Returning to Fika with Vicky this week are Authors Shelley (Michelle) Dorey and Jim Moriarty. We had so much fun discussing their A Haunting in Kingston Series in Episode 37, that we decided to visit again with their Witch Way paranormal fiction series.   From Michelle

““I’ve lived in Kingston Ontario all my life, born here, went to Queen’s University, and raised my children in this historic city. I like the size and feel of the city and can’t think of living anywhere else.

Jim Moriarty is my spouse and partner in life, but he was born and lived in New York City, specifically the Bronx. When he was in his twenties, he came to Canada to ski at Mont Tremblant and within a year, he uprooted his life to move here, raising his own kids in Smith Falls which is fairly close to Kingston.

We met in 2010 and have been together since then. It was finding a soul mate for both of us, and well worth the wait. We both enjoy skiing, our trips to Cuba every winter, enjoying a beer at our firepit in the evening, and playing with our pug, Suki. 

We started writing the Hauntings of Kingston series after going on the local Haunted Walk in 2012. It was fun visiting spots in Kingston and hearing tales of ghosts that have been seen in houses, taverns and even near the courthouse where the gallows once stood. But when we got home, we were frustrated as well; we were given the bare bones of the tales, missing the details of the stories. Who were the people who encountered the ghosts? How did the haunting happen? How did the people experience living in a house that was haunted?

And that is what sparked the first novel – The Haunting of Crawley House. It is loosely based on ahaunted residence that the university owns. We were told a woman died tragically while living there,and that her spirit has been seen in the garden and also in the attic area of the home to this very day. But who was the woman? How did she die? All we were told was it had been a tragic death.What if it was murder?

As you can see, asking questions like that flings open the door to the imagination.Well, after finishing that tour, Jim and I started musing on the tale. What if the woman who died was in fact murdered? Why was she killed?And why is she still on this mortal plane, not having moved over to the other side?And that’s how my career as an author began.

We were in our kitchen, playing this game of ‘what if’, and answering the questions. As we did, a story came to life.Today, we call our kitchen ‘The Magic Room’. That’s because for many books now, as we prepare andeat supper we brainstorm, bouncing ideas off each other, pausing to jot notes. From there, I will write the next day and he’ll do a read-back where things get expanded or changed. There is always a back andforth.There are times that Jim will do a complete re-write of a chapter if he feels it could use more passion.

Jim is the more dramatic and I’m the more aloof but disciplined type. It’s a good balance and partnership in writing. We are both fans of Stephen King, Anne Rice and Dean Koontz and we read a lot.

After writing many frightening tales of ghosts and hauntings, I wanted to write books with more of a fantasy and magical theme. Well, that brought me to a new pen name (Shelley Dorey—yes, I know, how original, huh? LOL . As Shelley Dorey, I’ve written books about women approaching mid-life and becoming witches, as well as younger women discovering magical realms.My life is so rich, and I’m very blessed.

If anyone would like to read our books, we publish our ebooks exclusively on Amazon, with our books enrolled in the Kindle Unlimited program. For the past month, we’ve reduced the two haunting series we’ve written to 99 cents each as a run up to Halloween. We’ve had good feedback on them fromreaders, with hundreds of 4.5 star reviews. Some of them are