Fresh Fiction: Hello, and welcome to a new Fresh Fiction Interview! Fresh Fiction is THE place to get the scoop on fabulous new releases and hang out with some of your favorite characters! And on that note, today we’re visiting with M.J. Holliday-Whitefeather and Gilley Gillespie, stars of the Ghost Hunter Mysteries series by Victoria Laurie. M.J. & Gilley, welcome and hello!
M.J.: Thank you so much. It’s great to be here!
Gilley: Are there snacks? I was told there’d be a catered lunch.
FF: Ha, ha, Gilley, ever the hungry foil!
Gilley: You try running for your life on a regular basis and see how many calories your body needs to keep on truckin’!
M.J.: Excuse him, he’s in hangry diva mode this morning . . .
(M.J. digs through her handbag and retrieves a Twix bar. Hands it to her bestie.)
Here, Gil. Eat this.
Gilley: Finally! Some sustenance!
FF: Now that we’ve got everyone’s appetite taken care of, let’s start with some questions.
M.J.: Bring it.
Gilley: Mmfrmvrf!
FF: Should we wait for him to finish eating his candy bar?
M.J.: Nah. If he chokes, I know the Heimlich.
FF: Um . . . okay . . . so the first question I have is: In the telling of this latest novel—number 11 in the chronicling of your ghost-hunting adventures—we start with your best friend Gilley’s visit to you from his home in New York, correct?
M.J.: Yes. Gilley and I have known each other since grade school, and we’ve been best friends since then too. Nearly twenty years ago Gil and I started a Ghost Hunting business—
Gilley: We were the real life “Who ya gonna call?” folks.
M.J.: —which was quite successful, and that led to other opportunities that we pursued for the next decade, but ultimately, we all retired and Gil moved to New York while my husband, Heath, and I settled in Santa Fe, New Mexico, to be near his family and tribe and to raise our three kids.
FF: Heath is Native American?
M.J. Yes. He’s full-blooded Pueblo Indian, specifically from the Zanto tribe.
Gilley: Heath is full-blooded all right. The man is hot!
M.J.: (with a sigh) Ignore him. We do.
FF: (laughs nervously, checks notes) M.J., you and Heath are both psychic mediums—
M.J.: We are.
FF: How does that work, exactly? Especially for hunting ghosts and demons.
M.J.: Hmm, there’s really a lot to unpack there, so let me explain it this way: Psychic mediums communicate with the dead. We define “the dead” as souls both from the Other Side—heaven—and souls that are stuck somewhere between this realm of existence and the Other Side. We call these “stuck” souls, or ghosts as you might refer to them, “grounded spirits” because they sort of hover in the physical realm. In the old days, when Gilley and I were dealing only with spooks—grounded spirits—we’d figure out a way to convince them to let go of their fear and accept the divine light that wanted them to move on to the Other Side.
Gilley: We were really good at it too.
M.J.: Maybe a little too good, because before very long, Gilley and I were teamed up with Heath for a cable TV show called Ghoul Getters, and in our quest for ever more dramatic circumstances, it wasn’t long before we were dealing with demons.
FF: D-d-demons are real?!
Gilley: You bet they’re real. And we all bear the scars to prove it.
M.J.: He’s not lying. Our work was very, very dangerous, which is why I retired when I became pregnant. I didn’t want to expose my kids to that kind of evil.
FF: Then what brought you out of retirement?
M.J.: The demons found out where we lived and they attacked us, something even this psychic didn’t see coming.
FF: What makes a demon different from a grounded spirit?
M.J.: For one thing, demons were never alive. They come from an altogether different place, the lower realms or, as Gilley often refers to it, the shadowlands. In that plain of existence, evil is the ruling party. These aren’t souls per se; they’re energies of malfeasance, and corruption. They delight in chaos, havoc, violence, and causing harm. For the most part, they’re locked into the shadowlands, but, every once in a while, they find a doorway into our world, and when that happens, me and my crew—
Gilley: By “crew” she means me, Heath, his cousin Brody, and the Zanto Pueblo’s lawman, Sheriff Pena.
M.J.: Yep, that crew. Anyway, we hunt down not just the demon, but also its portal, which can be hidden and difficult to find. Once we find the portal, we corral the demon back through it to the shadowlands, then close up the portal behind it so that the demon can never use that portal to come through to our realm again.
FF: Sounds like you have a system that works well.
Gilley: (laughs) This last time it was anything but!
FF: I see. What made this particular demon so difficult to battle?
M.J.: For starters it wasn’t just one demon. It was at least two. And for another, the demons were using a unique kind of portal—one that was created by a Native artist named Will Morningstar, who began painting portraits of the Pueblo tribal ancestors. The horrible thing about that particular setup was that the demon didn’t simply come through the portal created by the painting, but it actually kidnapped the soul of that Native ancestor and took it to the Shadowlands.
FF: I had no idea that would even be possible!
Gilley: Neither did we, but when M.J.’s spirit guide, Sam Whitefeather—who also happens to be Heath’s grandfather—was kidnapped right out of a portrait of him that hung in her vestibule, we realized that we were dealing with something insanely powerful and super murdery.
FF: Yeah, I heard about that. The demons murdered a couple of people, didn’t they?
M.J.: They did. A few members of the Tribal Council were murdered, and a few others had their souls kidnapped and taken to the Shadowlands, leaving their bodies in a soulless coma.
FF: How do you even begin to fight something like that?
Gilley: (making a motion like swinging a tennis racket) With a powerful backhand!
M.J.: (sighs again) We have some tricks and techniques from our days on the road producing our cable show, Ghoul Getters, and we use those methods because they work quite well.
Gilley: Unless we die first. Then they don’t work so well.
FF: What tricks and techniques?
M.J.: Well, to Gilley’s point about the backhand, we’ve learned that magnets are a very effective demon repellent. It’s the electromagnetic frequency that a magnet projects. Spooks and demons hate to be near them, so, in the past, we’ve strung squash rackets with magnetized wire, and we’ve literally used that as a weapon to defend ourselves and hit the demon back toward its portal.
Gilley: We also use magnetized spikes, arrows, grenades—
FF: Grenades??!
M.J.: Magnetic-pellet-filled squash balls that break apart when they land.
FF: Wow! And you used all that against these demons?
Gilley: We did. For all the good it did.
M.J.: We had some difficulty on this particular case because there was a mystery behind the demons’ appearance that we didn’t know about until the very end. Once we put all the clues together, we were able to resolve things. Mostly.
Gilley: I’m still going back to New York, where we only have to deal with murders sans the demon freaks.
FF: That’s a lot to deal with! And now that it’s over, you’re going back into retirement, right, M.J.?
M.J. (sighs yet again) I’d like to hope that I can, but truthfully, my intuition is telling me that I’m not done with this line of work. It’s worrisome, but it’s not something I can deny.
Gilley: Oh, joy. Can’t wait to visit you again, M.J.!
M.J.: I’ll stock up on my Twix bars, bud.
FF: Well, thank you for joining us, M.J. and Gilley, and good luck with any and all of your further adventures! And for our audience, you can read all about this fascinating case of demons versus mediums in Victoria Laurie’s A Ghoul’s Gotta Do, available on Amazon and BarnesAndNoble.com.
M.J.: Thank you for having us. This was great.
Gilley: Soooooooo, is lunch officially off the table here? Ow! M.J.! No hitting!
M.J.: Like I said, just ignore him. The rest of us do . . .
Ghost Hunter #11
A PICTURE PAINTS A THOUSAND SCREAMS
In this long-awaited 11th installment of the New York Times bestselling Ghost Hunter Mysteries series, M.J. Holliday, her husband Heath Whitefeather, and their visiting best friend Gilley Gillespie are attacked in the Whitefeather home by a pair of demons intent on robbing Heath of his very soul and killing anyone else who stands in the way.
The demons emerge from the portraits of Heath's Native American ancestors, and now the artist and driving force behind the demons' appearance--Will Morningstar--is on the run. Worse yet, a stream of subsequent attacks and murders among a few powerful members of the Santa Fe Pueblo Tribal Council tells the ghost hunters that there are more portraits, demons, and a nefarious mystery person's agenda to contend with.
As circumstances change and become even more deadly, the only thing the ghost-hunting crew can count on, besides each other, is that, where Will's portraits are hung, a demon and death quickly follow.
M.J., Heath, and Gilley must hunt Will down, get to the bottom of the mystery behind the targeted attacks, and lock the demons back in hell before the evil force behind their unleashing murders them all.
Mystery Paranormal [Independently Published, On Sale: May 16, 2024, e-Book, / eISBN: 9798325949906]
When I was in the 7th grade I took one of those career aptitude tests - you know, the ones where you answer a bunch of questions and the results indicate what profession you'd best be suited for? Yeah, well my test results indicated I was best suited for a career as a government spy.
A SPY!
I think I had the coolest results in the entire class. :)
Needless to say, I did not follow that particular career path - or maybe I just took the more indirect route. In my thirties a very good friend of mine who is now one of the world's most renowned psychic mediums suggested I stop ignoring my talents and dive right into the professional world of a psychic intuitive. On a lark, I did. And the results were pretty mind-blowing. Within just a few short weeks even I couldn't deny it - so much of what I predicted for total strangers was coming true and I really had to accept the "gift" so to speak.
Over the years I've built a really fabulous clientele and all those experiences have helped me create the Psychic Eye Mysteries, the Ghost Hunter Mysteries, and - for children - Oracles of Delphi Keep. And along that way I discovered my true love - writing.
Writing is one of those passions that gets me out of bed in the morning and invigorates my day. I love spinning a good yarn, and when I feel I actually get it right - wow! There is no better feeling.
In fact, the other day I was kicking back after a looooong day of writing, which ended in the completion of a manuscript and I remember just marveling in the fact that I actually get paid to daydream! I can't think of a more satisfying way to spend a life. And let's face it - it's a whole lot safer than working some covert operation. Although - I'm pretty sure the benefits might be better at the CIA. Still, I'll stick to my daydreams...at least for now... :)
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