantic comedy I wrote somehow ended up with either a psychic, a witch or in one case, two lovers from an alternative reality who had to play cupid to the hero and heroine in order to collect the hormones that humans let off when they fell in love. However, the thing that all these manuscripts had in common was that as soon as I had written them, I carefully edited out all the weird things (yes, right down to the alternative reality) and then sent them off as regular books. Goodness knows how long this would’ve gone on for if two things hadn’t happened.

One, my dad died and on the day of his funeral I had a very long conversation with him – apparently he wasn’t happy with the way I was cleaning the house for the upcoming wake, and while he was on the subject, should I really be wearing that outfit? Secondly, one of critique partners suggested I started sending out to American agents.

Anyway, since no self-respecting writer could let an imaginary conversation with her dead father go unused, three weeks after the funeral, I started writing You Had Me at Halo. Unfortunately, I realized that this time there was no way I was going to be able to edit out all the weird, so I quite literally just sent it out, crossed my fingers and then started to research the US market (see paragraph one – I had moved onto Angel repeats by the time they were handing out the ‘how not to do everything backwards when it comes to getting published’ genes).

Thankfully, not only did I belatedly discover a whole new genre for me to read, I also managed to get a wonderful agent and a book deal. And most importantly, I can honestly say that since that day no weird things have ever again been edited out of my manuscripts (hence why I’ve just sold a young adult book about a girl who accidentally turns her entire school into zombies!!!!).

Anyway, in order to stop myself from talking anymore, and also so that I can give away a copy of You Had Me at Halo, have any of you ever tried to edit or change your voice to suit a market and if so what were the results?

–Amanda

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Amanda Ashby was born in Australia, but has spent the last ten years dividing her time between England and New Zealand. You Had Me At Halo is her first book. Visit her website at www.amandaashby.com.

A few days ago I found a book in my research bookcase titled ASK YOUR ANGELS by Alma Daniel, Timothy Wyllie and Andrew Ramer. This is such a neat book, I’m going to chose a winner from those who post comments to this blog today and send them a copy.

I started paging through the book and found a lot of interesting information on angels.

For instance, angels are a different species of being. Their existence takes place on a slightly different plane than ours, which is why we can’t usually see or hear them, although they can see and hear us.

The word angel is from the Greek word angelos, meaning messenger, which might explain why we only see or hear them at certain times. For instance, when there’s a message we need to hear.

However, this book suggests we can learn to contact our own particular guardian angel. Interestingly enough, by listening to our intuition–or that inner voice we were discussing on this blog. The authors advise us to pay attention to that voice, write down our daydreams and meditate.

They also mention angels of birth and death, a period of transition from one plane to another on both ends of life. Many nurses have reported seeing a bright flash of light at the moment a person passes. The authors also believe many angels attend the birth of a child, including their special guardian angel who stays with them for life.

I love this idea of an angel watching over our birth, then remaining with us throughout our time on earth and following us into the afterlife. Many people are able to speak with their angels; they even know their names.

Have any of you have had direct experience with your guardian angels? Do you know anyone who has?

Lori Handeland
www.lorihandeland.com
Dates from Hell
NY Times Extended Bestseller!

The “voice” we hear that tells us to do or not do something–is that our own psychic ability, our guardian angel, or perhaps a spirit of a dearly departed loved one watching over us? I don’t know, but I’m curious.

Experts say that children and animals have greater psychic ability. I’ve always thought children could still hear the angels. They were with them more recently than anyone else. My niece always used to babble in her crib every morning to the same corner. We said she was talking to the angels.

My oldest son used to talk about the “old guy in the backyard.” That creeped me out, but he was never bothered by it. Was the old guy a ghost, an angel? Got me.

My dog constantly barks at nothing. (I’m of the opinion he’s not bright rather than psychically gifted, but that’s just me.) Is he seeing otherworldly beings? Does he feel something we don’t?

What’s your opinion on psychic gifts, angels and ghosts?

Lori Handeland
www.lorihandeland.com
Dates from Hell
NY Times Extended Bestseller!

I can’t think of a time in my life when I haven’t been aware of other levels of existence, such as when I was a little girl and a strange white orb came floating into my bedroom one night, and hovered over my bed. It came right through the glass of the window . . . and left the same way.

I don’t have a clue what it was or what it meant, but I was definitely awake and I definitely saw it. It couldn’t have been someone outside shining a flashlight inside; there was no beam of light, and the windows were high off the ground. The orb was all on its own, and the strangest thing is that it didn’t really give off any light, by which I mean it didn’t illuminate the surroundings. It was pure white light, but the light was contained. And even stranger — I wasn’t scared. All I remember is a sense of fascination.

Life seems like magic to me. It’s all so complicated, yet so interwoven and interdependent: the trees that take the carbon dioxide we exhale and turn it into oxygen which we breathe and use to make the carbon dioxide the trees use to make . . . and so it goes. The rain falls and the moisture evaporates and rises, where it forms clouds and falls again as rain, over and over and over. The moon is the exact distance it needs to be from earth to completely block out the sun during a full solar eclipse. The sun is the exact distance from earth it needs to be to heat the planet enough to sustain life, neither too hot nor too cold. The universe leaves me breathless with awe.

But on a more personal level, I am also aware of the angels around me. Most of the time if I sense them at all it’s in a very vague sort of way, but on occasion they have made themselves known — and saved my life.

Once I was driving behind a pickup truck that had a small, flat-bottom boat loaded in the bed of the truck. Now, I live in the South, so this isn’t an unusual sight. The boat was tied down; I could see the ropes. But as I was following this truck a voice that wasn’t mine shouted in my mind, “The boat is going to come off the truck!” Just like that — a complete sentence. The effect it had on me was if someone had just stepped into the highway in front of me: without looking behind me, without thinking, I slammed on the brakes and came to a complete stop in the highway. There was a car behind me and the driver began blowing the horn — but up ahead, the boat began sliding. It came off the bed of the pickup truck and went spinning across the highway, coming to a stop not far from where I had stopped. If I hadn’t slammed on the brakes exactly when I did, the boat would at least have caused me to crash the car, and could easily have come through the windshield and hit me. There was no way I could have known that was about to happen, so all I can think is . . . an angel stepped in and saved me.

Another time I was driving down the interstate highway (yes, I’m aware these things always seem to happen when I’ve driving, which may or may not say something about my driving skills, or lack of them) and I was tucked up behind an eighteen-wheeler. My car was one of those with a gauge that gives you your instant gas mileage, so you can tell if you’re getting twenty miles to the gallon or thirteen, depending on how hard you’re goosing the gas pedal, and I was trying for the highest gas mileage I could get. Again, I’m from the South; I know about drafting. It’s how race car drivers stretch out their fuel. A big truck breaks the air barrier so, if you’re behind one, your vehicle has less wind resistance and therefore gets better gas mileage. That’s why I was following a big semi.

Everyone has seen those huge strips of rubber that come off truck tires. They’ve broken out windshields, caused wrecks, killed people. What most people don’t know is that only the front tires on a truck are running on the original tread; the rest of the tires are usually retreads, and it’s the retreads that come off. In the trucking industry, that’s called, “throwing a tread.” So I was zipping down the interstate at eighty-five miles an hour, tucked up behind one of these trucks and getting really great gas mileage, when that same voice shouted at me, “He’s going to lose a tread!”

Same reaction. I locked that car down right there on the interstate, tires screaming and smoking. Thank goodness nothing was immediately behind me that time, because I didn’t look, didn’t think, my heart was beating so hard it felt as if it would break my ribs — that’s how urgent that voice was. And the truck was no more than a hundred yards from me when a huge retread peeled off the back right tire and flew up in the air, right where I would have been if it hadn’t been for that voice.

Angels again.

New York Times bestselling author Linda Howard’s next book, Cover of Night, will be released in late June by Ballantine.