MEET ALICE DUNCAN
Award-winning
author Alice Duncan lives with a herd of wild dachshunds (enriched
from time to time with fosterees from New Mexico Dachshund Rescue) in
Roswell, New Mexico. She’s not a UFO enthusiast; she’s in Roswell
because her mother’s family settled there fifty years before the
aliens crashed (and living in Roswell, NM, is cheaper than living in
Pasadena, CA, unfortunately). Alice would love to hear from you at alice@aliceduncan.net
. And be sure to visit her Web site at http://www.aliceduncan.net
and her Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/alice.duncan.925
Book #1 in my
Daisy Gumm Majesty series
 |
| Original paperback cover |
Welcome to sunny Pasadena,
California, just a stone’s throw from Hollywood. The twenties are
in full roar, Prohibition isn’t stopping anybody . . . And Daisy
Gumm Majesty is getting by the best way she knows how–catering to
the rich and famous as a medium who put the “con” in conjuror . .
.
Excerpt 1:
It all
started with my aunt Viola's Ouija Board. It was an old one, and sort
of shabby. I guess Mrs. Kincaid had been using it ever since she
bought it in '03 when they first came out, but she claimed it still
worked.
Whether
it worked or not, Mrs. Kincaid gave it to Aunt Vi after her own
custom-made one with a large emerald in the center arrived from
overseas. Mrs. Kincaid declared it had been made by a Gypsy woman in
Rumania but I had my doubts then, and I have my doubts now. After
all, Mrs. Kincaid was rich, and we all know how gullible some rich
people are. I suppose I should amend that to read that I know how
gullible some rich
people are. Lord knows, I've had plenty of experience in gulling
them.
On the
other hand, my aunt Viola Gumm, like the rest of my Gumm kin, wasn't
at all gullible. Or rich. In fact, Aunt Vi worked as a cook at Mrs.
Kincaid's mansion on Orange Grove Boulevard in Pasadena, which is how
she came to be involved with the Ouija Board to begin with.
Aunt
Vi claimed to be a little scared of the thing, but I think she was
only teasing. Everybody knew Ouija Boards were just pieces of wood
some smart guy painted and patented to swindle people with money out
of it—money, that is to say. You didn't have to look any farther
than Mrs. Kincaid if you doubted it.
So
that's what started it. What kept it going was Aunt Vi taking the
thing out on Christmas Eve to show the relations. Everybody laughed
at it, but nobody wanted to touch it. I thought that was strange,
since if Ouija Boards weren't truly conduits to a Great Beyond
somewhere past death, what harm were they?
I
decided to take a crack at it. Why not? I had no morals to speak of,
being only ten years old at the time. Back then my main concern was
in not making the adults in my life so mad they'd spank me. Since
they seemed crazy for this silly board, I decided to have some fun on
my own.
You
could have heard a pin drop when I sat down across from my cousin
Eula and we settled our fingers lightly on a triangular shaped piece
of wood Aunt Vi told me was a planchette which, I assumed, was a
French word for a triangular piece of wood. Eula, who was sixteen and
showing it in every detail, wanted to know if there would be any
beaux in her future. I didn't much like Eula, since she wouldn't let
me beautify myself with her new eyelash curler, so I made the
planchette tell her she'd have three boyfriends, turn Catholic, and
enter a nunnery.
Needless
to say, my spelling wasn't great, but I invented a spirit control
named Rolly, who'd lived in 1055, and who'd never been to school.
Therefore, since nobody expected Rolly to spell well, it worked out
all right.
I was
quite proud of Rolly. I'd listened hard when Aunt Vi explained the
Ouija Board to Ma. She'd said that people conjured up some sort of
spirit control from the Other Side, whatever that was, with which
they communicated through the Ouija Board. That's how I came up with
Rolly when I felt a need to explain my rotten spelling. Nobody else
in the family could spell worth beans anyhow, so I probably could
have dispensed with the control altogether, but Rolly added a touch
of panache to an otherwise childish exercise.
To my
utter astonishment and her absolute horror, Eula believed me.
Everyone joined in communicating with the Ouija Board and Rolly
through me after that, except Uncle Ernie, who'd already drunk most
of the punch and had taken to snoring in his big easy chair. Uncle
Ernie, Aunt Vi's husband and my father's younger brother, snored
through most of our family get-togethers.
Excerpt #2
Every
time I thought about doing a séance, I had to fight hysteria. For
some reason I envisioned those poor dead people rising from their
graves, still swaddled in their burial finery, dripping dirt, and
looking skeletal, except for who were still in the process of
rotting. Especially when it came to the soldiers who'd lost their
lives overseas, the visions were hideous and bloody and made me feel
sick to my stomach. They were unpleasant mental images, but I
couldn't help it that they invaded my mind's eye any more than I
could help Billy.
"I
don't know why you can't get a normal job." Billy let go of my
hand and hunched in his wheelchair. He could walk a few steps at a
time, but his lungs were so bad from the mustard gas, and his legs
were so badly damaged from grapeshot, that he couldn't walk like he
used to walk: forever and ever without even thinking about it. Or
run. When we were kids, we used to run everywhere. He'd pretend to
find me annoying because I liked to follow him around, but I didn't
believe him then. I believed him now. Nevertheless, his tone of voice
riled me. Still, I tried to keep my anger from showing.
"A
normal job wouldn't pay as well as this one." I'd pointed out
this trenchant fact before, but Billy didn't buy it. Or maybe he did
and just didn't want to admit it. Sometimes I felt as if I didn't
know anything for certain any longer.
"Money's
not the only thing that's important in this world, you know,"
Billy said in the strange, querulous voice that seemed to belong to
someone other than the Billy Majesty I'd known all my life.
"Maybe
not, but money keeps food on the table and clothes on our backs."
Every now and then, when I remembered how his rich laugh and deep
baritone voice used to thrill me when I was a starry-eyed bride, I
wanted to cry. At the moment, I wanted to shove his wheelchair down
the front porch steps and save us both more pain and grief.
"It's
sinful, what you do."
"What?"
It was too much. I snatched up my handbag and whirled around, my
fists planted on my hips, and glared down at my poor, destroyed
husband. "What I do is not
sinful, Billy Majesty. What I do is called work.
I can't help it if you don't like it. It's all I know how to do, and
it pays a lot of money." I hated that I had to pass the back of
my hand under my eyes to catch tears. "Besides, it helps people,
whether you want to believe it or not."
"Hunh.
You're only fooling yourself, Daisy. It's wicked."
"It's
not wicked! What I do gives comfort to bereaved people." That
there wasn't a darned thing I could do to comfort Billy was a fact
that seemed to shimmer in the air between us. I wanted to stamp my
foot and scream.
His
bitter expression didn't alter appreciably, even in the face of my
fury and well-reasoned arguments. He ignored my impassioned speech.
Sometimes I thought he ignored all of my impassioned speeches because
he knew it was the best way to hurt my feelings. I knew I was being
unfair to both of us.
"Who's
going to be there?"
I
turned around, slammed my handbag on the dresser since I hadn't meant
to pick it up in the first place—these arguments always rattled
me—and picked up my elegant black cloche. I tried to keep my hands
from shaking as I settled the hat over my knot-in-a-pouf hair-do. The
style was a little old-fashioned, but I was afraid I'd look like
Irene Castle if I got my hair bobbed. I'd have liked to get a bob. It
would have been so free and easy and simple, especially since my hair
was thick would have taken to the "do" with relative
simplicity. But then, nothing in my whole life was free and easy any
longer.
As you
can probably tell, every once in a while I'd get to feeling sorry for
myself no matter how much I tried not to.
"How
should I know who's going to be there? I'll probably see Edie."
Edwina "Edie" Marsh was one of my friends from high school.
She worked as a housemaid for the Kincaids, and we always had a good
time trading gossip when I conducted séances the mansion. "And
I'm sure there will be some of Mrs. Kincaid's rich friends there. Oh,
and her sister, Mrs. Lilley, I guess, since it's her son we're trying
to reach."
"That's
horrible," Billy said in a low voice.
It
was, kind of. I'd never say so. "Maybe, but it pays the milk man
and the grocer."
Without
another word, Billy pushed his chair around and rolled out of the
room. I turned and watched him go, my heart aching. Thanks to my
work, we'd managed to get him one of those newfangled chairs with
wheels big enough so that Billy could maneuver himself around without
help. That was some kind of blessing, I guess, because he felt
helpless enough without having to have an attendant push him every
time he wanted to, say, go to the kitchen or, worse, the bathroom.
Not
for the first time, I was glad America had climbed aboard the water
wagon. I could envision poor Billy, bitter and incurable, turning to
the bottle for escape. Life was hard enough for us already. We didn't
need the Demon Rum living with us, too. I worried a little about the
morphine the doctor prescribed for him, but without the drug his pain
was too great to bear. In other words, there wasn't any happy
solution to the Billy problem.
 |
| Audiobook cover |
The books in
this series are soon to be given new covers and will be re-released
by ePublishing Works. The first two books, Strong
Spirits and Fine
Spirits will also be available in print form
as print-on-demand books. More information to follow when I know what
the heck is going on.
.png)
The man holding Eba tossed her in a corner.
Fear gathered thick in her throat, she crouched motionless and watched one of
the men seize the carcass from the spit and divide it amongst his cronies. She
heard her own uneven, shallow gasps, clamped her mouth shut and peered at the
two youths flat and silent on the dark earthen floor. The flames flickered on
Sorchand's red curls and closed eyes, but someone's boots blocked her sight of
Comgell's face.
