Daily Archives: September 28, 2026

Ghastly Ghouls and Haunted Houses

I’ll be celebrating Halloween with a ghostly new release: The Duke, the Diamond, and the Ghastly Ghoul.

This year, the group of writers I regularly publish collections with decided to forgo Christmas and stretch our muses’ wings with ghost stories. And voila, Moonlight Madness, a Bluestocking Belles Collection is now available to preorder for the October 15th release.

Not one ghost, but two!

In The Duke, the Diamond, and the Ghastly Ghoul, a young duke visits one of his properties, a haunted abbey that his disreputable predecessors steered clear of. He’s determined to prove that ghosts aren’t real and the story of a missing diamond is a hum—until a strange lady appears on his doorstep, and the spirits of Wotton Abbey, a young noblewoman and a monk from the Abbey’s past, awaken seeking to right past wrongs.

I like working with story prompts (like a duke, a diamond and a ghastly ghoul) and these three came to me via a friend’s Facebook game at a release party. You know the type of game: choose an item from a column based on some biographical fact like the first letter of your name, your month of birth, etc. Fun and silly, but when these items came up, I said to myself, I’m going to write that story!

Being that I’m more geared to Hallmark movies than the Halloween movie franchise, my story and the others don’t fall into the horror category. They won’t give you nightmares!

Here’s a bit about the entire collection:

Jude Knight – Moonlight Becomes You in which a lady sees, but cannot hear, a ghost who attempts to warn her about a man who will die if she doesn’t find him soon.

Alina K. Field – The Duke, the Diamond, and the Ghastly Ghoul in which a house party at a haunted abbey brings together a duke, a ghost-hunting lady, and two ghosts determined to right old wrongs.

Aileen Fish – Mad about the Marquess in which a lady known for communing with the dead is forced to bring unwanted messages to the marquess next door from his dead father.

Rue Allyn – True Love’s Kiss in which a hunter seeking his kidnapped son in the forest stumbles upon a fairy with a similar mission. Together they may succeed if they stop squabbling.

Caroline Warfield – Not Again, Harry in which a lady takes shelter in a creepy old house only to find haunting, prowlers, strange artifacts, and a man from her past. A wish-granting mouse complicates it all.

Sherry Ewing – Finding My Way To You in which a ghost meets a determined lady who leaps at a chance to alter his past in spite of his efforts to convince her to leave the past where it belongs.

Barbara Monajem – The Haunted Hoyden in which two friendly ghosts help a lady to rescue a handsome, wounded man—who proves to be just what she needs to escape a dastardly plot.

Elizabeth Donne – Always With You in which a man pressed-ganged into service in the Royal Navy promises his wife he will come back to her. Whether it’s in this life or the next remains to be seen.

Here’s the universal preorder link for Moonlight Madness: https://books2read.com/u/4Dwnjr

Authors, do you find writing prompts helpful for generating story ideas? Let us know in the comments!

Happy autumn, everyone. I’ll be back in December for another Quarter Days post.

(Image of ghostly lady is from Depositphotos.com)