Carolyn's Dark Side


"These books take a different turn than my others.  I’ve always enjoyed reading books that focus on the dark side of human nature. My first attempt at a novel (which never sold) was about a young woman confronted with the issue of euthanasia. Not exactly a laugh-a-minute. But I am interested in exploring serious issues, especially crimes. While Sarah Booth, Tinkie and the Zinnia gang take crime very seriously, the tone of the those books is humorous. I love humor, too. By writing both dark & light, I keep myself fresh as a writer. I also challenge myself with different techniques."


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Skin Dancer

SKIN DANCER is now available as an e-book.  If you are a Kindle owner, CLICK HERE.  If you are a Nook owner, CLICK HERE.  If you would prefer to read the first two chapters for a taste, then click RIGHT HERE, to read it.  Enjoy!
Summer of Fear

My first published, third person book was SUMMER OF FEAR (Pinnacle, 1993). Set in Mobile County, Alabama, this book combines my love of horses with a bit of gothic chill and what I hope is a good mystery and a lot of suspense. While it is out of print, I hope to have it available soon as a download and a POD (print on demand). Yeah, yeah, you keep hearing that from me, I know. Soon. Soon. But I am working on all of these projects as fast as my two-cell brain and churn along! The good news is that you can find this book in used bookshops or on-line, and I hope to have it available for e-readers soon.

Here’s a brief little synopsis: Riding instructor Connor Tremaine returns to her home ground in Mobile, Alabama and ends up married to Clay Sumner, a charismatic politician. On the surface, this is an ideal life, but Connor discovers that things are not as they appear in Clay’s world. Not with this home or his children, and she begins to fear that he may not be telling all he knows about his first wife's death.
Summer of the Redeemers

This was my first published novel. It’s a coming of age story, about a young girl, Bekka Rich, who lives on a read dirt road in rural Mississippi in the ‘60s. Bekka is a good girl, though a bit horse crazy and confronting the time when she begins pulling away from her family and trying to discover who she is. The ‘60s in Mississippi were a tumultuous time, and Bekka confronts some of those issues. But the driving story of the book involves the abduction of an infant, Maybelle Vancamp Waltman, the baby sister of Bekka’s best friend. Bekka believes members of a religious cult are to blame, but she when and Alice start investigating, they bite off more than they bargain for.

When I was growing up, I was the most horse-crazy kid in the world. And I love local legends and folk lore. The story of Kali Oka Road and Cry Baby Creek originated in Mobile County, but I “borrowed” them for my purposes in this novel. Not a single event in this book happened, but there is a lot of emotional truth between the covers.

SUMMER OF THE REDEEMERS was bought by Dutton and released in hardcover and trade paper. Later, River City Publishing in Montgomery brought it back out. I hope before too long to have an e-version available. All in good time.

This book earned a comparison to TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, which is about the highest praise a novel can receive, in my book.
Touched

This book involves members of the same family as in SUMMER OF THE REDEEMERS, the McVay family. But it’s set in 1926 in the same community of Jexville.

I wanted to write about the bond of love between a mother and daughter—a bond that is stronger than anything else. My mother and grandmother shared such a bond, as I did with my mother.

Johanna McVay is a woman who excites fear and anger in Jexville. She is out-spoken and some say outrageous. When her nine-year-old daughter, Duncan, is struck by lightning while dancing—a pastime frowned upon by the religious elements of the town—some say the uppity family got what it deserved. Duncan survives, but she is changed forever. She now has the ability to prophesy the future, but only in a limited aspect.

When a terrible injustice is committed in the town, Johanna will not leave it alone. She has befriended a young woman, Mattie, who is a mail order bride to the town barber, a brutal man.

Mattie narrates the story, and ultimately has the final say in bringing justice for sins long buried.
Judas Burning

This is a contemporary crime novel with a descendant of Johanna McVay as the protagonist. These three books are tentatively linked through the McVay family line, but in three distinctly different time periods.

Here’s a review from the Amazon site written by Margaret Ellis: Once again Carolyn Haines has written about her native Mississippi and the people who live in that beautiful and mystical state. Things happen and lives are changed in Jexville, far from the "maddening crowd" of Atlanta traffic and Memphis' Beale Street. The nearby river looks quiet and peaceful, but there are dark and angry currents and ghastly events take place. Two teen age girls disappear, a statue of the Virgin Mary is vandalized, and tension rises even higher when Dixon Sinclair, a journalist who has returned to her old home town, and the local sheriff try to unravel the mysteries. The population of Jexville is not large, but the characters who live there are and the plot will keep the reader on the edge of the page until the very end. After that, perhaps one could sit by the dark and swirling river and sip some sweet tea, but not quietly as this story will be remembered for a long time.
Many Bloody Returns

One of the most flattering phone calls (or e-mails) a writer can receive is a request for a short story for a collection. When Charlaine Harris and Toni L.P. Kelner asked me to be one of the 13 stories in their book, MANY BLOOD RETURNS, I was thrilled. The premise of the book is that each story will include a vampire and a birthday. Other than that, I was free to create whatever I wanted.

While I love reading vampire stories, I’d never tried to write one. When I started the story, I found that I was writing as much about mortality as immortality. But this story—this collection, which has achieved such huge success in so many markets—opened the door to a world I love, that of the short story. I began my writing career wanting to write short fiction. But it is a tough, tough market. My agent told me to write a novel (unimaginable to me at the time—who could write that many words?).

Over the years, I’ve published a few short stories, several in the fine collections of Charline McCord and Judy Tucker who have scoured our home state of Mississippi and the South as they put together their collections with University Press of Mississippi and Algonquin. “The Wish” brought me home to my love of the short story.

Since then, I’ve edited an anthology (DELTA BLUES) and I have stories in FLORIDA HEAT WAVE and DAMN NEAR DEAD 2 (geezer noir—you just have to love it!) And the joy of these collections is that I’ve read writers who are new to me and found myself in a multitude of different worlds for the span of one story. Perhaps my time is more fragmented, but if that’s true, I think it’s true for lots of people, because short story collections are coming back in vogue. I am very happy to be part of this. If you haven’t dipped into this anthology, you are in for a treat that is absolutely “supernatural!”
Penumbra

This is a novel about the consequences of loving the wrong person. In PENUMBRA, each principal character has made a grave mistake in love—giving affections to the wrong person. I spent a lot of time choosing the point of view characters, because I wanted different views from the community of Drexel, but also different characters who would bring more to the table than just another voice. The story is set in 1952 Drexel, Mississippi.

This is perhaps my darkest book. And maybe one of my strongest. I know Dottie is one of my most favorite characters. She surprised me more than once.

When Marlena, the wife of the richest man in town, goes down to the river to meet her lover, a route man, she takes her daughter along as a beard. But when the child is abducted and Marlena is nearly beaten to death, no one will help her except her half-sister, Jade, a woman who is also half black, and a deputy sheriff who is tormented by his own past mistakes.

It’s a complicated web of lies, deceit, cruelties, and redemption.
Fever Moon

Legends have always intrigued me, and I had the great good fortune of knowing Dianne Agee, a native of south Louisiana who told me about the Cajun werewolf, the loup garou. I wanted to write a book about the power of belief systems, and how they control how we grow—or don’t grow. If a person believes something, then it is real for them.

Raymond is a sheriff’s deputy in Iberia Parish, but he is also a man tormented by his war experience in Europe. He’s returned home with a serious injury and taken up the job of keeping the peace in a land recovering from the Great Depression and suffering from the shortages of World War II.

When Adele Hebert, sick and fevered, confessed to a brutal murder, Raymond doesn’t believe she’s guilty. And he sets out to prove her innocent. But people are frightened of Adele, frightened of the world around them which has become threatening. And they believe she is possessed by the spirit of a shape shifter that takes on the properties of a savage beast.

Raymond must find the real killer of Henri Bastion before Adele pays for a murder she didn’t commit.

FEVER MOON allowed me to explore a part of the world that I grew to love by reading James Lee Burke’s wonderful novels. It is a place rich in history and unique characters, a place of hard work and joyful play. I love this region of sugar cane fields, bayous, and zydeco.

While more Bones books are in the works, I hope to continue writing the “darker” books also. Who knows where a poke in the shadows will take me next.
Revenant

I love this cover. It’s one of my favorites. The truth is, Carson Lynch was intended to be a series character, but sometimes things just don’t work out. This is one of those instances. Most of you know I was a former journalist, and Carson and Dixon Sinclair from JUDAS BURING are both newspaper reporters. Both have suffered great loss, but that has made them acutely aware of others.

When I started this book, I knew Carson and I knew the Mississippi Gulf Coast, which before the advent of the casinos included elements of the Dixie Mafia. I wanted to try to capture the flavor of the Gulf Coast pre-gambling, and also try my hand at a book about a serial killer. I think Carson is a complex and compelling character, and I hope you enjoy the story.