Guest Author: Kirsty Ferry

Thank you so much AnneMarie for letting me post an excerpt of my new novel on your blog.

The Girl in the Photograph is the third book in the Rossetti Mysteries Series, and picks up the stories of the characters readers might have already met in Some Veil Did Fall and The Girl in the Painting. This book is Lissy’s story  - but as it’s also a timeslip, we need to meet another set of characters; from 1905, no less. The extract below is when Julian, a photographer, first sees Lorelei Scarsdale swimming in the sea. The name “Lorelei” is synonymous with a mermaid, and from the very first moment Julian sees her, he understands why mermaids – or Sirens – have such a reputation for beauty and for making people fall dangerously in love with them. 

The book traces Julian and Lorelei’s story alongside Lissy and Stefanos. Stefano is Lissy’s very own photographer – an Italian ex-boyfriend who she has never quite forgotten, and never quite forgiven either…

Thanks again for reading this. I do hope that you enjoy book as much as I enjoyed writing it!

Julian MacDonald Cooper watched the woman with the long, dark plait race lightly across the sand and strike out to sea. She was indeed a pleasure to behold and his intuition told him that she would make an excellent model and would be just as much of a pleasure to work with.

He wasn’t sure who she was. He had just left the Dower House for a walk in the cove after a late lunch and he had come across this vision as he rounded the path down onto the beach. He understood it to be a private beach, so he wondered if she was a member of the Scarsdale household or a friend of theirs they had graced with access to the cove.

But he was determined to find out. He strode onto the beach feeling the sand between his toes. He never bothered with shoes or formality when he came down here. Formality was for working and impressing clients. Bare feet and an open-necked shirt would do him very well for the beach. He ran a hand through his longer-than-generally-acceptable dark hair and smiled to himself as he remembered the idea he’d had earlier today about finding a barber in Staithes.

That had never happened, had it?

Well, there was always tomorrow.

Julian had heard a lot about Staithes and the artists’ colony that had sprung up about ten years ago. He feared their days were numbered though; their 1905 exhibition had been subsumed into the Yorkshire Union of Artists’ work, and he had heard other plans were afoot to hold an exhibition in August – which would clash terribly with the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy in London. And the art aficionados would be down in the capital along with the wealthy patrons, not up here in a little fishing village on the north-east coast of England.

So that was why he had come down to Yorkshire from Edinburgh. Firstly, to observe how things were now, and secondly, to record Staithes and its colony for posterity in his favourite medium – photography. He already had a dealer lined up in North Yorkshire to buy and sell his photographs.

And that woman, who he now realised was swimming over to some rocks with the clear intention of climbing onto them, was just begging to be used as a model in some shape or form. But first, he conceded, he would actually have to speak to her.

The Girl in the Photograph

What if the past was trying to teach you a lesson?

Staying alone in the shadow of an abandoned manor house in Yorkshire would be madness to some, but art enthusiast Lissy de Luca can’t wait. Lissy has her reasons for seeking isolation, and she wants to study the Staithes Group – an artists’ commune active at the turn of the twentieth century.

Lissy is fascinated by the imposing Sea Scarr Hall – but the deeper she delves, the stranger things get. A lonely figure patrols the cove at night, whilst a hidden painting leads to a chilling realisation. And then there’s the photograph of the girl; so beautiful she could be a mermaid … and so familiar.

As Lissy further immerses herself, she comes to an eerie conclusion: The occupants of Sea Scarr Hall are long gone, but they have a message for her – and they’re going to make sure she gets it. 

Bio

Kirsty is from the North East of England and won the English Heritage/Belsay Hall National Creative Writing competition in 2009 with the ghostly tale 'Enchantment'.

Her timeslip novel, 'Some Veil Did Fall', a paranormal romance set in Whitby, was published by Choc Lit in Autumn 2014. This was followed by another Choc Lit timeslip, 'The Girl in the Painting' in February 2016 and ‘The Girl in the Photograph’ in March 2017. The experience of signing 'Some Veil Did Fall' in a quirky bookshop in the midst of Goth Weekend in Whitby, dressed as a recently undead person was one of the highlights of her writing career so far!

Kirsty’s day-job involves sharing a Georgian building with an eclectic collection of ghosts – which can sometimes prove rather interesting.

You can find out more about Kirsty and her work at www.rosethornpress.co.uk, catch her on her Facebook Author Page or follow her on Twitter @kirsty_ferry.