Well, isn't this just the bee's knees... My debut novel, Seven for a Secret turns 10 years old today! In celebration of this anniversary, my other paranormal books, What the Clocks Know and Myths, Mothers, and Mystics, are FREE on Kindle this week through Friday. So snatch your copies up and leave that scathing review of my work that you've been dreaming of! 😉
Since 10 years is a long time, here's a little refresher on Seven for a Secret if you need it:
It's the year 2000, and twenty-four-year-old Kate moves into a new apartment to find a new state of independence in a new millennium. Almost immediately, she starts crushing on a hot guy who lives in her building. Deciding to take a break from her boyfriend Dexter, Kate believes the only thing now separating her from the fresh object of her sexual fantasies is the thin wall between their neighboring apartments.
A former 1920s hotel, Camden Court has housed many lonely lives over the decades--and is where a number of them have come to die. They're not all resting in peace, however, including ninety-year-old Olive, who dropped dead in Kate's apartment and continues to make her presence known.
For Olive has a secret she's dying to tell. One linking her to the sex, scandal, and sacrifice of a young dreamer named Lon. As the past haunts the present, Kate's romantic notion that the thrill-of-the-chase beats the reality-after-the-catch unexpectedly entwines her modern-day love life with Lon's Jazz Age tragedy.
With a little supernatural and a lotta' razzle-dazzle, Seven for a Secret is where historical fiction meets contemporary rom-com--from the Roaring Twenties when the "New Woman" was born, to the modern Noughties when she really came of age.
This story was my homage to sweet home Chicago and, more specifically, my single days living there. To quote from my acknowledgments at the end of the book:
To the Twenties and my twenties in Chicago. They were both roarin' times, and had the former been any less dodgy and the latter less douchie, I wouldn't have had so much material to work with.
Someday, I've gotta reread this book myself and note all the Easter eggs I hid in it. Those have become fewer and fewer the more I've written over the last decade, but there's no question that my earliest stories contain a lot of autobiography--highly fictionalized, of course, and kinda broken apart and reconfigured into something new and decidedly not mirroring my life. I think that's a lot of what writing's about: observing life, reviewing it, taking what we know and combining it with what we don't to turn it into something else entirely... It's a beautiful and mysterious alchemy.
And so ultimately, no, I am not Kate, the protagonist of this novel's Year 2000 story thread. And yet I am in certain ways, or should I say that she is me in those ways. It's been so long since I wrote this story, but what I do vividly remember is how much it brought me back to my earlier years living on my own in Chicago, even the fanciful ideas I'd have of certain locations while there, which appear in the 1920s story thread involving Lon. The Hughes mansion especially, which was based on the real-life Dewes mansion down the street from where I lived in Hampden Court, the inspiration for the book's Camden Court. If you're interested in other real-life locations, check out my Settings page here: https://www.rumerhaven.com/my-kind-of-town
Anyway, there are so many ways this tale is near and dear to my heart. Whether it got published or not, it was a story that wanted to be written, and I just got lucky that it got to be published, too. Many thanks to Omnific Publishing and Simon & Schuster for giving it a home and me the confidence to keep on goin'. While I largely stepped away from writing the past few years to prioritize editing instead, this anniversary finds me in the writer's seat once again as I attempt my first book series. It's an idea that I've had for quite a long while now, and at last, it's go time. More on that in the near future.
But in the meantime, among the wee bits I've written in recent years, this anniversary week (which includes the book sale, don't forget--FREE EBOOKS 'til Friday!) shall culminate in the standalone release of a novelette that originally featured in the anthology Ghosts & Gravity. My story Ghosted, is already available NOW for pre-order on Kindle, and both the ebook and paperback will be released this Friday, the 16th.
Not all doors…meant to open.
It’s 1972. Manhattan. The Wellraven apartment building. When Keith wakes up in Apt. 801 to find himself alone—again—all he can do is cling to his dreams, where it feels so real that he’s not alone…
An up-and-coming actor, Keith has so much to live for. But he’s had his heart broken by his agent and lover, Roderick, who wouldn’t commit when Keith wouldn’t come out. Leaving him for another client, Rod has vanished from his life, closing the door on a history that still haunts Keith day after day.
Yet night after night, another door opens…to a room in Keith’s apartment seen only in dreams. There, a mysterious presence waits for him, a force that strengthens as Keith’s will weakens. Crossing the threshold into his waking life, something—someone?—begins to haunt Apt. 801 with more than just the past. To shut the door on what torments him, though, is to lock himself deeper inside with it.
Only when the veil thins—and the door opens—can Keith confront this lost soul and set his own free.
So anyway, that's my update. Finally! After all these years, back in the saddle. And my monkey alter ego is equally pleased, already screeching about the books to come...🐒
Until then, I'm so proud of those that have come before and continue to inspire me to not give up. Much gratitude to any of you who join me along the journey, whether it was 10 years ago or now for the first time. 🤍
~ Rumer
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