Today I am so pleased to welcome Jenn Burke to Joyfully Jay. Jenn has come to talk to us about her latest release, Give Up the Ghost (which we reviewed here and loved). Please join me in giving her a big welcome!

Do I Believe in Ghosts?

Well, let’s just say I don’t not believe in them.

They’re such a pervasive legend in our society that I feel there has to be some truth to their existence. But is it what we’ve seen portrayed in stories and plays and movies? Probably not.

If ghosts do exist, I think they’re echoes of energy—no longer people but memories of people. But ghosts that can interact, like the ghosts in Not Dead Yet and Give Up the Ghost, are probably firmly in the realm of fiction. And I’m okay with that.

I’ve never actually seen a ghost, though I have experienced some unexplainable things.

When my daughter was little, she needed to listen to music to fall asleep every night. We had an old CD-player/boombox set up in the bookcase beside her bed, the type with no clock or any other functionality other than playing CDs or the radio. One night, around midnight, I was jolted out of a deep sleep by the radio suddenly playing at full blast. I raced to my daughter’s room to discover that she was sound asleep (I swear, that kid can sleep through anything). I have no explanation why the radio suddenly came on—she rarely, if ever, listened to the radio, preferring CDs, and she never listened to them loudly. It remains a mystery to this day. But it was good fodder for one of the unexplained events mentioned in Give Up the Ghost.

Despite venturing on a number of haunted walking tours in Ottawa and Kingston, Ontario, (and a witch walk in Salem, Massachusetts) I’ve yet to encounter a ghost. There was one strange instance of rattling behind a closed door at the Old Ottawa Jail on one of these tours, but I can’t rule out that was a living person manually adding to the atmosphere.

However, when I was a kid, I visited Boldt Castle in the Thousand Islands, and felt something that makes the hair on my arms stand on end to this day, 30 years later.

If you don’t know the history of the place, it’s quite romantic and sad. George Boldt had commissioned its construction on the family-owned island as a surprise for his wife, but the project was stopped suddenly in 1904 after his wife died. George never returned to the island and the unfinished castle remained exposed to the elements for 73 years, but it’s now a tourist destination. When I visited with my cousins, I remember feeling something in one of the rooms that went beyond the general creepy feeling of old buildings. My skin crawled and my muscles got all tense, as though I could feel something in the shadows watching us. I never saw anything, and maybe it was just my overactive imagination, but I’ll never forget it.

My experiences with creepiness are pretty tame compared to what other people have experienced, I know. Do you have any ghostly encounters you’d like to share?

Blurb

The bigger they are, the harder they maul.

Immortal not-ghost Wes Cooper and his vampire partner, Hudson Rojas, have it all—rewarding private investigation work, great friends and, most important, a love that’s endured. But ever since Wes sent a demon screaming back to the beyond, his abilities have grown overpowering and overwhelming. He’s hiding the fact that he’s losing control the best he can, but it’s hard to keep anything a secret for long when your partner’s a former cop…and especially when your partner’s a former cop who wants to move in together.

When all hell literally breaks loose in Toronto and superstrength ghosts are unleashed on Wes and his friends, he and Hudson are thrown into a case unlike any they’ve seen before. To save the city, Wes needs to harness his new power…and find some answers. But when he gets them, the solution to fix it all could mean losing everything.

Bio

Jenn Burke has loved out-of-this-world romance since she first read about heroes and heroines kicking butt and falling in love as a preteen. Now that she’s an author, she couldn’t be happier to bring adventure, romance, and sexy times to her readers.

Jenn is the author of a number of paranormal and science fiction romance titles, including the critically acclaimed Chaos Station science fiction romance series (authored with Kelly Jensen) from Carina Press.

She’s been called a pocket-sized and puntastic Canadian on social media, and she’ll happily own that label. Jenn lives just outside of Ottawa, Ontario, with her husband and two kids, plus two dogs named after video game characters…because her geekiness knows no bounds.