Halloween Spooktacular: Eliza: The Awakening by Eileen Sheehan + giveaway

Severed Finger Sugar Cookies

Ingredients:

2 ¾ c. flour;

1 tsp baking soda

½ tsp baking powder

1 x. softened butter

1 ½ c. sugar

1 egg

1tsp vanilla extract

Heat oven to 350°F. Line cookie sheets with cooking parchment paper or silicone baking mats.

In medium bowl, cream butter with sugar and add egg and vanilla.

Then, add flour and baking powder and baking soda.

Using fork or spatula, until well mixed and texture of breadcrumbs.

Squeeze handful of dough crumbs together tightly to form small log or "finger."

Score top of log with butter knife to shape the knuckle, then press 1 slivered almond at one end to make the fingernail. Repeat to use up dough. Refrigerate 30 minutes.

Bake 15 minutes. Cool completely, about 30 minutes.

Eliza: The Awakening Book One
by Eileen Sheehan
8/31/2021
Genre: Paranormal Shifter Series
ASIN: B09956JTJ1
Number of pages: 178
Word Count: 26,380
"The Awakening" begins the saga of a female shifter named, Eliza.

Eliza is a simple and uncomplicated young woman. She enjoys the outdoors, is good with animals, and, like most young women her age, loves to party and have fun. When she meets a sexy man with an alluring Southern drawl, she has no idea that he is involved in a world that she is yet to know, but is her legacy. Like it or not.

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Excerpt
It felt like someone was swinging a hammer against the inside of Eliza’s skull. The early morning dew caused a damp muskiness on the earth that blended with the mold and dust that burrowed beneath the thick layer of leaves where she lay her aching burden; assaulting her nose and adding to her misery. Her chocolate colored eyes felt pinned shut, but her hearing was abnormally acute. By the sounds around her, she sensed her surroundings were familiar ones. If she was correct, she was near the small cave that was nestled in a knoll that began the acres of woods at the far end of her family’s farm. It was a place that she’d discovered at a young age and had frequented whenever she required alone time. Her surroundings weren’t the greater mystery. How she got there was.

As her faculties returned to normal, she sat up and realized that how she got there wasn’t the biggest mystery after all. It was superseded by the fact that she hadn’t a stitch of clothing on.

None of this made sense. How did she get there and what happened to her clothes?

Straining her mind, she reached into the fog for a replay of the night before. She’d gone with her best friend, Reba, to a newly opened dance club. The place was packed, and dance partners were plentiful. The exertion from dancing combined with the excessive body heat made the air feel so stifling as to be practically unbearable. She remembered stepping outside for a bit of fresh air. Did Reba join her? She struggled to remember, but the visions in her head showed very little.

Squeezing her eyes shut almost to the point that it hurt, she forced her mind to function. She needed to remember the chain of events that led to her waking up naked in a field at the edge of the woods. Had she gone home from the club and sleepwalked? Or had something sinister occurred? She just didn’t know.

About the Author:

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Eileen Sheehan primarily writes hot, steamy romances (mostly New Adult) with a sexy male and strong female. A few are steamier than others (see their description). The majority of her novels are paranormal, but some are just plain novels about people in love (contemporary or historical with the author name of Ailene Frances). ALL of her stories have a bit of naughtiness, some excitement, a few thrills, and maybe a touch of mystery mixed in with sometimes naughty, sometimes sweet lovin'. She strives to write a novel length that will allow the busy woman to be able to sit down in an evening or two and be taken on a romantic journey without having a week go by before she gets to the end of the story.

An incurable romantic, she has a love affair with at least one of her characters... one book at a time. She hopes the same thing happens to you.

Spooktacular Giveaway

Audible code for free audio book copy of Eliza The Awakening

a Rafflecopter giveaway

'The Awakening' directed by Nick Murphy

Director: Nick Murphy

Cast: Rebecca Hall, Dominic West and Imelda Staunton

Synopsis:

1921 England is overwhelmed by the loss and grief of World War I and following the Spanish flu, the opening titles tell us “This is a time for ghosts.”

Skeptic and hoax exposer Florence Cathcart is enlisted by Teacher Robert Mallory to investigate a boarding school and explain sightings of a child ghost. Upon arriving however things go awry when everything Florence knows begins to unravels as the dead begin to show themselves and her own past comes back to haunt her.

Review:

There is a tendency to forget that delving's into supernatural haven't always been at the hands of a petrified protagonist out of the lens of a shaky camera. Modern horror's while retaining the mystery have become much more first person affairs or vitriolic shock value bastardisations of their cinematically older cousins.

A resurgence in the supernatural chiller has happened in recent years that has re-acquired the lost gothica through films like The Sixth Sense, The Others, The Devils Backbone, The Orphanage and the sort of low key cinema that isn't afraid to tread in period waters with rounded characters and an affecting story in favour of gratuity and gore.

The Awakening adds to this tradition bringing the period ghost story back with an elegant tale of murder, mystery, terror and revelation. While it's often entertaining enough to have a simple ghost story set in a different era, this tale is something more. Beautifully shot through the gloomy lens of Eduard Grau, Nick Murphy transports us to the purgatory of England in mourning duirng the 1920's.

Stricken by the guilt and the personal isolation of the post war years, the fear encapsulated in the dark halls and unforgiving teachers cum survivors of the haunted boys school seems palpable, crushing almost. Rebecca Hall's Florence Cathcart is an inspiring rendition of a strong willed cynic, really a haunted woman trying to outrun the misery of her blighted past.

Her 20's style ghost hunting gadgetry is more engrossing than any hackneyed modern devices, though I initially struggled with Catcart as a character, trying to imagine such a strong willed protagonist pre-feminism. But Hall's performance wins you over persuading you that her cold and clinical method comes from a darker place, her cynical requirement a self protective barrier that she has erected by necessity.

The pace of the film is played staccato, long silences are interrupted by bursts of mayhem. The moment you feel secure the beautifully gothic score from Daniel Pemberton begins to wail and assures you you are not. The feeling of guilt and sadness weigh heavily amongst the cast and indeed the boys of the school are wrapped in similar isolated and fearful conditions. Add to this the ghost of a boy and the death of another and you have a melting pot of emotional turmoil.

The boys are painted a combination of both cliquish and terrified as subjects not just to a haunting, but to the backlash of a generation of men who were forced to toughen up before their time, resulting in displays of behaviour that today would rank as odious, but then was par for the course. It's this eye for detail that allows you to forget Murphy's questionable 'Ghost Science' and become immersed in the bleakness of the circumstances. Rising discomfort floods through the screen and the suffocating sense of dread is enough to buckle the most hardened supernatural aficionado.

The excellent Dominic West wears survivors guilt behind a stolid exterior, while secretly he's cramped with the post trauma's of war and death. Imelda Staunton similarly hides her emotions behind the poker face of duty, her real motivations a harder nut to crack. The mystery is infused with the raw emotions of the cast and melts perfectly into a study of sadness and of a yearning to be healed. These are the things that will in turn yield the answers to the haunting and the dead, rather than the science that Hall's Cathcart finds is falling short.

The Awakening is a twisty turny film, with a plot that will mislead you and intrigue you as far as the credits. Despite it's short falls in what seemed a slightly rushed final act, it is a truly superb piece of eerie. A tale as much driven by excellent character as it is by a rich plot thick with scares and misdirection.

4.5/5

By: Mark McCann

For film reviews and much more check out Mark's site: Bad Haven