Guest post Zoey and Claire Kane

Courage in The Dark

Zoey: Claire and I used to always think that the world was full of nice people, like our grocer and next door neighbor, and that there was nothing bad happening around us except for what was aired on the nightly news. It was quite by accident that we discovered a darker side to people; the nice guy with a criminal mind. Seeing this other side to life certainly has brought adventure to our ordinary circumstances, like investing in property, taking a cruise, and so forth.

We are getting used to creepy happenings and dead bodies. While some people would runaway screaming at certain situations, we find ourselves joking, asking each other, “What else could happen?” because we  developed a jaded, dark sense of humour; that happens when extraordinary becomes ordinary. On the other hand, I know I have at one time asked Claire to hide under the bed, but she wouldn’t do it… I guess that makes me overprotective concerning my twenty-five-year-old daughter.

Claire: I love my mother. She is over-protective at times, but I’ll never forget how in The Riddles of Hillgate she sent me up in the attic ahead of her. She apologized later, but I understood that for her to climb up a rope ladder, it would take a lot of dexterity… especially when you have a colt. 45 in your pants. We do our best to watch out for each other. And we balance each other out.

Enjoy this excerpt:

They both shined their flashlights inside. Part of a ladder hung down, slightly swaying, made of rope.
“Should we climb it?” Zo whispered.
“Follow me up, Mom.”
“How about you pop your head up there first and tell me what you see?”
Claire huffed.
Zo added, “You know I’m not good with ropes or trapezes or anything of that nature.”
“Alright.”
“Be careful, darling.” Zo hesitated. Maybe it’s not such a good idea to let your only daughter go into a creepy attic alone at night, her conscience warned. “Is it the attic?” she asked.
Claire climbed enough just to see inside. The temperature instantly dropped a few degrees, just by that small distance. The rain beat hard on the roof, sounding as if she were in a drum. She shined her light in the space. She followed the glow of the flashlight’s ray along the walls. The attic was bigger than she expected. There was no sign of anyone in there, so she decided to pull herself all the way up and inside.
“Are you all right, dear?” Zo called, afraid.
“Just come up here. You’ll be surprised,” Claire said.
“Is that a good thing?” Zo asked rhetorically. She decided to try her legs at the rope ladder and did much better than she thought. “Good news, Claire, I didn’t get tangled in it.”

Claire: Yeah, there are many times we’ve had to be courageous, like when we stole a lifeboat off a cruise ship and followed a bunny down a dark well in Cruise to Murder.

Zoey: Those are the type of things you have to do, when you feel cornered, and can’t run away anyway. There are going to be hard times in life for all of us… we just happen to stumble upon them at exceedingly high rates. If you are cornered and have to make decisions like we have had to, I would hope you remember that running away is not always the right option. Sometimes you have to face the scare. 

About Zoey and Claire:
Claire has a Masters in Journalism, was Editor for Eye Witness Magazine and can’t make Irish Rum Cookies to save her life.

Zoey has dabbled in modeling, is a licensed real-estate agent, seeks for treasures (great and small), and is often underestimated.
Together, Zoey and Claire are a mother-daughter mystery solving duo. During their downtime, they dream of island men whisking them away.
(Claire and Zoey are also fictional, and their authors are a real life mother and daughter who use their names as pseudonyms. Don't tell them that, though.)

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Do not forget to stop by over at their website HERE and enter to win a $25 Amazon Gift card. And later this week my reviews of both The Riddles of Hillgate and Cruise to Murder will be posted here (very fun and entertaining reads)