Interview with Lee Nichols

Welcome to Cotton Candy Reviews Lee. It’s great to have you here.

Thanks for having me!

There are some people out there who may not have heard about you or your books. Could you give potential readers a rundown?

The Haunting Emma series is about seventeen-year-old girl who discovers she can see and control ghosts and while a lot of them are good, some of them are out to kill her.

I have read both Deception and Betrayal in your Haunting Emma series (& loved them), how many books are planned for this series?

Surrender is the final book in the series and I think will be available in the UK and Australia in April.

I really enjoyed the ghostkeeper aspect of the Haunting Emma novels. How did this idea come about?

I set out to write a sort of contemporary Gothic mystery, which to me means an old house and ghosts, but to keep it fresh I decided Emma Vail, the main character, would discover she could see and control the ghosts, and that there would be this whole ghostkeeping world and society that was protecting regular people from evil ghosts.

You write both YA and Adult books, where did you begin and why do you dabble in both demographics?

I started writing women's fiction for adults and will probably go back to that in the future. The original idea for the Haunting Emma series was an adult novel, but I kept making the character younger and younger until I realized she was better suited to a YA novel. I really love both demographics.

When you go to the movies, is there one type of junk food you have to have?

If I'm going to have anything, it has to be popcorn.

Have you ever thought about who could play your Haunting Emma characters if the books were to be made into a movie?

Deception, the first book in the series, is being optioned for television. I'd love for Diana Agron from Glee to play her.

Are you working on anything new that you could give us a sneak peak at?

I can't give you a sneak peak at anything I'm working on, but here is a short excerpt from Surrender the final Haunting Emma novel:

I’ve never liked bad boys. On TV shows, when the girl is torn between her sweet best guy friend—who is not-so-secretly in love with her—and the stand-offish bad boy, I always root for the best friend.

But standing in Bennett’s attic room, my arms twined around him, I finally saw the appeal. I shouldn’t have been there. Shouldn’t have let Bennett’s drug-stained fingers stroke my neck, shouldn’t have lied to Simon about him. And I definitely shouldn’t have been kissing him when I was supposed to be downstairs with the rest of the team, trying to figure out Neos’s next move.

Yet I barely protested when Bennett nibbled my neck. “I—I should—oh—”

He pinned me with his piercing blue eyes. “Yes?”

“Um …” I licked my lips. “I forgot what I was going to say.”

“You don’t have to say anything. Just keep making those little noises.”

I let out a sound I didn’t recognize, as he traced my spine with his finger.

“Yeah, like that,” he whispered.                                 

Oh my God. How could I have been so wrong about bad boys? Forget the best friend, I wanted this—the unpredictable charm, the danger, and the heat. Did anything else matter? I closed my eyes and ran my fingers through his hair in the spinning darkness—then stopped when I heard a cough from the doorway.

My eyes snapped open and I caught a glimpse of someone standing at the top of the attic stairs. It was Simon, peering inside.

“Simon!” I yelped. “Go away!”

“Emma …” he said. There was something weird in his tone, something more than just I’ve caught you with your drug-addled boyfriend who shouldn’t be here.

“What?” I asked. “What’s happened?”

Before he answered, two people stepped into the room. Well-dressed, faintly familiar, and completely unamused.

And Bennett said, “Mom … Dad?”