As seen in the October issue of Uncaged Book Reviews

Uncaged: What attracted you to writing in the paranormal/mystery genre?

I love the idea of solving a mystery. And, for me, it just doesn’t get any better than when a mystery has paranormal elements entwined in it. The original Twin Peaks was a major influence on me. The X-Files, Ghost Whisperer, all these shows have mysteries where the paranormal has to be explored to solve them. And they are all fantastic.

Uncaged: Can you tell readers more about The Haunting of Dylan Klaypool series? Do you have a set amount of books in mind for the series, or is it open-ended to see where the story takes you?

As the title suggests, this story is centered around Dylan. This is a ghost story, for sure, but at its heart, it’s a story about a troubled girl. For as long as she can remember her life has been on a downward spiral, and she believes the only way to correct it is through paranormal investigation. Ironically, Dylan’s initial inability to connect with people and with society is what ultimately helps readers connect with her. Readers are on a journey with Dylan, as opposed to watching her go through it from afar. Dylan has knowledge that the reader doesn’t. But, never at any point does the reader know more than Dylan does. Because of that, they experience everything right along with her. Seeing how Dylan grows has been something readers tell me they really enjoy.

This series is planned to be three books. I had a beginning, middle, and end planned from the start. But, I will say, Dylan took me places I didn’t expect to go in Book One, and I imagine she will in the subsequent books, as well.

Uncaged: You have been attending quite a few book signings. What is your favorite part about those?

I’m amazed at the amount of people that come to me to share their personal experiences with the paranormal. Readers tell me stories about ghosts, spirits, and dreams that they haven’t shared with anyone. Having them give me that trust is something I cherish. It’s remarkable that someone would find it appropriate to open up to me, a complete stranger, about something so personal.

And, of course, discussing Dylan, who she is, what she’s battling, and how people are identifying with her.

Uncaged: Do you read your reviews? What do you feel you can take away from them?

Not sure what I take away, good or bad. I don’t think a review could ever carry enough weight to change what I write or how I write. But, I do read them.

Uncaged: What is one of the nicest things someone has said to you about your books?

When someone tells me they are disappointed that they have to wait for the next book. Their eagerness to find out what will happen next tells me I wrote something that touched them in one way or another.

Uncaged: What do you like to do when you aren’t writing? Where is one of your favorite places on Earth?

I enjoy doing a lot of different activities besides writing. I like hiking and fishing, attending concerts and plays, watching sports, movies, and TV. I read psychological thrillers. And, of course, I enjoy conducting paranormal investigations.

I love to travel and visit new places, but home is definitely one of my favorite places on Earth. Whether I’m with my daughters, hanging with my girlfriend, or even by myself, home is a great place to be.

Uncaged: What can you tell us that is very unique about you?

I actually have had a paid gig as a Michael Jackson impersonator.

Uncaged: What would you like to say to fans, and where can they follow you?

I hope you are enjoying Dylan as much as I am. Thank you for reading, thank you for coming to events, and I hope to see you soon.

James Alan Ross loves ghost stories. Not only in novels, but in real life.

www.jamesalanross.com

The Haunting of Dylan Klaypool
James Alan Ross
Horror/Suspense

To hear the truth, she must listen to the silence.
Dylan Klaypool’s dark history has her searching for answers that can only be found down a single path: paranormal investigation. Battling demons from her past, the high school junior’s obsession with proving the existence of ghosts has become the only consistent aspect of her troubled life. Now living with her estranged grandmother in a new town and attending a new school, Dylan’s focus has not wavered. And the boarded up, abandoned house she discovered on Cemetery Road might hold the key that can unlock the secrets that have long haunted her.

Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

Willing herself to focus, she gently closed her tired, itchy eyes and concentrated. Dylan Klaypool’s white earbuds fit snugly inside her ears which fought to curtail long strands of curly brown hair from tumbling in front of her narrow face. Still, one mischievous lock snuck from the top of her head and dropped to tickle her nose. With an angry puff of air from under her pouty bottom lip, Dylan briskly blew it away, but the undisciplined curl had already severed her attention.
It didn’t take much to lure her attentiveness away from the three straight hours of total silence she was playing back on her digital recorder. Only the occasional sounds made by birds or bats randomly sprinkled through the otherwise tranquil sea of nothingness that had been washing over her ears.
Dylan exhaled her frustrations away, sank back into the hard, plastic seat connected by a bent metal rod to the wooden desktop, and watched seconds pass as the recording lagged on. She gripped the front of the desk with her sweaty palms, leaned back, and pulled her arms straight, staring at the miniature, black digital recorder.

As the quietness traveled from the small recording device over her delicate eardrums, her dry and scratchy eyes surveyed Room 234 for signs of life. Most of the students had their faces firmly attached to smartphones: posting and texting, spreading rumors, and making plans for the Varsity football game later that night (or more likely the party afterwards in a freshly cut hay field, with a large fire surrounded by rampant, underaged drinking). None of those things interested Dylan. Not even slightly.

Yawning, Black Willow High’s newest student rubbed her sharp knuckles over a squinted eyelid and listened intently to more of nothing, like a phone call with no one on the other end or a CD with no songs. Spying through the window, she found that the boring hum of silence played the perfect soundtrack to the drably, gray skies serving as the backdrop to dozens of gangly, leafless trees that surrounded the school.

Dylan glanced up at her study hall teacher, Ms. Castle, who sat properly behind her shiny desk but whose thoughts looked to be somewhere else. Framed images of the teacher’s twin toddlers posed by a hip, young photographer sat proudly facing out towards the uninterested students. The thin, tall, early-thirties teacher crossed her unseasonably tanned legs and laughed at the five-inch screen in her palm. Dylan swore she saw the divorced woman blush and wondered if the exchange happening through the teacher’s personal device was appropriate for school hours. The way Ms. Castle carried herself, Dylan guessed not.

Dylan’s brown eyes rolled in their deep sockets, as the eleventh-grader fought the urge to stand up, walk out, and never return. It had become difficult, pushing herself to achieve even average grades with all she was trying to accomplish outside of school. The real world had assigned Dylan other, more important things to worry about than math equations and forming a fluent sentence in French. Just passing and making it to graduation next year would’ve been sufficient enough for her.

Dylan was tired. Not just tired of her current life circumstances, which she truly was, but physically tired. She needed sleep. She ran the pad of her thumb over the tiny back-lit screen on the plastic digital recorder that she had retrieved from the rugged, abandoned house down the road early that morning. Her black sneakers still carried dust from the long gravel road between it and her grandma’s house: the only two houses for miles on a rural, country road fittingly named Cemetery.
Closing both eyes, she laid her forehead on folded arms feeling the threads of her knitted sweater pressing into her skin. Her breathing slowed, each inhale stretched to full capacity, and the teenager could hear her heartbeat pulsating over the dull hissing that still funneled into her ears.

Buh-bump… Buh-bump… Buh-bump… “huh-huh-huh” … Buh-bump…

Suddenly, Dylan’s sleepy shell shattered.

Between the beats of her heart, she had heard something. Quickly, she raised her head from the desk and hit REWIND on the device. She impatiently watched the seconds rewind from three hours, twelve minutes, and twenty-two seconds. Twenty-one, twenty, nineteen, eighteen, seventeen, sixteen. PLAY.

“…huh-huh-huh…”

Furling her eyebrows, she concentrated. Sitting alone in the abandoned house on Cemetery, the recorder had captured something. Something that did not belong.

REWIND. Twenty-two, twenty-one, twenty, nineteen, eighteen, seventeen, sixteen. PLAY.
“…huh-no-cents…”

Goose pimples covered Dylan’s arms under the long, black sleeves of her sweater. Quickly, she sat up, straightened her spine like a wooden plank. REWIND. Twenty-two, twenty-one, twenty, nineteen, eighteen, seventeen, sixteen. PLAY.

“…huh-no-sense…”

There, on the recording made overnight in a house that no one lived in, were words. But, what were they saying? Dylan’s thoughts ran a race with her pulse.

No sense? No cents? Know sense?

REWIND. Twenty-two, twenty-one, twenty, nineteen, eighteen, seventeen, sixteen. PLAY.

“…in no tents…”

The hair on the back of her thin neck stood tall; her hands trembled, as the whispering syllables became more apparent each time she played them. REWIND. PLAY.

“…in no tense…”

Past tense? Some tents?

REWIND. PLAY. REWIND. PLAY. REWIND. PLAY.

“…in no scent…”

Her bones, wrapped tightly with pale, stretched skin, rattled together like primitive instruments playing a worship song to holy, unknown deities. REWIND. Twenty-two, twenty-one, twenty, nineteen, eighteen, seventeen, sixteen. PLAY.

“…Innocent…”

Dylan elevated six inches off her chair when a deafening bell reverberated off the four concrete walls that had held the stirring class hostage for the previous forty-five minutes. Rapidly, her classmates shuffled their belongings with eagerness to calm their rumbling stomachs downstairs in the cafeteria with pizza, chicken nuggets, and nachos.

Dylan, however, didn’t budge. She sat frozen as solid as a block of ice floating in the Arctic Ocean. Placing her hand on her chest, the hopeful girl took several calming gasps into her heaving lungs, as eighteen other teenagers made their way past her out the door and raced to lunch.

Her left hand scribbled the tip of a ballpoint pen on a bright white, blue-lined sheet of paper. The black ink spelled I-N-N-O-C-E-N-T. A fiercely drawn exclamation point followed and a bold, deeply compressed line below it nearly tore through the page. The word repeated in her mind over and over and over…

“Innocent.”

“Innocent.”

“Innocent.”

Coincidentally, there had never been a word that meant more to Dylan Klaypool. Hearing it there, stamped into the white noise, it now meant more than ever.

As seen in the November issue of Uncaged.

Uncaged: Can you tell readers more about your A Cure to Kill For series?

The “A Cure to Kill for” series is currently a two book series. The first book, “Chain of Salt and Water” was originally intended to be a standalone novel. As I neared the end I realized the story was far from being complete and a sequel would need to follow.

The concept for “Chain of Salt and Water” began as an assignment in nursing school. I had completed a very lengthy paper in which I came up with a hypothetical cure for AIDS. When I say lengthy I mean that I went overboard on the paper. All I can say is that I was in to my school work and became overly involved in the assignment. What was supposed to be a five page paper ended up being somewhere between twenty five to thirty pages in length. When I finally turned in the project my teacher refused to accept it saying, “This has nothing to do with nursing.” Annoyed that I had put all this work and energy into the assignment, I slapped some of my research onto a different paper and ended up with an “A” anyway.

Several years after graduating, I revisited my thoughts and began to formulate “Chain of Salt and Water”. For starters many of the underlying themes fall in line with how the infestation of a virus overruns its surroundings. This is similar to how people can manipulate their environment, to the point of destruction, in order to get what they want.

This principle can be found taking place with Charles Differ, the owner of a small mom-and-pop hardware store. There have been several mishaps that have negatively impacted his business and it leaves him wondering if the store has somehow been infected. But for what purpose? Charles is left with the difficult decision to either sell the store or try and pull it out of its nosedive toward bankruptcy. Will he be able to make this decision before something bad infects him?

The timeline for both books are written in a linear fashion and that in turn corresponds to their titles. We as humans are comprised of salt and water, whereas the “chain” or “bond” expresses the way we are linked to one another.

In the end two college students, Anthony and Lianna, need to put aside their differences and somehow unite in order to save their professor’s cure for AIDS before it falls into the wrong hands. As their efforts become more and more difficult, their relationship begins to blossom and the bond they develop continues into the second book, but at what cost?

Besides being a little bit thriller and a small part mystery there are also several paranormal qualities to the book. This is partially shown in Anthony’s dream journeys into the underworld. When he awakens he’s left wondering if they were something more than a simple dream. As he tries to unravel these mysteries he hopefully begins to realize that there other agenda’s lurking out there. A killer with a motive. A killer who wants what Antony and Lianna have found. Someone who wants the hardware store gone. Someone who wants it all for themselves. But who and what this person wants may be manipulated by someone else as if they were a puppet on a string.

Uncaged: Chain of Salt and Water is out now and the second book, Bonds of Water and Salt will come out November 27. How many books are planned in this series?

As I mentioned earlier “Chain of Salt and Water” was originally meant to be a standalone novel. When I realized there was more to tell, I embarked on the sequel.

I initially approached “Bonds of Water and Salt” with a lot of zest and I had the first section completed within a few short months. However, the next section took several months longer and by the time I reached the third part I wasn’t writing as frequently as I normally do. I felt I had fallen into a trap where the writing wasn’t as fresh as it had been when I was first developing the characters and the storyline. I think that’s the challenge when writing a sequel in that the story itself can potentially become mundane and quite repetitive.

My initial intentions had been to finish the series after the second book. Currently, I’m not counting out writing another installment. There are several characters that I really like, one being Johnny Dantanian, who I would love to explore and write about even more. I’ve kicked around a storyline in my head and I have a very rough idea how things might play out. As of yet, nothing has been placed on paper. So I guess the short answer is to wait and see.

Uncaged: What advice would you give new authors?

I’m still young in my author career so I’m still exploring the ins and outs of writing. However if I was to give any advice it would be persistence and enjoyment.

Persistence in that you have to keep writing to become better at the craft. I feel you should try and limit your expectations as it relates to your work getting out into the public’s hands. By being persistent it will eventually find its way to where it was meant to be.

Further, you have to enjoy the process of writing. Enjoy developing the story, characters and dialogue. If you don’t it’s going to show in your work.

Uncaged: Do you read your reviews? What do you feel you can take away from them?

I’m sure everyone would agree that reading a good review is elating and being confronted with a not so great one can be disheartening. I would prefer being praised for my work, but the negative review can allow you to grow as an author. As one of my teacher’s had said, “You have to be willing to fail in order to succeed.” With that being said, I do take the time to read all my reviews.

Uncaged: What is one of the nicest things someone has said to you about your books?

One of my more memorable compliments occurred when someone had told me that they couldn’t put “Chain of Salt and Water” down. They had been reading the book late into the night, were late for work and then spent the majority of their weekend reading it from cover to cover. Not only had the book engaged them that much but they wanted to more about the characters and some of the back story. It’s this same person who has been eagerly waiting for the sequel, “Bonds of Water and Salt”.
For me one of the greatest achievements I could hope for as a writer is having a reader become engrossed in the characters, the story and ultimately the book itself.

Uncaged: What do you like to do when you aren’t writing? Where is one of your favorite places on Earth?

There are many things that I enjoy doing outside of writing. For the most part I like to keep busy and rarely do I find myself sitting idle. I love to further explore my creativity through painting, drawing and working in my yard. I also like to work out, run and get involved in running races. I will always find the time to spend with my dog and fiancée. Of course work has to be crammed in there somewhere. As someone recently told me, “Work seems to get in the way of my life.”
As for my favorite place on Earth, that can be a difficult choice. I’ve been fortunate enough to have been to several unique and exciting places. If I had to pick one I would, at this particular moment, choose Nepal. A few years ago my fiancée and I travelled to Kathmandu for a volunteer medical mission. We meet some incredible people during our stay and found the city itself fascinating. We also toured the countryside where we visited a jungle, gave a bath to an elephant in a river with a crocodile nearby and then took a bus to Lumbini where we had the opportunity to stand over the spot where the Buddha is said to have been born.

Uncaged: What can you tell us that is very unique about you?

Despite being active and involved in a variety of things, I tend to be a private person. I’m content with spending time by myself and for the most part I’m comfortable in my own skin. I can even go several days without talking to anyone.

Uncaged: What would you like to say to fans, and where can they follow you?

I would like to simply say to my fans, “Thank you.” Thank you for taking the time to read my books, becoming immersed in the characters and story, creating the enthusiasm that surrounds them and finally allowing me to pursue my creative passion. If it wasn’t for you these books would never have gotten very far.

[symple_box color=”black” fade_in=”false” float=”center” text_align=”left” width=””]Tim Sabados has been an emergency room nurse for over eleven years and a part time paramedic for nineteen. A native born Detroiter having interests in painting, sculpture and drawing it was only natural that he turned to creative writing to fulfill that artistic gap formed by the excessive amount of technical writing required of him during nursing school.

His influences in fiction have come from interests in various mystical concepts and the many unusual situations presented to him during his medical career. More importantly his writing strays from any one single genre, but instead blends them together to create a literary experience that allows a vibrant mental journey and the ability to contemplate the multi-faceted aspects of life. Something he feels the reader will find enjoyable on top of an entertaining story. Visit Tim online at www.timesabados.com.[/symple_box]

Bonds of Water and Salt
Tim Sabados
Suspense/Paranormal
Releases Nov. 27, 2018

What would you trade for freedom and wealth? This simple decision is the difference between life and death. Find out how the dice roll in the anticipated sequel to Chain of Salt and Water.

Millions of lives hang in the balance while Anthony and Lianna fight to keep the cure for a deadly virus protected from the onslaught of people who want it destroyed. When an elite team is paid big bucks to confiscate it, a dangerous game of cat and mouse ensues, and the body count rises.

With a bounty on their heads, Anthony and Lianna soon can’t trust anyone, not even each other. As their relationship tears apart and Lianna is manipulated by a deadly double agent, Anthony is left wondering what happened to the woman he loves.

In this heart-pounding conclusion where greed is a poison, can Anthony save Lianna, or will the cure cost them both their lives? Will Anthony turn a cold shoulder on his dream walking abilities, even though the strange and eerie parallel to his waking world could be a way to save them all?

Excerpt

The ringing was tortuous. Cold. Harsh. Relentless. It became louder. Drilled deeper and deeper into Anthony’s skull, as if the bony hand of death were twisting it with the frosted tip of a carbon screw driver. The metallic vibration intensified. His eardrums swelled, ballooning to the point that they filled every minuscule crevice in his ear canal, effectively keeping out any other sound. The very core of his brain shook. And louder.
If only it would stop. Anthony needed some kind of relief. Yearned for it. Craved it as if his very life depended on it. Maybe he could plug his ears with his fingers. Block the scalpel-sharp pain from slicing into his head. Somehow soothe the overbearing agony that disintegrated any thought he had of reprieve.
Anthony tried to move his right arm. It wouldn’t budge. Neither would his left. Not even his hand. His fingers. Something had climbed on his back and pinned him down with animalistic voracity. Panic seeped into his lungs. Stole his breath. Burrowed into his veins. His heart thumped wildly, trying desperately to rid itself of the poison of terror. The ringing became even louder.
It was too much. He needed to do something. Anything. He needed to escape the unyielding torment. Squirm free from the binding restraints.
Anthony tensed his arms. His legs. Tightened his shoulders. His gut. Locked the vertebrae of his spine. He took a deep breath and pushed.
He thrust upward with all he had, hoping the sudden jolt would throw off the phantom clamped to his back. He pushed. Strained. The tension in his muscles surpassed its limit. The organic fibers locked. Shredded. He kept pushing. Acidic pain sizzled in the joints between his bones. Ate away at the straps that held his spine. His arms trembled. That thing on his back didn’t budge.
Anthony tried to scream. Tried one final thrust. The air bubble of his will crept out of his lungs and lodged in his throat. Clogged his voice box. Nothing escaped from his mouth. Not even a whimper. The ringing got louder. Sharper.
He collapsed. Gasped for a breath as if it were the final one he would ever take. The last remnants of energy oozed from his listless arms. His triceps were liquid gelatin. So were his quads. Chest. Shoulders. His neck. Sweat trickled into the curve of his back, pooled and then evaporated.
The flame of his will sputtered. Its glowing embers flickered their last shards of light. Anthony exhaled the remaining gulps of air from his lungs. He was the gazelle caught in the jaws of the lion. There was no escape. Nothing more he could do except give in to the moment. Life drained from his body as if flowing from a broken faucet. His fate was sealed.

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