CHERIE CLAIRE

There's a full moon on Sunday, Oct. 13, this year. What better time for the latest installment in my Viola Valentine paranormal mystery series to come out! In 2005, Hurricane Katrina uprooted Viola Valentine from her dead-end job and what she deemed a loveless marriage. Four years later, she and her husband Thibault “TB” Boudreaux are starting over on a Tennessee houseboat, she following her dream as travel writer and TB finishing school at Smoky Mountain University. But the

There’s a scene in book two of my Viola Valentine mystery series where my main character, Vi, sits on the seawall overlooking Lake Pontchartrain in New Orleans. It’s a special spot for me because my parents took me there many, many times. Since South Louisiana is mostly mud, if not water, the waterfront of Lake Pontchartrain left a lot to be desired as far as recreation. A seawall was built with steps leading down into the water and residents would step into the lake for ligh

When I first started working as a journalist, one of my assignments was to write ghost stories of New Orleans for the weekly newspaper Gambit. I thoroughly enjoy it and ended up writing additional ghost stories every fall. Then I was on to The Advocate daily newspaper of Baton Rouge and the ghost tales became ones of Louisiana, including odd myths, superstitions and Cajun folk tales. You're probably guessing where this is heading —yes, I incorporated much of that into my Viol