From debut author M.Q. Nguyen, comes a spine chilling & emotional tale of a mother and daughter. When the good forces intermingle with the evil, what will a desperate Maggie feel compelled to do to bring her daughter back?
When Maggie steals a shard of bone from her daughter Carrie’s urn during the ash-scattering ceremony, she is unaware what forces she is allowing into her new home.
Strange little happenings around the house leave Maggie hopeful that her daughter is back, but little does she know this comes at a price. Along with her daughter’s gentle spirit, she senses a malevolent one—one that is out to get her! If she brings in an exorcist, they will most likely purge the house of all ghosts, and Maggie cannot bear to lose Carrie so soon, all over again.
As the hauntings grow more violent, Maggie has to face the fact that she has a choice to make—it’s her life or Carrie.
Book Links:
Goodreads | Amazon.in | Amazon.com
Interview with M.Q. Nguyen
When did you first realize that you wanted to be a writer/ a storyteller?
Growing up, I was always such a bookworm. You can usually find me with my nose deep in a book. After reading so many great works of literature, this eventually began to rub off on me in a good way.
What inspires you to write?
A lot of my works are inspired by dreams. This was how a bunch of my short stories got started. I also would mine directly from these short stories and expand with what I have already written and turn it into a larger universe. That’s how my novel, My Littlest Russian Doll and novella The Séance That Never Dies got written. I took an idea that I already had and developed the idea further. It took me nearly ten years, but eventually, I got it all down onto paper!
How did you come up with the idea for your current story?
At one of my creative writing classes at university, we were given an exercise to collect quotes from the books we were reading at the time and put it into a collection called ‘Compendium’ and apply them into our writing that my professor at the time called ‘Applications.’ For our final writing project I decided to use the quote “For you, a source of grief; to him a séance” from Elias Canetti. Using this quote as inspiration, I wrote a six-page story called “The Séance” that I still have the exact copy to this day. Years later, I saw this story again in my documents folder and decided to spruce it up a bit. From a six-page story, The Séance That Never Dies is now a novella that is slated to be released by Saga Fiction in April.
Are there some stories tucked away in some drawer that was written before and never saw the light of the day?
Yes, I have several. But I hope to someday return to them and see how I can rework them into a larger piece of work. That was what I did with The Séance That Never Dies. Like I said, it was a short story I wrote for one of my college classes and I found it on my computer one day and thought I had a few ideas to add to it. And voila! The rest is history.
What is your favorite scene in the book? Why?
My favorite scene in the book is the crucial moment when the hauntings turn violent. Maggie is in bed nursing a fever while a bitter storm rages outside. In the middle of her delirium, she senses the paranormal activity going on around her but cannot get up and get out of the house in time, so she has to just lay there and deal with it. As this is going on she calls out to her daughter, beckoning to her humane side, she hopes she could reach out to her daughter in time before the dark forces overtake her. This scene is my favorite because it goes on to show the bond between mother and daughter. And how strong Maggie and Carrie’s relationship is.
Did any of your characters inherit some of your own quirks?
Yes, some of them did and some of them didn’t. I love food and Maggie’s parents, Ada and Ed, inherited this from me. Also, Maggie is a writer, currently working on a novel in the book. So her love for reading and writing obviously was something I drew from my own life.
Do you read? Who are your favourite authors and how have they influenced your writing style?
Yes, like I said earlier, I love to read. Some of my favorite authors are Nick Hornby, Elizabeth Hand, L.M. Montgomery, and most recently I got into The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab which is a wonderful but heartbreaking read. I would have to say a lot of the authors I follow write about music and the music industry. I know that Nick Hornby has done that a few times with High Fidelity and Juliet, Naked. I am also a music reviewer at a couple of music sites as well and all this has inspired me to write my upcoming novel, My Littlest Russian Doll, which is slated to be released on Saga Fiction later this year.
What do you have in store next for your readers?
Up next for me is a mystery series about a YouTube horror narrator who ends up fighting crime. I am working on the first book and it is about Harvey Barnes, our YouTube narrator, and he meets Liv Morales and the two join forces to try and unlock the mysteries of Mia Kranes’ case, an heiress who was murdered in her own home. I don’t want to divulge too much but the book also involves, a secret hacker society, a bomb countdown, as well as a sizzling tension that arises between Harvey and Liv. I am planning to publish this series under an alias. Please stay tuned for more!
About the Author:
M. Q. Nguyen knew she wanted to be a writer early on. When she is not writing immense scenes for her works of fiction, she divides her time between contributing to music sites and editing web novels. You can usually find her at a local coffee shop, sipping on some iced coffee as she taps away at her keys. She is currently working on a slew of titles, hopefully to be released on Saga Fiction soon!
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