Wednesday, November 27, 2019

INTERVIEW WITH ROBERT HEROLD (The Eidola Project)



 
I can't believe how quickly November is passing by. Is everyone knee-deep in the hustle and bustle? Let's take a break from it all and have a quick chat with author Robert Herold  . Welcome to Supernatural Central, Robert.

SC: Tell me a little bit about your main character of this book.
RH: Nigel Pickford is a thirty-nine year-old veteran of the Civil War. He was cursed by a witch during the war with the ability to foresee events. Nigel is like Cassandra in Greek mythology: no one believes him and he cannot stop their occurrence. He is particularly haunted by an 18-year-old vision where he foresaw his Confederate troops being massacred and another vision predicting the end of the world. Alcohol quiets these and other visions, but has caused him to become a derelict. Though a drunk, he has obsessively attacked and exposed fake mediums, searching for one with legitimate supernatural abilities who could help him with his own. Now, the Eidola Project offers him a chance to break the curse and potentially, during the series, save the world—provided his character flaws do not wreck this one chance at salvation.

SC: Nigels seems to have some paranormal gifts. Do you believe in the paranormal and if so, do you have an experience you can share?
RH: I have never had a paranormal experience, but the history of beliefs around the world, and the attempts at scientific investigations—particularly in the Nineteenth Century—are fascinating. An inspiration for my book is Ghost Hunters: William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life After Death, Deborah Blum’s wonderful non-fiction book. Another good resource was Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife by Mary Roach (author of Stiff).

SC:  What titles are you working on now that you can tell us about?
RH: The next Eidola Project novel is set in 1885 Virginia. It involves a werewolf and is entitled, Moonlight Becomes You. I hope to have it out, mid-2020. I am currently 100 pages into writing the third book, Totem of Terror, set among Northwest Coastal Indians.

SC: Thanks for popping in today. Let's take a look at your novel now.


The Eidola Project

An Eidola Project Novel

Book One

Robert Herold



Genre:  Horror

Publisher:  Wild Rose Press (Black Rose Imprint)

Date of Publication: November 18, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-5092-2406-7 Paperback
ISBN: 978-1-5092-2407-4 Digital

Number of pages:  290
Word Count: 69870

Cover Artist:  Debbie Taylor

Tagline:  The Eidola Project is recruiting. Dare to join them?

Book Description:

It's 1885 and a drunk and rage-filled Nigel Pickford breaks up a phony medium's séance. A strange twist of fate soon finds him part of a team investigating the afterlife.

The Eidola Project is an intrepid group of explorers dedicated to bringing the light of science to that which has been feared, misunderstood, and often manipulated by charlatans. They are a psychology professor, his assistant, an African-American physicist, a sideshow medium, and now a derelict, each possessing unique strengths and weaknesses.

Called to the brooding Hutchinson Estate to investigate rumored hauntings, they encounter deadly supernatural forces and a young woman driven to the brink of madness.

Will any of them survive?





          Excerpt:
            Sarah retrieved the lamp and twisted the peg. The outhouse door swung open on its own, and she gasped.
            “Momma?” Sarah asked as she held out her lantern. No. A ruined version of Molly stood in the doorway.
            Before her disappearance, people often commented on the sixteen-year-old’s beauty, but in the last twenty-eight days birds pecked out her pretty blue eyes, and maggots now swam in the sockets. Molly’s head hung to the left at an odd angle. Her skin looked mottled with patches of gray, blue, and black. A beetle crawled out of Molly’s half-opened mouth and darted back in.
            Sarah’s heart leaped to her throat, and she jumped back. She lost her footing, fell onto the outhouse seat, and dropped the lantern to the floor. She bent to retrieve it; thankful the glass globe did not break. Sarah looked up and saw an empty doorway.
            Impossible, she told herself. Must’ve dozed off, had a nightmare, and woke up when I dropped the lamp. Her heart still pounded in her chest, and Sarah took a deep breath to calm herself.
            Holding the lamp before her once more, she crept out…


About the Author:


The supernatural always had the allure of forbidden fruit, ever since Robert Herold’s mother refused to allow him, as a boy, to watch creature features on late night TV. She caved in. (Well, not literally.)
                 
As a child, fresh snow provided him the opportunity to walk out onto neighbors’ lawns halfway and then make paw prints with his fingers as far as he could stretch. He would retrace the paw and boot prints, then fetch the neighbor kids and point out that someone turned into a werewolf on their front lawn. (They were skeptical.)

He has pursued many interests over the years (among them being a history teacher and a musician), but the supernatural always called to him. You could say he was haunted. Finally, following the siren’s call, he wrote The Eidola Project, based on a germ of an idea he had as a teenager.

Ultimately, he hopes the book gives you the creeps, and he means that in the best way possible.









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