The Calling - Softcover
Faye Summers's serene modern-day life is invaded by a terrifying and vengeful evil, when she becomes haunted by the spirit of an Egyptian queen, murdered three thousand years ago and doomed to an eternity of wandering. Original.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
From the Author:
The Origin of The Calling
Or why I love stories of ghosts and ancient Egypt so much
written this day of October 8, 2011
Night Owl Reviews"Top Pick" Review: nightowlreviews.com/nor/Reviews/Hitherandthee-reviews-The-Calling-by-Kathryn-Meyer-Griffith.aspx
In 1992 I'd already had two novels published by Zebra paperbacks, following three I'd sold myself to Leisure Books between 1984-1989, and my agent at the time (who I no longer have) wanted me to write two more novels for Zebra so she could lock in a double book contract. I've always loved ancient Egyptian stories since I'd been a kid so I had this idea to write about the time of Nefertiti and Akhenaton. I'd read somewhere that no one ever knew what had really happened, in the end, to Queen Nefertiti and her four remaining daughters after Akhenaton set them aside and eventually died - or was he murdered? Two of the greatest mysteries of ancient times. It intrigued me. So I thought: what if a modern day woman, Faye, was haunted all her life by the long dead ghost of one of those daughters until she agreed to travel to Egypt and uncover the truth? A truth that was really just my theory to what could have happened to Nefertiti and her daughters, not necessarily what did happen. A ghost craving vengeance and justice over something - foul murders - that had occurred millennia ago; who wouldn't/couldn't rest until the truth was revealed finally to the world.
Hmmm. I had to do a lot of research, in libraries because that was before the Internet, e-mail attachments, and editing track changes, of those ancient times but then the book fell easily into place. Of course, there'd be other ghosts, curses, evil priests and Egyptian themed monsters filling the pages along the way trying to keep them from finding out the truth as well as the adventure itself of Faye and her husband reluctantly flying off to the sultry Egyptian deserts to solve the mystery and release Faye from the dangerous haunting.
I actually used the same research afterwards to write two more stories, the erotic horror short story The Nameless One and a more romantic time travel novel I called Egyptian Heart a few years later. Waste not, want not, always being my motto.
The Calling, I thought, was a good book but by the time it came out in 1994 I'd already lost my sympathetic editor at Zebra and they'd cut a wide swatch of their midlist horror writers from their stable in a massive reorganization. I've been in a few of them in my time, believe me. Ah, the life of a writer! Without notice or reason, they'd dropped my other book on the double contract, Predator, a horror novel about a dinosaur loose in Crater Lake, which still exists in all the computers in the Internet world like some weird ghost book, six weeks before it went to the shelves, so it was never actually published; saying that "no one wanted to read about a dinosaur"...and six months later Jurassic Park came out! The Calling they released the following year but never pushed or publicized it much. I always thought it never had a chance. Zebra dumped meafter that. So I was thrilled in 2010 when my new publisher, Kim Richards at Damnation Books/Eternal Press, asked to rerelease ten of my older novels, rewritten and with new covers, in print, and all in e-books for the first time...The Calling included. Dawné Dominique did a fantastic new cover for it. Haunting, isn't it? Now the novel has a second life, a second chance, along with the other nine going back to my first romantic Leisure Books horror novel Evil Stalks the Nightfrom 1984, which will be the last one rereleased in June 2012.
Have you made any changes to the new edition?
Not many. I've already rewritten all 10 old novels and found that the Zebra Books didn't need much done to them at all. I'd had excellent editors there, I must confess. Now the three oldest Leisure novels - whew!- especially my first romantic historical The Heart of the Rose(began 39 years ago and published as my second novel in 1985) really needed a lot of rewriting. A lot. While my old The Wild Rose Press novels, Egyptian Heart, Winter's Journey, The Ice Bridge and a ghostly novella Don't Look Back, Agnes, needed very little as well. Thank goodness all that rewriting is done with.
Is the meeting of the modern world and ancient Egypt part of the appeal of the story for you as a writer?
Definitely, The Calling has two parallel stories in different time periods running along at the same time (a trick I also used in my best selling Witches earlier). One is the adventure of going to modern day Egypt, with all its present dangers, and the perils of what happened in ancient Egypt to our ghost woman. Readers seem to like that balance between the past and present. It's hard to pull off sometimes but when a writer does, it's magic.
How important is it to maintain a balance between a realistic backdrop and the fantastic elements of a paranormal story like The Calling?
To me, that's why I always liked Stephen King's novels...taking an ordinary person or people in our everyday normal world and then inserting the supernatural in some form, usually as a threat. I've always done that also with my novels. Introduce the unbelievable into the believable and it makes a nice counterpoint. The readers can relate to the realism and thus they feel more for the characters. When something happens to them, it matters. The readers can actually believe that what is happening supernaturally could really happen. I've been told that often about my novels and short stories.***
About the Author:
Or why I love stories of ghosts and ancient Egypt so much
written this day of October 8, 2011
Night Owl Reviews"Top Pick" Review: nightowlreviews.com/nor/Reviews/Hitherandthee-reviews-The-Calling-by-Kathryn-Meyer-Griffith.aspx
In 1992 I'd already had two novels published by Zebra paperbacks, following three I'd sold myself to Leisure Books between 1984-1989, and my agent at the time (who I no longer have) wanted me to write two more novels for Zebra so she could lock in a double book contract. I've always loved ancient Egyptian stories since I'd been a kid so I had this idea to write about the time of Nefertiti and Akhenaton. I'd read somewhere that no one ever knew what had really happened, in the end, to Queen Nefertiti and her four remaining daughters after Akhenaton set them aside and eventually died - or was he murdered? Two of the greatest mysteries of ancient times. It intrigued me. So I thought: what if a modern day woman, Faye, was haunted all her life by the long dead ghost of one of those daughters until she agreed to travel to Egypt and uncover the truth? A truth that was really just my theory to what could have happened to Nefertiti and her daughters, not necessarily what did happen. A ghost craving vengeance and justice over something - foul murders - that had occurred millennia ago; who wouldn't/couldn't rest until the truth was revealed finally to the world.
Hmmm. I had to do a lot of research, in libraries because that was before the Internet, e-mail attachments, and editing track changes, of those ancient times but then the book fell easily into place. Of course, there'd be other ghosts, curses, evil priests and Egyptian themed monsters filling the pages along the way trying to keep them from finding out the truth as well as the adventure itself of Faye and her husband reluctantly flying off to the sultry Egyptian deserts to solve the mystery and release Faye from the dangerous haunting.
I actually used the same research afterwards to write two more stories, the erotic horror short story The Nameless One and a more romantic time travel novel I called Egyptian Heart a few years later. Waste not, want not, always being my motto.
The Calling, I thought, was a good book but by the time it came out in 1994 I'd already lost my sympathetic editor at Zebra and they'd cut a wide swatch of their midlist horror writers from their stable in a massive reorganization. I've been in a few of them in my time, believe me. Ah, the life of a writer! Without notice or reason, they'd dropped my other book on the double contract, Predator, a horror novel about a dinosaur loose in Crater Lake, which still exists in all the computers in the Internet world like some weird ghost book, six weeks before it went to the shelves, so it was never actually published; saying that "no one wanted to read about a dinosaur"...and six months later Jurassic Park came out! The Calling they released the following year but never pushed or publicized it much. I always thought it never had a chance. Zebra dumped meafter that. So I was thrilled in 2010 when my new publisher, Kim Richards at Damnation Books/Eternal Press, asked to rerelease ten of my older novels, rewritten and with new covers, in print, and all in e-books for the first time...The Calling included. Dawné Dominique did a fantastic new cover for it. Haunting, isn't it? Now the novel has a second life, a second chance, along with the other nine going back to my first romantic Leisure Books horror novel Evil Stalks the Nightfrom 1984, which will be the last one rereleased in June 2012.
Have you made any changes to the new edition?
Not many. I've already rewritten all 10 old novels and found that the Zebra Books didn't need much done to them at all. I'd had excellent editors there, I must confess. Now the three oldest Leisure novels - whew!- especially my first romantic historical The Heart of the Rose(began 39 years ago and published as my second novel in 1985) really needed a lot of rewriting. A lot. While my old The Wild Rose Press novels, Egyptian Heart, Winter's Journey, The Ice Bridge and a ghostly novella Don't Look Back, Agnes, needed very little as well. Thank goodness all that rewriting is done with.
Is the meeting of the modern world and ancient Egypt part of the appeal of the story for you as a writer?
Definitely, The Calling has two parallel stories in different time periods running along at the same time (a trick I also used in my best selling Witches earlier). One is the adventure of going to modern day Egypt, with all its present dangers, and the perils of what happened in ancient Egypt to our ghost woman. Readers seem to like that balance between the past and present. It's hard to pull off sometimes but when a writer does, it's magic.
How important is it to maintain a balance between a realistic backdrop and the fantastic elements of a paranormal story like The Calling?
To me, that's why I always liked Stephen King's novels...taking an ordinary person or people in our everyday normal world and then inserting the supernatural in some form, usually as a threat. I've always done that also with my novels. Introduce the unbelievable into the believable and it makes a nice counterpoint. The readers can relate to the realism and thus they feel more for the characters. When something happens to them, it matters. The readers can actually believe that what is happening supernaturally could really happen. I've been told that often about my novels and short stories.***
About Kathryn Meyer Griffith...
Since childhood I've been an artist and worked as a corporate graphic designer and for newspapers for 23 years before I quit to write full time. I began writing novels at 21, forty years ago, and have sixteen (eleven romantic horror, one historical romance, one romantic suspense, one romantic time travel and two murder mysteries) previous novels and twelve short stories from Zebra Books, Leisure Books, Avalon Books, The Wild Rose Press, Damnation Books and Eternal Press.
I've been married to Russell for thirty-four years; have a son, James, and grandchildren, Joshua and Caitlyn, and live in a small quaint town in Illinois called Columbia, which is across the JB Bridge from St. Louis, Mo. We have three quirky cats, ghost cat Sasha and live cats Cleo and Sasha (Too), and the five of us live happily in an old house in the heart of town. Though I've been an artist, and a folk singer in my youth with my brother Jim, writing has always been my greatest passion, my butterfly stage, and I'll probably write stories until the day I die.
My books Revised and all out again from Damnation Books (damnationbooks.com/people.php?author=79)and Eternal Press. (eternalpress.biz/people.php?author=422): Evil Stalks the Night-Revised Author's Edition; The Heart of the Rose-Revised Author's Edition; Blood Forge-Revised Author's Edition; Vampire Blood-Revised Author's Edition; The Last Vampire -Revised Author's Edition; Witches-Revised Author's Edition; The Nameless One short story; The Calling-Revised Author's Edition; Scraps of Paper; All Things Slip Away; Egyptian Heart; Winter's Journey; The Ice Bridge; Don't Look Back, Agnes, novella; In This House short story; The Nameless One, erotic short story; Always & Forever, erotic contemporary novella; BEFORE THE END: A Time of Demons; The Woman in Crimson; The Guide to Writing Paranormal Fiction: Volume 1 (I did the Introduction);Dinosaur Lake; and four 99 cent each SPOOKY SHORT STORIES on Kindle. ***
Since childhood I've been an artist and worked as a corporate graphic designer and for newspapers for 23 years before I quit to write full time. I began writing novels at 21, forty years ago, and have sixteen (eleven romantic horror, one historical romance, one romantic suspense, one romantic time travel and two murder mysteries) previous novels and twelve short stories from Zebra Books, Leisure Books, Avalon Books, The Wild Rose Press, Damnation Books and Eternal Press.
I've been married to Russell for thirty-four years; have a son, James, and grandchildren, Joshua and Caitlyn, and live in a small quaint town in Illinois called Columbia, which is across the JB Bridge from St. Louis, Mo. We have three quirky cats, ghost cat Sasha and live cats Cleo and Sasha (Too), and the five of us live happily in an old house in the heart of town. Though I've been an artist, and a folk singer in my youth with my brother Jim, writing has always been my greatest passion, my butterfly stage, and I'll probably write stories until the day I die.
My books Revised and all out again from Damnation Books (damnationbooks.com/people.php?author=79)and Eternal Press. (eternalpress.biz/people.php?author=422): Evil Stalks the Night-Revised Author's Edition; The Heart of the Rose-Revised Author's Edition; Blood Forge-Revised Author's Edition; Vampire Blood-Revised Author's Edition; The Last Vampire -Revised Author's Edition; Witches-Revised Author's Edition; The Nameless One short story; The Calling-Revised Author's Edition; Scraps of Paper; All Things Slip Away; Egyptian Heart; Winter's Journey; The Ice Bridge; Don't Look Back, Agnes, novella; In This House short story; The Nameless One, erotic short story; Always & Forever, erotic contemporary novella; BEFORE THE END: A Time of Demons; The Woman in Crimson; The Guide to Writing Paranormal Fiction: Volume 1 (I did the Introduction);Dinosaur Lake; and four 99 cent each SPOOKY SHORT STORIES on Kindle. ***
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherKensington Pub Corp
- Publication date1994
- ISBN 10 0821746596
- ISBN 13 9780821746592
- BindingPaperback
- Edition number1
- Number of pages379
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ISBN 13: 9780821746592
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Kensington Pub Corp
(1994)
ISBN 10: 0821746596
ISBN 13: 9780821746592
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