WiHM Spotlight on Elizabeth Massie

Elizabeth Massie, a ninth generation Virginian, has been writing professionally since 1984. Many of her works are in the suspense/horror genre (Sineater, Hell Gate, Desper Hollow, and more), but she also writes mainstream fiction (Homegrown), media tie ins, educational materials, and poetry (Night Benedictions). Her first novel, Sineater, won the Bram Stoker Award. Her Tudors novelization (season 3) won the Scribe award. She is currently working on Ameri-Scares (Crossroad Press) a 50 novel series of spooky books for middle grade readers (age 8-12), as well as new novels and short works for adults and a nonfiction book about being an unchurched believer.

A member of Amnesty International for more than 30 years, she also writes numerous letters on behalf of victims of human rights abuses worldwide. She lives in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia with her husband, well-known illustrator, Cortney Skinner, and enjoys hiking, geocaching, knitting, singing, traveling roads she's never been on before, eating an occasional Pop Tart,and visiting amusement parks (the older, the better.)

She founded and for more than three years managed the Hand to Hand Vision project (on Facebook) that raised money to help others during these tough economic times. Though she has a home office, she likes to work at Starbucks a couple days a week. There she can feel like part of the human race. And have a chai.

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Synopsis: It begins when hardheaded mountain matriarch Granny Mustard decides she wants to live forever. Then she dies. Her slow-witted but equally hardheaded granddaughter Jenkie decides to pick up the ball and run with it, taking Granny’s unperfected immortality moonshine recipe, a socially-inept friend named Bink, and dreams of fame and fortune to an abandoned, isolated trailer up in Desper Hollow.

But slow-witted doesn’t stand against the terrible mountain power Granny initiated. Jenkie’s experiments with the immortality moonshine only worsen the trouble with Granny’s original recipe, bringing dead critters and a few stray folks back to a state of hungry, vicious, mindless animation. Now a stash of the living dead is locked up in the back of the trailer, a howling herd that has Jenkie terrified. And Armistead, one of the red-eyed living dead, seems way too alert for comfort.

Mountain resident Kathy Shaw and Hollywood reality show pitchman Jack Carroll find themselves caught up in the growing terror surrounding Desper Hollow. They can’t avoid it and must face it head on. So must Armistead, who fights the fog of his ghastly condition to discover the truth of who he really is.

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Synopsis: The year is 1909. Coney Island is a wild, bright, malodorous, noisy, and garish place, luring work-weary folks in with its dangerous roller coasters, bizarre shows, tantalizing displays, and promises of "improper" gaiety to be remembered. Suzanne Heath, a ticket-seller for Luna Park's amusements and a reluctant psychic, has been called in by police Lieutenant Granger to help find and stop a murderer whose victims have been hideously mutilated. Suzanne feels compelled and obligated to offer her assistance even as doing so recalls memories of her childhood and youth when her psychic talents only brought about rejection, heartache, and pain.

Suzanne's one true friend is Cittie Parker, a young man who ran away from the Colored Waifs' Asylum and now performs as a bloodthirsty Zulu drummer in Dreamland. He knows of her abilities and fears for her safety. As Suzanne digs deeper into the grisly Coney Island murders and her own past, she finds herself and Cittie caught up in a nightmare where worlds converge and collide, where death gleefully beckons and insanity grins like a devil at the gate of hell.