My Ghost Story

In just a few short weeks, the third book in the Cemetery Tours series, After Death, will be available on Amazon and Kindle (and Nook shortly thereafter).  I can’t wait.  This is a book I’ve been working on for over a year.  I knew what I wanted for it, but for some reason, it took TWO rewrites to get it to where I wanted it to be.  It would have been easy to simple finish the first version and publish it, but I would not have been happy with it.  There was no real plot.  My characters and especially my readers deserve better than that.  So I started over from scratch.

Two days after the release, I will also be speaking to a small group about me and about my books.  I’ve got to tell y’all, I’m not that great at talking about my books, but I’m even worse at talking about myself.  I’m just really not that interesting.  I have interesting stories.  But me as a person?  Kind of boring.

I’ve been trying my best to come up with ideas for my presentation.  I will certainly include a synopsis of the first book as well as a little bit about the next two.  But you know, the question I get asked most often is, “So what inspired you to write a ghost story?”

I know I’ve answered this question multiple times on my blog, but those posts are lost in the binary infinity that is the internet.

My love for ghost stories began at a young age.  I grew up in a house that celebrated Halloween the way most people celebrate Christmas.  My whole family just loves it.  Ghosts, witches, vampires, zombies, I could never get enough.  My mother and I were (and still are) particularly fond of all the ghost-hunting and unexplained mystery documentaries that aired around All Hallows Eve.  I remember learning about notorious haunting grounds, such as the Del Coronado Hotel.  I knew then that I wanted to have a ghost experience of my own.

It never occurred to me to actually write a ghost story until 2010, when I suffered a very sudden and unexpected loss in my family.  Long story short, I was devastated.  I’d never hurt like that before.  I actually felt my heart breaking.  I turned to my faith in God to help see me through.  But I also turned to the paranormal.

I became obsessed in proving to myself that life did continue on after death.  I visited libraries and bookstores seeking rock solid testimonies of psychics, mediums, religious figures, and those who’ve endured Near Death Experiences.  I scoured Scripture for passages that referred to death and life eternal.  Perhaps most importantly, I began tuning into ghost hunting shows, particularly one called Ghost Adventures.

It was during that time that I began writing a story about a guy who could see ghosts and a girl who was haunted by a spirit of a loved one.  It was a mess.  Of course, I never really intended to publish it.  It was just a story that I began writing to make myself feel better.

It didn’t really become something more until I was over at my friends’ apartment one night watching Criminal Minds.  Now, I’m a huge fangirl.  You all know this about me.  That night, I was introduced to Dr. Spencer Reid portrayed by Matthew Gray Gubler and let me tell you, it was love at first sight.  Crazy?  Perhaps.  But I knew then and there that I’d found the inspiration for my main character.  He just looks like the kind of guy who would see ghosts and who would be an adorable mess trying to figure it all out.

Shortly thereafter, I realized my story was missing one key element: An enthusiastic ghost hunter.  Cue Ghost Adventures and the creation of Luke Rainer.

After that, the story naturally fell into place.  I knew going in that there would be at least two books in the series.  That soon turned to three.  Now the plan is five.  Both books are already planned out and I can’t wait to write them.  I can’t tell you a lot, but I can tell you that the fourth book is going to be set in Scotland.  It’s going to be so much fun to write I can’t even tell you.  Hopefully it will be just as much fun to read, if not more so!

Until then, I hope you enjoy After Death. And if you haven’t read the first two, I hope you’ll enjoy them as well!  Preferably before you read the third.  But you know, there’s no law that says you have to read a book series in order.  Just do me a favor and don’t tell me if you do.

Love you all!  Talk to you soon!

Character Interview: Michael Sinclair

Back when I first started writing, to get to know my characters, I would interview them.  I’d make up questions, kind of like a survey, and I’d write out responses as those characters.  This is kind of the same idea, except I thought I’d give my characters a chance to interview me for a change.  Up first, the serie’s underdog hero and reluctant medium, Michael Sinclair.

Note: This shouldn’t contain too many spoilers, but if it does, I apologize.

Michael Sinclair (MS):  This is kind of weird.

Jackie Smith (JS):  Yeah, I know. Just go with it.

MS:  Okay. Well, I guess I’d have to start this interview off by asking… Why me?

JS:  What do you mean?

MS:  Why won’t you let me catch a break?  Why do you like to torture me?

JS:  I don’t torture you.  You’ve actually got it pretty good compared to a lot of fictional guys out there.

MS:  I see ghosts, I can’t find a job, I get kidnapped, I get tortured, my girlfriend is always ending up in the hospital…  Why can’t you write a book about me where I win the lottery or I take a romantic, ghost-free getaway with Kate to a tropical island?

JS:  Because you don’t play the lottery and neither of you could afford that. Neither could I, for that mat ter.

MS:  Am I ever going to find another job?  Let’s face it, I’m not going to be able to pay rent much longer.

JS:  I have an idea for you.  I think Luke is really going to like it.

MS:  Oh, great. Of course Luke is going to like it.  You like him so much better than me.

JS:  Not true.  If I did, then he would have ended up with Kate.

MS:  Okay then, here’s a real question.  How come I can see ghosts?

JS:  It was a story I always wanted to write, especially after I experienced a loss myself.  I didn’t really know how to characterize you, however, until I started watching Criminal Minds and discovered Matthew Gray Gubler as Spencer Reid.  You know that’s who you’re based off of, right?

MS:  Yeah, you remind me all the time.  I think you like him better than me, too.

JS:  Wait a minute, I thought you were supposed to be this super sweet, nerd of my dreams kind of guy. Where is all this sass coming from?

MS:  Don’t ask me.  You wrote me like this.  Speaking of which, did you mean to make me so two-dimensional or is that just part of the protagonist’s curse?

JS:  Why do you think you’re two-dimensional?  You’re not two-dimensional.

MS:  All anyone knows about me is that I see ghosts and I feel sorry for myself.  A lot.  Why didn’t you give me more depth?

JS:  I totally gave you depth.  Your problem is that once you discovered you were the only one seeing these spirits, your entire life began to revolve around making sure no one else figured it out.  It didn’t give you a whole lot of room to branch out, and for that, I’m sorry.

MS:  So, while you were thinking up ways to ruin my life, you never thought to maybe make my power a little more, oh, I don’t know, cool?

JS:  What does that mean?

MS:  I mean, you read all these books and watch these TV shows about mediums who can not only see dead people, but predict the future, time travel, read minds, all that stuff.  How come I can’t do that?  How come I only get the ghosts?

JS:  Because all of that would make these books a lot more complicated.

MS:  Oh, okay.  As long as it makes everything easier for you.

JS:  Seriously, are you always this snarky when I write you?  I thought I gave you a pretty good life.  Cool ghost best friend, cute girlfriend, and at least you’re not like Haley Joel Osment in The Sixth Sense.  You don’t see hanging people or kids with their brains blown out.

MS:  I guess I should be thanking you for that.

JS:  You’re welcome.

MS:  I’m still not particularly thrilled with you, though.

JS:  Yeah, I’m sensing that.

MS:  So tell me, are good things ever going to happen to me?

JS:  You are far too melodramatic, you know that?  And I’m not going to tell you if good things will happen or not.  You know I can’t make you any promises.  But if it all works out the way I think it will…  You’ll just have to wait and see.

How it Started

Tomorrow, I’ll be speaking at my first book club meeting!  I’m really excited about it, but I also wasn’t really sure what to expect, so I emailed one of the ladies hosting the event.  She said not to worry and that she had told her friends to come prepared with questions.  She did, however, mention that her guests might be interested in what inspired Cemetery Tours and how it all started.

I think I’ve said before that I’ve always been a fan of ghost stories and that I was a little nerd who had all those scary story books and watched the true haunting shows around Halloween and that’s why I eventually decided to write a ghost story of my own.  That’s true, but mere childhood fascination with the paranormal was not the only thing that inspired me to write Cemetery Tours.

I hadn’t even planned on writing a ghost story, to be honest with you.  I was more into the chick-lit genre and was in the middle of writing a college-cenetered story when I suffered a pretty unbearable loss.  I don’t really want to go into it, because it will make me sad, but it was very unexpected and it hit me harder than anything has before.  I began questioning everything.  Out of sheer desperation, I went to the library and checked out every book I could find on the afterlife.  Reading other people’s experiences brought me a lot of comfort.  Writing, as it turned out, brought me even more.

But loss wasn’t the only factor in creating Cemetery Tours.  If it had been, it’d be a much more depressing story.

My second source of inspiration came in the form of Criminal Minds.  I was at a friend’s apartment one night and it happened to be on TV.  That was when I first caught a glimpse of Matthew Gray Gubler.

I’ve said it before and I will say it again.  I’m a nerd.  I’m a fangirl.  And Spencer Reid as portrayed by Matthew Gray Gubler was the cutest guy I’d ever seen in my life.  I knew after one episode (incidentally, the one where Reid ends up in the hospital with Anthrax) that he was going to be my muse for… whoever my protagonist was going to be.  I didn’t know at the time.  I just knew I wanted a cute yet kind of awkward guy who didn’t want anyone to know that he could see ghosts.

I had several early drafts of the story that fizzled out before I finished.  Something seemed off.  I wasn’t connecting with my main character (whose named changed several times before I finally found Michael Sinclair) and I couldn’t find a way that connected him to his potential love interest in a way that wasn’t stupid or cliche.  All in all, I realized there was a key component missing in the story.

Cue Luke Rainer.

It wasn’t until I made the decision to bring in a hot shot paranormal superstar that everything finally seemed to fall into place.  Luke, in all his arrogant yet charming glory, turned out to be the key.

Interestingly enough, I first discovered one of my Luke Rainer inspirations, Ghost Adventures, the day after that devastating loss.

It was October 24, 2010, and I was so depressed that I did nothing that day except sit around and watch 16 and Pregnant.  Let me tell you, I hate reality TV shows, but that day, it was all I wanted to do.  After the last episode of the day, I began flipping through channels and noticed a show called Ghost Adventures on Travel Channel.  That was pretty much all it took.

Once I brought in Luke Rainer (who was originally a character in another story), all that remained was a name for his ghost-hunting team.  It didn’t take me very long to decide on Cemetery Tours.  In fact, I didn’t even come up with it.  It was a title that my dad had come up with years earlier on a road trip to San Antonio.  We stopped at a roadside Dairy Queen across the highway from a small town cemetery and my dad goes, “You know, you should write a story about a bunch of cemeteries around Texas and call it Cemetery Tours.”

Funnily enough, a lot of people think that Cemetery Tours is a book about cemeteries.  It does make sense.  But no, it’s definitely a fictional ghost story, one that I hope people of all ages can enjoy.

http://www.amazon.com/Cemetery-Tours-Jacqueline-Smith-ebook/dp/B00F7CHQ08/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1402361581&sr=8-1&keywords=cemetery+tours