Moncrieff’s success no mystery

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This article was published 30/05/2017 (3248 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

There are many reasons why J.H. Moncrieff may soon be creeping up the bestsellers’ list.

The St. Boniface-based novelist is preparing for a double book launch on June 1 at 7 p.m. at McNally Robinson in Grant Park.

That’s when Moncrieff will officially release the first two novels in her GhostWriters series — City of Ghosts and The Girl Who Talks to Ghosts, which are published by DeathZone Books.

The series features protagonists Jackson Stone, a disgruntled IT worker who dreams of writing books about the supernatural, and Kate, a gifted medium who experiences the emotions and deaths of the departed souls she communicates with.

“The main premise is that this guy, Jackson, who is in his late 20s, hates his dead-end IT job and hits on a great idea to go to different haunted locations across the world and write paranormal books about them,” Moncrieff said.

“He’s thinking he’ll write a bestseller, but he’s never written before and he has the impression it’s really easy. The clincher is that he doesn’t believe in ghosts — at least, he doesn’t when the book starts.”

Without giving too much else away, in the City of Ghosts, Jackson meets Kate on a tour of China, where they must work together to reveal a dark and sinister secret about what happened to the women who vanished from a Chinese village.

And in The Girl Who Talks to Ghosts, Jackson and Kate team up again to retrieve the soul of a 12-year-old girl who was kidnapped by the spirit of an evil doctor and taken to Poveglia Island in Venice.

One of the things that feeds Moncrieff’s masterful imagination is her love of travel, which has inspired some of elements in the stories.

“One of the cool things I get to do is travel to those places. The ghost city of Poveglia is one of the most haunted islands in the world. It’s now completely abandoned and there’s an old asylum, so it’s pretty creepy there. There are mass graves there for plague victims who were dropped off there to die. I don’t know how true this is, but there’s a legend that a doctor there once did unethical experiments on the patients there and he (either fell) from the asylum’s bell tower or was pushed,” she said.

“Travelling is a big part of it for me, as I get so many ideas when I travel. If anyone ever asks me how to overcome writer’s block, I tell them to travel, if they can.”

Her third book in the GhostWriters series is due out in October, Moncrieff said, in time for Halloween.

“I see it as a five-book series, but it could go on independently, depending on how the books are received. I like Jackson and Kate; they’re cool people, so I’m fine hanging out with them for a while.”

“Sometimes, a character will show up and start talking to me and my job is to transcribe. It’s a natural evolution,” she said.

The winner of Harlequin International’s search for the “next Gillian Flynn,” Moncrieff has also co-written a psychological suspense for Harlequin, Take it to the Grave, which will be released in June under the pen name Zoe Carter. Her novella, 2015’s The Bear Who Wouldn’t Leave, stayed on Samhain’s horror bestsellers’ list for more than a year.

She began her writing career as a journalist, and her articles have appeared in many national and international publications, including The Globe and Mail. Moncrieff is also a professional ghostwriter with Gotham Ghostwriters in New York.

As well, she’s also a successful blogger and visitors to her website can also sign up for her hidden library feature.  

“I blog every week, whether it’s about scary stories or supernatural things. I also have families with missing loved ones who contact me to see if I can help. I think it would be a great achievement to help someone be found.”

Go online at www.jhmoncrieff.com for more information.

simon.fuller@canstarnews.com