How To Contact The Living by Irish writer Bryan Farrell published October 2024 and is described as ‘a different kind of ghost story, a darkly comic paranormal thriller about learning that in this life or the afterlife, the most dangerous lies are always the ones we tell ourselves.’
Bryan has kindly shared an extract , including further details, with us today so I do hope you all enjoy. Happy reading!
[ About How To Contact The Living ]
The living and the dead have finally made contact…turns out that was the easy part.
Detective Owen Hoath spent his life chasing dangerous people, never thinking he would end up a victim, choking to death on his own blood in the house of the infamous Cherry Tree Killer. Now, trapped between this life and the afterlife, Owen is desperate for justice, for one last chance to put right what went wrong – and maybe find a little peace.
Amateur paranormal investigator Wil Tagg has spent his life chasing ghosts, never thinking one would chase him, let alone get his attention by attacking him in a public restroom. When Owen makes contact, Wil can’t resist the opportunity to finally study a real spirit, even if it means helping Owen close his last case. But what begins as a thrilling supernatural partnership quickly spirals into something far more sinister.
As Wil is pulled deeper into the mystery of Owen’s death, he discovers that the living aren’t always who they appear to be — and the dead can’t be trusted either. With a killer on the loose and Owen’s restless spirit growing more desperate by the day, Wil has to decide who to trust before he becomes the next victim.
[ Extract ]
He told me again that he didn’t regret killing Cherry Tree.
What he did regret was spending his final minutes in that house, a place of filth and squalor no matter how clean it looked. A hungry mouth full of sharp teeth that stank of evil no matter how much bleach was poured down its throat.
I sat quietly, turning everything over in my head, staring at a point just past his shoulder which kept him in sight but didn’t necessitate eye contact.
I spent my childhood fantasising about finding a dusty Necronomicon on the back-shelves of my school library, full of wonderful, terrible knowledge meant only for me. I spent my adulthood researching forgotten gods and mysterious murders, poking about in graveyards and ruins, all in search of something hidden but waiting to be found. Despite this, nobody had ever given me a magic ring to keep secret and safe, no owl had shown up with an invitation to the life I was meant to be living. A life spent thirsting for something rare and precious and now, with the words of the dead poured into me, I just felt nauseous.
Finally, I met his gaze.
“What then?”
Nauseous maybe, but not yet full.
“Not a good enough ending for you?”
I met his stony stare with a smile, refusing to offer the apology he seemed to expect.
“It’s not exactly the ending, is it?” I said, gesturing at him to illustrate my point.
At first, when I realised who he was, or had been, I had envisaged helping him say goodbye to his wife or unearthing a stash of dirty money earned from years on the take to provide for future of same. She’d give it to charity, absolving his tainted soul in the process. He’d go into the light, leaving me with some crucial life lesson or, at the very least, a lucrative publishing deal. Paranormal “How To” books were a booming market, the likes of Joshua P. Warren’s How To Hunt Ghosts had been shifting units for decades, and there was no reason my firsthand experiences couldn’t do the same once they were edited, packaged and marketed.
The book deal and subsequent lucrative multimedia opportunities were still possible, but it seemed high-emotion low-risk hijinks were not. There was a killer out there, this mystery woman, who had done things nobody alive knew about, not the cops and not the journalists.
Only me.
So, if the dead man in my apartment hated having to share his whole story then too bad, better to tell it all now and get it over with, because I knew eventually, whether either of us liked or not, he would have to. Ghosts couldn’t be choosers.
How To Contact The Living ~ Purchase Link
[ Bio ]
Originally from Co. Waterford but educated (to some small degree) in St. Colman’s, Fermoy, Co. Cork, I spent a few years working around Ireland as a bartender in places like Killarney and Lisdoonvarna, having too much fun and making too little money, before heading off to Australia for a one-year backpacking holiday that started in 2007 but somehow didn’t end until 2020 when I returned home to Ireland with my Aussie wife by my side.
How To Contact The Living is my first full-length novel and was inspired by my love of all things supernatural, my passion for punk music, and my interest in writing a ghost story that was as concerned with feelings as much as scares. My aim was to write a story that combines horror, humour, and heart and I hope readers will find all those elements in my book which is a darkly comic paranormal thriller.
How To Contact The Living is available on ebook from Amazon Kindle and on paperback from Amazon and local bookshops including Fermoy Books and Midleton Books with more local bookshops coming on board regularly (ask at your local bookshop as they can order it in).
Instagram ~ @paranormal_punk
Website/Mailing List ~ www.bryanfarrellauthor.com
