Introducing Ruby Silver from #Wild-Wild-Ghost, #The-Good-The-Bad-The-Ghostly, by Margo Bond Collins @MargoBondCollin

RW:       What’s your story/back story? Why would someone come up with a story about YOU?

RS:        I used to be a demon hunter, until a demon got the better of my partner and me in a church in New Mexico. I walked away from that. My partner didn’t. Now the scariest things I hunt are ghosts—but only to avoid the memories that haunt me.

RW:       Can you tell us about your hero

RS:     Trip Austin is a ghost-hunter for The Tremayne Psychic Specter Investigations Agency. Technically, he’s the senior agent, and I’m the junior agent. However, I’m the one with the psychic ability.

RW:       What problems do you have to face and overcome in your life?

RS:        I’m still trying to get over the death of my last partner. I can’t fact my past, or my fear that I might have caused his death.

RW:      Do you expect your hero to help or is he the problem?

RS:        He is the problem—or at least, he might as well be. I can work on my own. I don’t need anyone’s help.

RW:        Where do you live?

RS:        I go wherever my company tells me, but I prefer to work out west. Right now, we’re working a poltergeist case in the Texas Hill Country.

RW:       During what time period does your story take place?

RS:        In the nineteenth century.

RW:        How are you coping with the conflict in your life?

RS:         I ran and buried myself in my new job. I’m doing my best to never look back, but my new partner won’t let me hide from what I’m feeling.

RW:        Those are all the questions we have for you. Thank you for speaking to us.

Author Interview: Margo Bond Collins

RW:        What is the best thing about being a writer?

MBC:     Being able to create worlds that other people love to visit!

RW:       Cherries or Bananas? Leather or lace? Black or red? Mud Bath or Oily Massage?

MBC:     Cherries, lace, black, oily massage.

RW:        If you came with a warning label, what would it say?

MBC:     Warning: Unexpected Snark.

RW:     After you’ve written your book and it’s been published, do you ever buy it and/or read it?

MBC:     I always buy it; I don’t read it until I’m ready to write a sequel.

RW:        Have you experienced writer’s block? If so, how did you work through it?

MBC:     Often. When I’m good and stuck, I switch where and how I write. I usually write in my office on a laptop, but if I’m having writer’s block, I’ll take a notebook and pen and go to a coffee shop or even just to another room. The change of scenery and writing implements seems to jar me out of my rut and get me going again.

RW:        Satin sheets or Egyptian cotton?

MBC:     Cotton!

RW:        You’d never be able to tell, but (fill in the blank).

MBC:     I am painfully shy. I’ve been a college professor for many years, so I’ve gotten used to speaking in public (more or less), but it’s draining. I love talking to readers at conferences, but afterwards, I have to collapse in a heap to recover.

Wild Wild Ghost

by Margo Bond Collins

With everyone she loves in the grave, Ruby specializes in the dead.

Trip wants to bring her back to the land of the living.

When Ruby Silver traded in her demon-hunting rifle for a Tremayne Agency badge, she didn’t want another partner—losing the last one was too traumatic. But when a new case in the Texas Hill Country pairs her up with the slow-talking, fast-drawing Trip Austin, it will take all their combined skills to combat a plague of poltergeists in this German-settled town.

Excerpt:

Realizing that all the broken glass flying past him had been swept up into the whirlwind of glass around the woman, he dropped Bandit’s reigns. "Stay here," he instructed. The stallion rolled its eyes at him, but nickered. Trip didn’t bother to tether the animal; his horse wasn’t going anywhere without him.

If exploding glass didn’t startle him, nothing would.

For that matter, neither did various ilk of ghosts and beasts. Bandit was steady, even if he had a tendency to bite strangers.

Was this woman really supposed to be his new partner?

When he’d gotten the telegram from the Tremayne headquarters back in St. Louis, he had laughed aloud. Trip knew there were lady agents—he’d even worked with one a time or two—but they had all been stationed back east. No lone woman in her right mind would want to come out here to work.

Not when there were plenty of ghosts to be exorcised in civilized places.

Safer places.

I guess maybe this one’s not in her right mind, then.

Might not be a bad idea to remember that.

He watched the glass-cyclone sweep up the dust around her, the cloud of dirt thickening until he couldn’t see the woman at all, and reconsidered.

If she can cause something like that happen, maybe she’s plenty safe out here, after all.

As Trip made his way toward her, the glass-and-dirt devil rose into the air. He stopped to watch it ascend. Then, with a noise like a crack of thunder, it was gone. Trip had the vague impression that it had sped away toward the wilds rather than merely disappearing into nothingness, but he couldn’t have pointed to any particular evidence that made him think that.

Smoothing her hands down the sides of the painted horse’s face, the woman murmured something soothing in a tone that made Trip realize he had been hearing her voice all along, a soft alto hum rising and falling under the whipping and tinkling sound of the glass tornado, somehow more noticeable now in its absence than it had been during the strange events on the street.

The horse huffed out a breath, and the woman laughed. The sound of it sent an odd shiver up Trip’s back—not of anxiety, but of interest.

Don’t be stupid, man. You haven’t even seen her face yet.

And he couldn’t tell anything about her body under that horror of a dress.

Reaching up, she untied the bonnet from under her chin and removed it to shake off the dirt. A silken fall of blonde hair cascaded out of it and down her back, and Trip stopped to stare, frozen by the glint of midday Texas sun off its golden sheen.

By the time he moved again, she had begun brushing off her skirt in sharp, efficient motions.

“Ruby Silver?” he asked when he was close enough to speak without shouting.

As she spun around, it occurred to him belatedly that it might not be a good idea to sneak up on a woman who could turn flying glass into a tornado and make it disappear.

About the Author

Margo Bond Collins is addicted to coffee and SF/F television, especially Supernatural. She writes paranormal and contemporary romance, urban fantasy, and paranormal mystery. She lives in Texas with her daughter and several spoiled pets. Although she teaches college-level English courses online, writing fiction is her first love. She enjoys reading urban fantasy and paranormal fiction of any genre and spends most of her free time daydreaming about heroes, vampires, ghosts, werewolves, and the women who love (and sometimes fight) them.

Contact Margo:

Website:  http://www.MargoBondCollins.net

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Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/MargoBondCollins

Amazon Author Page: http://www.amazon.com/author/margobondcollins

Twitter:  https://twitter.com/MargoBondCollin Google+:  https://plus.google.com/116484555448104519902

Join her street team, The Vampirarchy, here: http://www.facebook.com/groups/vampirarchy

Buy Link:  http://mybook.to/GoodBadGhostly