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Greetings, fans of the psychic and supernatural! I'm Stephen Woodworth, author of the Violet Series of paranormal suspense novels, and whether you are a reader of my previous books or a curious newcomer, I welcome your interest in my writing.I've wanted to tell stories almost from the time I learned to read—to give other people the thrill of excitement and adventure that books have always given me. I started submitting some (really lame) short stories to magazines while in seventh grade. Approximately ten years and four hundred rejection slips later, a tale of mine entitled "Scary Monsters" won First Place in the Writers of the Future Contest and appeared in Writers of the Future, Volume VIII. Over the next decade, I averaged about one story sale a year, placing them in such publications as The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Weird Tales, Aboriginal Science Fiction, Strange Horizons, Gothic.Net, and Horrors!: 365 Scary Stories. To prod myself into making the scary commitment to write a novel, I attended the Clarion West Writers Workshop in 1999, taught by such speculative fiction luminaries as Howard Waldrop, Nancy Kress, and the late and much lamented Octavia Butler. In the third week of the workshop, I floated a sort of trial balloon by writing the first chapter of the book that eventually became my first novel: THROUGH VIOLET EYES.
THROUGH VIOLET EYES speculates on what our world might be like if the abilities of spirit mediums was scientifically "proven," widely accepted, and reliable enough that they could summon the souls of murder victims to testify against their killers in a court of law. In the novel, these mediums are known as "Violets," for the genetic anomaly that grants them the ability to channel the dead also turns the irises of their eyes an unnatural violet color. One of these Violets, Natalie Lindstrom, must help F.B.I. profiler Dan Atwater track down the murderer who is killing her fellow Violets—a man who masks his face so that his victims cannot identify him.The story of Natalie, her family, and the other Violets continues in the second and third books in the series, WITH RED HANDS and IN GOLDEN BLOOD. Along the way, we see some of the other intriguing uses to which society puts these violet-eyed mediums: They can summon great artists and composers of the past to create new works years after their deaths, they can interrogate dead pilots about the real causes of airplane crashes, and they can give archaeologists direct contact with the famous people of history to unearth new discoveries. The services of the Violets are so invaluable, in fact, that they are condemned to involuntary servitude in the North American Afterlife Communications Corps, the ruthless government organization that keeps them enslaved.
The fourth novel in the series, FROM BLACK ROOMS, is set to debut as a Bantam paperback this Halloween. For those who want a sneak preview, please check my blog, where I'll also keep you up to date on some personal appearances I'll be making before and after the book's publication. You can also catch up on all things Violet at the official Bantam website at www.violet-eyes.com. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy your visit to my humble MySpace home and leave a comment to let me know what you think of the books. Thanks for reading!
