Monday, October 16, 2017

Excerpt & Giveaway: The Girl Who Saved Ghosts by K.C. Tansley


The Girl Who Saved Ghosts
K.C. Tansley
Publication date: October 17th 2017
Genres: Mystery, Time-Travel, Young Adult
She tried to ignore them. Now she might risk everything to save them.
After a summer spent in a haunted castle—a summer in which she traveled through time to solve a murder mystery—Kat is looking forward to a totally normal senior year at McTernan Academy. Then the ghost of a little girl appears and begs Kat for help, and more unquiet apparitions follow. All of them are terrified by the Dark One, and it soon becomes clear that that this evil force wants Kat dead.
Searching for help, Kat leaves school for the ancestral home she’s only just discovered. Her friend Evan, whose family is joined to her own by an arcane history, accompanies her. With the assistance of her eccentric great aunts and a loyal family ghost, Kat soon learns that she and Evan can only fix the present by traveling into the past.
As Kat and Evan make their way through nineteenth-century Vienna, the Dark One stalks them, and Kat must decide what she’s willing to sacrifice to save a ghost.

EXCERPT
[My roommate] Morgan sat across from me on her bed. “Enough about me. I don’t know how you managed to stay with your grandparents a month without them finding out about the ghosts.”
“When you’ve lived with a secret as long as I have, keeping it is easier than sharing it.”
“Did you tell your mom?”
She was supposed to be home by August, but August was almost over and we were still video chatting because of exciting discoveries at the archaeological site where she was working. Unexpected finds. Something truly remarkable, she promised. “She’s still in Africa.”
I couldn’t bring up the topic of my dad’s family, the Langleys, over Skype. With the video freezing and voices garbling and the calls dropping, it would be a nightmare. I pictured myself screaming, “I see ghosts and it’s because I’m a Langley,” over and over again. I winced. Nope. That was a conversation we had to have in person. She promised she’d be back in September, for at least a week.
I was nervous. We never talked about my dad, and now I was going to have to tell her that I was the Langley heir. It was a weight I didn’t want to share with her because, in my bones, I knew I had more to face. Like a gathering storm on a sunny day, it wasn’t here yet, but it was coming.
I think Joshua felt it, too. He called to check in on me every week. After I saved his life, he suddenly felt responsible for mine. It was a weird twist of fate. My ring made me responsible for his safety, but the ties between our families made him worry about me, too.
“Kat?” Morgan asked in a way that sounded like it wasn’t the first time. “Where’d you go?”
“Just thinking about stuff.”
“How’s Evan doing?” She gave me a sly look.
“Happy he got to see his parents, but wishing he’d had time to go to Hong Kong and see his grandfather.” His dad is British and his mom is Chinese. She’d left her family behind to be with Evan’s father. Sometimes I think Evan wished that his dad had chosen to stay in Hong Kong instead.
“You miss him.” Morgan tilted her head and studied me.
“Of course. I missed you, too.”
Morgan smiled like she knew something I didn’t. “Yeah, it’s exactly the same thing.”
“No. I’ve known you longer. And you’re my best friend.”
She burst out laughing. “I’m not jealous. I just think you and Evan have a different kind of bond, Kat.”
“The kind that is forged in life and death scenarios.”
“The most intense kind of bond.”
“Definitely.”
I got the feeling she was laughing at me, but I let it go. It felt good to be back with Morgan. We’d been planning our senior year since we’d met at freshman orientation. Maybe I could find a way to balance the ghosts and my family inheritance and senior year. And maybe, just maybe, I might make it to graduation without having to save someone’s life or travel through time.
A girl can hope.


Author Bio:
K.C. Tansley lives with her warrior lapdog, Emerson, and two quirky golden retrievers on a hill somewhere in Connecticut. She tends to believe in the unbelievables—spells, ghosts, time travel—and writes about them.
Never one to say no to a road trip, she’s climbed the Great Wall twice, hopped on the Sound of Music tour in Salzburg, and danced the night away in the dunes of Cape Hatteras. She loves the ocean and hates the sun, which makes for interesting beach days. The Girl Who Ignored Ghosts is her award-winning and bestselling first novel in The Unbelievables series.
As Kourtney Heintz, she also writes award winning cross-genre fiction for adults.

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10 comments:

  1. Gorgeous cover. I definitely want to read this one.

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    1. Thanks so much! I love how my cover designer captured Kat and the Langley family estate, Dumbarton. The clouds really hint at the storms on the horizon too.

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  2. Thanks for being on the tour! :)

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  3. Thanks for kicking off my book tour and sharing the excerpt today!

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  4. A unique ghost story - I like that.

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    1. I really wanted to put my own take on ghosts out there. It was a blast to write!

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  5. Thanks for the excerpt! It sounds great!!!

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    1. Thanks. I really had a hard time picking excerpts. I love this whole book.

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