Spotlight & Giveaway: Halloween Town by Joss Wood

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Joss Wood to HJ!

Hi Joss and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, Halloween Town!

Great to be here!

Please summarize the book for the readers here:

Poppy McMaster was supposed to be getting married, not climbing out of a bathroom window in her wedding dress because two ghosts told her to bolt instead of saying ‘I do ‘.

She runs back to Solstice Springs and her grandparents’ beloved inn, back to the small town she spent so much time in as a child. But these days, H-Town is where Halloween never really ends. It’s also the place she once believed anything was possible.
The problem is that her grandparents’ beloved inn now belongs to Thom Sheffield, her childhood hero. And her ex-fiancé’s brooding older brother. And the last man on earth she should be fantasising about.
In a town filled with pumpkins, cosy traditions and more Halloween magic than is strictly reasonable, falling in love might just be the scariest thing these two have ever done.
 

Please share your favorite line(s) or quote from this book:

Thom kicked the fridge door shut, but before he could reach the kitchen door, it flew open, and he blinked at the vision standing in the doorway.
A bride stood in his doorway.
Which was alarming, given that he hadn’t ordered one.

Please share a few Fun facts about this book…

• Halloween Town was supposed to be the first book in the series, not the second.
• The ghosts telling Poppy to run was the inspiration for the entire series.
• The ghosts aren’t cliches; they all have agency. And are full of nonsense. And they love watching Human TV.
• Thom’s dog Felony is unhinged. So is Luna, the town’s mayor.
• Poppy is Wren’s best friend from Summerween.
• Edie, Fel’s dog walker, is the heroine of Hot Ghoul Summer, book three in the series.
• I adore the idea of having a Gratitude Tree.

What first attracts your Hero to the Heroine and vice versa?

Under her weird hair, makeup, and panda eyes, he could see the beautiful woman he always knew she’d become. Her heart-shaped, pixie-like face, perfectly feminine with its high cheekbones, straight nose, and ever-so-slightly pouty lips. Her dress was ridiculous—it was the least Poppy-like creation ever—but the body within it was slim, curvy, effortlessly female.
And God, her eyes. As a kid, they’d always been too big for her face, and that was still, sort of, true. High, arched brows and thick black eyelashes, made longer and thicker by too much mascara, were the perfect contrast to all that blue. Grandma M. had called them Persian Blue.
In Thom’s words…
When Poppy was angry, her eyes turned lighter; when emotional, they deepened to the color of the lake as night fell, dark and mysterious. Thom had never been able to resist her when she looked up at him through her long lashes and thick bangs. Part fairy, part devil.
He pulled his eyes from her and shook himself out of his reverie. Now wasn’t the time to get soppy. He wasn’t a sentimental guy, and he wasn’t impressed by having his peaceful life—boring, but peaceful—derailed by a heartbroken bride.

For Poppy, Thom has always been her soft place to fall, and he becomes that person for her again, but this time with muscles!

Did any scene have you blushing, crying or laughing while writing it? And Why?

I LOVED writing the ghost scenes…and this is one of my favorites!

At three the next morning, the time when all good ghosts got to work, Ruby, Lila, and Naomi drifted across the square to the Gratitude Tree. Ruby was surprised at the number of ghosts darting in and out of the branches, sitting on the grass beneath the tree, or on the branches. The H-Town ghosts were having their own Tag & Thanks event.
It was a pity it didn’t come with alcohol and food. She missed drinking and dancing going home with someone after you were a bit buzzed.
“Do you know who also loved this event?” Lila asked, dressed in her favorite outfit, a very short, very red dress with tassels falling to her ankles. Her lipstick mirrored the dress, and Ruby rather liked that shade. “Captain Blackwood.”
Ruby was surprised at how much she missed the pedantic captain. A Civil War doctor, the captain had moved on at the end of summer, and they all missed his sensible, solid, and precise presence. In many ways, big and small, he’d kept their ghostly feet on the ground. The Reverend, his old, brimstony cohort, headed into the light not long after Silas left them, and they didn’t miss him half as much as they missed the captain.
“He was also really good at moving tags,” Lila added.
Ruby pulled a face. She’d tried last year but hadn’t added much to the communal effort. Humans thought it funny how the tags were moved and scribbled on, but the ghosts expended a lot of energy to make it happen. It took up to twenty ghosts working in shifts to move tags, more still to write on the tags. The ones who contributed the most energy were lauded as heroes for continuing the town tradition and fulfilling the unwritten and unspoken contract with the humans of H-Town. Like their forebears, the current residents of H-Town provided a safe (ish), accepting place for ghosts to live, and the ghosts contributed to keeping the “spooky” atmosphere alive.
Nearly everybody was happy, and the ghosts knew that was as good as you could get.
Ruby, Lila, and Naomi openly admitted they were too lazy to move or write on tags, but were enthusiastic cheerleaders.
“Dear Captain Blackwood,” Lila said, fondly. “He was so easy to tease.”
This year’s crop of teenagers who’d decided to take on the challenge of “outing” the ghosts—why did they bother, they never managed it—were either asleep in their camp chairs, blankets pulled up to their noses, or were too busy making out to think about ghosts.
“And he loved messing with the teenagers,” Ruby commented, hands on her hips.
Naomi saw a phone on a tripod, camara camera attached, drifted over to it, and wrapped her hand around it. When the red light blinked off and the screen went black—she’d drained it of its battery—she smiled.
“That’s my contribution to the cause,” she said, dusting off her hands.
Ruby, seeing a couple on a blanket, hands under clothing, grinned at her friends. “In honor of our friend, Captain Blackwood,” she murmured, drifting over to the couple. Looking away from their enthusiastic, tongues-down-throats kissing, she pushed her fingers beneath their collars and tapped her fingers against their necks. Instantly, they sprang apart, eyes wide.
“Did you touch my neck?” the girl demanded.
“No, my hand was in your pants.” Ruby grimaced. Ew.
“You touched my neck!”
The girl pulled her hands out from his pants—Ruby hadn’t noticed the down-below action, double ew—and lifted them “They weren’t. So who touched me with cold fingers?”
“Who touched me with cold hands?” the boy demanded, utterly confused and more than a little freaked out.
They both sprang to their feet and looked around, their eyes wild. Ruby grinned and gripped their necks, and they both shivered. Then, without further discussion, they grabbed the blanket and their backpacks, and the boy whipped the phone off the tripod. “Shit, it’s dead.”
The girl wrapped her arms around her waist and rocked on her heels. “I am so spooked, Tad.”
“It’s fine, Gina, let’s just go.”
Tad? Gina? Weren’t they Wren’s dance kids from the summer? Huh, so they were still together. Ruby wanted to remind them to use protection, but they were too freaked out to hear her. Oh, well, scaring them was also an effective method of contraception.
Dusting off her hands, she drifted back to her friends. “Good job, Ruby,” Naomi said. “It was time for them to get their butts home.”
Ruby linked, as much as she could, her arms with Lila’s and Naomi’s. “Let’s find a seat to watch the tree shenanigans. And I’ll update you about Cedric … the poor boy is losing his ever lovin’ mind.”

Readers should read this book….

If they want a funny, flirty, Halloween, fall escape set in a Halloween-obsessed town with crazy characters, they should read Halloween Town!

What are you currently working on? What other releases do you have in the works?

Halloween Town is the second in a four-book series: Summerween, Halloween Town, Hot Ghoul Summer and Talk Turkey to Me.

I’m about to start Talk Turkey to Me, and am also busy with projects for Harlequin Romance.
 

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: I’m giving away two ebook copies of Halloween Town.

To enter Giveaway, please share this post on your Socials and Leave a comment below to this Q: Are you a Summerween (Halloween in summer) girlie or a pumpkin spice and cooler weather, fall -is-finally-here girl?

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and drop a comment below letting me know you've shared it.
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✨ If you win, I'll need your full name and mailing address to send your prize. 
This information will be shared with the author, publisher, or publicist solely for prize fulfillment purposes.
✨ Giveaway closes 3 days from the date this post is published.  
 

Excerpt from Halloween Town:

“I look absolutely gorgeous. Tragically so.”
Gentle afternoon light spilled through the sheer curtains of the bridal suite, casting a soft glow on Poppy McMaster’s face. Sitting on the stool in front of the antique, gilt-framed mirror, she tipped her head to the left, then the right, not recognizing her reflection.
Her normally tousled blonde hair was swept up into a sleek, smooth chignon, tucked into the left side of her neck, a style her mother liked. She’d wanted a natural look, but the makeup artist opted for the smoky eyes and contoured cheekbones that her mother had also insisted on.
When Glenda McMaster spoke, even God listened.
As for her dress … Poppy’d imagined something floaty, light, boho-ish. But Glenda had insisted on a can-barely-breathe number that resented every move she made. It hugged her hips, then flared into a peppy, mermaid’s tale. Poppy loathed it with the fire of a thousand suns. But she loved the look in Glenda’s eyes when she wore it. The pride, the satisfaction, the “she’s finally acceptable” gleam.
Poppy was the perfect bride, marrying the perfect groom, their wedding highly and perfectly curated.
An uncomfortable truth bomb floated up to the surface. She wanted to ignore it, but couldn’t… If her mother was this happy with her, then she should probably be concerned. Because it meant she was further away from her authentic self. And judging by Glenda’s effusive praise earlier, Poppy wasn’t just in trouble.
She was in deep, irreversible, mermaid-tailed shit.
Poppy touched her grandmother’s pearl necklace. It didn’t suit the dress, she knew that. Everyone knew that. But she didn’t care. It was the only sartorial detail she’d cared enough about to dig in her heels over.
Today was, as she’d realized a month after first becoming engaged to Benji Sheffield, Glenda’s wedding. Poppy was simply the lead actress in the production, there to look pretty but not to give any input.
Not how she should feel on her wedding day.
The dress, the makeup, the two-hundred guests, most of whom she didn’t know … there were a dozen reasons why this day wasn’t what she’d imagined. Oh, and her best friend and matron of honor was on the other side of the country, in LA, currently in the hospital after suffering from dehydration post-food-poisoning. Poor Wren, it was her first choreography job in months, and she’d fallen ill. Her boyfriend, Dane, had naturally flown to her side immediately. Poppy, who’d known Wren since they were five, had wanted to be with her, too, but there was the small matter of getting married.
If Dane hadn’t been around, then not rabid wolves, aliens, nor Glenda would’ve have kept Poppy from jumping on a plane, upcoming wedding or not. As for today, how was she supposed to get married without Wren by her side? They’d taken turns wearing the veil when playing dress-up-weddings as kids, written their own vows, and practiced walking down the aisle. Sometimes the bride, sometimes the groom. Always together.
That she was doing this majorly adult thing without Wren was all sorts of wrong.
Standing in the bridal suite, Poppy heard raised voices floating in from the adjacent room, now occupied by her bridesmaids, her sisters, and acquaintances chosen by Glenda. Someone was arguing about a shade of lipstick, and she recognized her second-oldest sister’s voice. Apparently, she urgently needed a protein bar.
Poppy urgently needed a drink. Or several.
Poppy stared at herself in the mirror, clutching her pearls like a talisman, her mind spinning her away to her favorite place in the world, Solstice Springs. She didn’t want to be in Boston, playing the starring role in this polished, socially perfect, city wedding. Solstice Deep, her grandparents’ bluff-top, Victorian inn on the edge of the small town of Solstice Springs, was where she most wanted to be. There, where the Berkshires loomed, and the lake glittered…
During all her childhood and teen summers, she’d run through the town and the surrounding woods like she owned both, laughing with Wren at things too dumb to remember. Memories, all of them and all at once, hit—a punch of nostalgia, longing, and wild, impossible happiness. Yes, Solstice Springs was deeply weird, but weird was the point there. With its all-year-round Halloween madness and a mayor who was a part-time witch and a full-time hustler, it was spooky, chaotic, and a little ridiculous.
Poppy loved it, and it was where she most wanted to be.
She knew that on this last day of September, Halloween Town, as tourists affectionately called it, would look beautiful. It was a pretty, pretty town—wide streets, big yards, Victorian buildings, and flowerboxes. Every season was wonderful, but the fall was her favorite. She could see it all so clearly … the lake shimmering in the sunlight, its surface ruffled by an autumnal wind. There would be orange kayaks on the wide shore of Lantern Beach, lined in a neat little row, waiting for anyone who liked a little exercise with their pumpkin spiced lattes and spooky decorations. Blackweather Green, the large park running alongside the lake, would already be transformed in preparation for the town’s biggest festival, a month-long affair celebrating everything Halloween, culminating in the Bonfire of the Bewitched on Halloween night.
An iron Victorian bandstand stood in the center of the meadow, its rails wrapped in black-and-orange bunting. The hills overlooking the town blazed with the kind of foliage people drove six hours to see, the slopes rolling upward in waves of fire-red and gold, like someone had set them on a slow burn.
H-Town was home. It was where she most wanted to be.
“Harper, shall we go check on Poppy?” She heard Isobel, her oldest sister, ask from the other side of the door. “She was looking a bit pale earlier.”
God, Poppy did not want to deal with perfect sister one and two right now. She wasn’t ready to smile sweetly or act like this day was what she’d dreamed of, wanted, and looked forward to for months. Moving as quickly as she could in her breath-restricting dress, Poppy slipped into the adjoining bathroom, closed the door, and locked it. The huge, sash window dominated the space, and she pushed it up, inhaling the scent of the blood-red roses in the bed just outside the window. If she wanted to, she could sling a leg over the sash, hightail it through the garden, and run.
It was so very tempting…
But that wasn’t an option. Her family was one of the most respected in Boston, her mother a stalwart of the A-List social scene; her father, a highly-regarded neurosurgeon. Two of her siblings worked at the hospital with him, one as a thoracic surgeon, the other as a pediatric specialist. Her oldest brother ran the family business interests—medical-related— which were impressive and wide-ranging. Another sibling was an actuary, with his own super-successful venture-capital firm.
In their eyes, Poppy’s greatest achievement was marrying into the legendary Sheffield family, a political dynasty that boasted a few senators and a couple of state judges, and one of the oldest law firms in the state. Her fiancé, Benji, who, when his older half-brother, Thom, had “stepped down”, had taken over Sheffield Strategy, a well-respected public and government affairs company, planned to go into politics in a few years, starting with becoming a…
She couldn’t remember.
Everyone agreed that a merger between the two most influential families in Massachusetts was a flex, good for both sides. Poppy wasn’t so sure; she knew she wasn’t cut out to be a politician’s wife.
Or even Benji’s wife.
“Having cold feet on your wedding day is normal,” she told herself, speaking out loud to convince herself. “Everything will go back to normal soon.”
She’d been telling herself the same tired story for months, but nothing had changed. Would it ever? She and Benji barely saw each other these days, and they hadn’t had sex for, uh, how long? Weeks? And that raised the question: if he wasn’t getting it from her, who was he getting lucky with?
Because Benji liked sex. Benji liked sex a lot.
Poppy gripped the edge of the basin, astonished to realize that the thought of Benji having an affair didn’t shock her, nor did it hurt. She didn’t feel … well, anything. Not love, or jealousy, nor a smidgen of concern.
Shit. That was concerning. And a hell of a thing to figure out on your wedding day.
Poppy shook out her hands and hauled in some much-needed air.
You’re just having a bridal panic attack. Just breathe. All you have to do is breathe. And get through today. After today, everything will be better.
Would it, though?
Seeing that her veil was off-center, she adjusted it and frowned at the flicker of movement in the bathroom mirror. That was odd.
Poppy looked at the locked door and wondered what time it was. How much freedom remained? She looked at her phone… She had half an hour. Thirty minutes before she married Benji, became his wife … before they got the government involved and made it legal.
Lifting her eyes to look in the mirror, she frowned at the fog forming on the edges of the frame. The windows were open, there was a breeze blowing … and, oh, my God, what the fuck was a woman doing inside the mirror?
Poppy gripped the sides of the basin again, unable to wrench her eyes away. A sweet face, hair pulled back into a simple tail, huge eyes, and far too thin.
What the hell was she doing in her mirror? In her goddamn mirror!
Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope.
Look, she’d spent all her childhood summers, and a lot of her other school vacations, in a town that lived and breathed the paranormal and ghosts, and while she’d had a couple of encounters—seeing people out of the corner of her eye, waking up to someone standing at the end of her bed, cold patches in her grandparents’ inn—she’d never been face-to-face, eye to eye with … well … with an apparition before.
“Poppy, sweetheart … I hate to barge in without warning, but you’re running out of time.”
The apparition was talking to her? Poppy pinched the inside of her wrist and twisted her skin. Ow! She definitely wasn’t dreaming. Maybe she was having a stroke. Or a hallucinatory panic attack brought on by the stress of marrying Benji.
Just keep holding on to the basin; do not let your knees buckle. And do not, whatever you do, faint. Your mother will kill you if you crease your dress or muss your hair.
Poppy couldn’t take her eyes off the woman in the mirror. This was so fucking weird.
Then another female figure materialized in the mirror, and Poppy blinked. Leather jacket and pants, streaked eyeliner, teased bottle-blonde hair, a smoker’s mouth… This ghost looked like she’d walked straight out of a 1970s documentary on female bikers and hellraisers.
The biker ghost hip-bumped the other apparition. “Move over, cupcake. This requires some tough love—”
“Ruby, for heaven’s sake, you can’t barge in and take over. We agreed that I’d persuade her—gently.”
“Gently won’t cut it. This one needs a swift boot to her ass.”
“Ohmigod, ohmigod, there’s two of you? What? Why—?” Poppy slapped her hand on her chest, her mouth wide open. “I’m having a breakdown, that’s the only explanation. It’s been a rough few months, too much stress, too little sleep. I haven’t eaten that much. Cried too much.”
“Yeah, yeah. I’m Ruby, by the way.” Ruby jabbed a thumb at the more polite ghost. “She’s Naomi.”
Ruby pulled out a pack of cigarettes and tapped one out. “The point is, hon, you’re about to make a mistake you can’t undo. To put it plain, your fiancé is a douchebag asshole.”
Poppy felt like her head was about to explode.
“Why don’t you tell me how you really feel?” she muttered, unable to believe she was talking to two mirror-bound ghosts.
Okay, no matter whether this was real or whether she was hallucinating, it was time to yank back some control. And that meant thinking, breathing, returning to normal. “I’ve just got a case of wedding jitters. Yes, I admit, it’s extreme, but everyone panics before a wedding. I’m feeling a little overwhelmed.”
Ruby released an unladylike snort. “Honey, you are so fucked up that you summoned two ghosts to help you out of this jam.”
While Poppy was partial to the odd F-bomb herself, she never expected to hear it out of the mouth of someone, well, dead.
“Let’s get real, shall we? You don’t want to get married. And you especially don’t want to marry Benji. I don’t blame you, he’s a dick.”
“If you marry him, you’re going to regret it forever,” Naomi, the other one, interjected. “You want to bail, Poppy, we know you do. You just have to find the courage to walk.”
“In your case, run,” Ruby stated, her voice hard.
Poppy shook her head. She couldn’t. Too many people, including Benji and her parents, her siblings—The Fabulous Four—were waiting for her. Too much money had been spent, so much effort had gone into making this the wedding of the year. Her mother might never recover from the embarrassment.
“Choose yourself, and fucking run,” Ruby told her.
“You have a future to save,” Naomi urged.
“And it isn’t with him,” Ruby added. Her face softened, just for a moment. “You can do this, Poppy.”
Poppy watched, entranced as a thin, hairline crack appeared in the mirror, right between the ghosts’ faces. Cracks then covered the mirror in a thousand, scattered lines, and the faces distorted, then faded away. Poppy, coming back to herself, took a deep breath. The mirror was completely back to normal, and everything was as it was when she’d walked in here, just—she looked at her phone and checked the time—five minutes before.
Her face, now the only image in the mirror, was bloodless-white. She’d imagined it all, right? It had been a dreadful hallucination, a trick from too much stress and too little sleep.
At that moment, her grandmother’s gorgeous, perfectly matched pearl necklace slowly slid from her neck and dropped into the basin, still intact, still on its string. She picked it up, checked the diamond clasp, and saw that it had come undone. How? The clasp was tricky and she’d needed help to fasten it around her neck. They’d even joked that she might need to cut it off her neck because the clasp was so tight.
It was, Poppy realized, her grandmother’s way of telling her she agreed that Poppy should bolt.
She lifted her hand and saw that it was trembling. “Right. So, are you going to choose yourself?”
Poppy scooped up the necklace, shoved it into the cup of her custom-made, strapless bra, picked up her phone and shuffled over to the window. She kicked off her wedding shoes, designer and expensive, ripped off her sheer stockings and lifted the heavy hem of her dress to her knees. Higher, higher, there … she could now lift her leg and sling it over the windowsill.
She hesitated and looked back at the mirror. Was she going to do this? Seriously? Yep, it looked like she was. Sitting on the edge of the windowsill, she swung her legs over and dropped down into the bed of roses below, her bare feet sinking into the mulch, soil, and manure. It squelched up between her toes and covered her French pedicure. The back of her dress fell into a pile of dislodged soil, and Poppy looked at the streak of brown mud on the cream silk. Oh, well.
There was no going back now.
***
“Oh, I love your costume!”
Three hours later, Poppy, still barefoot, took a step back when a tiny woman bolted toward her, her grin wide. “A jilted bride! You’re just perfect!”
Tired after the bus ride, scared and utterly overwhelmed, Poppy tried to make sense of her words. Her new friend, thoroughly overexcited, hopped up and down on the spot, squealing again when she saw her bare feet.
“Oh my God, you look so authentic!” The tourist looked around and waved her partner, wearing two cameras as necklaces, over.
“Honey, the tourism page said that we might see people dressed in Halloween costumes wandering around Solstice Springs. Since it’s early in the season, I didn’t expect to see anyone. But look!”
“I see her, babe.”
“Can I take a photo with you?” Without waiting for her answer, the woman tossed her arm around Poppy’s bare shoulder. It was warm and a little sweaty on her shoulder, and her husband lifted the bigger of the two cameras.
“Oh my God, I just love Halloween, and I’ve been begging my husband to bring me to Solstice Springs, and he surprised me with this trip.”
“Smile, ladies.”
“She can’t smile, she’s a runaway bride, silly.”
So Poppy stood there, unsmiling, not willing to spoil her new best friend’s H-Town experience. The tourist, after telling her for the fourth time, or was it the fifth, that she was nuts, just nuts about Halloween, completely obsessed, thanked her, told her she adored her costume, and finally, finally walked away.
Poppy rolled her eyes and rubbed the back of her neck, not that surprised by the encounter; this was H-Town after all. She swatted her veil out of her face, picked up her dress, and contemplated whether she should walk east up Main Street or duck through the park. The walk to Solstice Deep would take longer through Blackweather Green, but it would be a lot quieter, and there was less chance of running into someone she knew at this time of the day. If she walked up Main Street, by the time she got to the inn, everyone in town would know she’d bolted from her afternoon wedding.
Yeah, the park it was.
Poppy hadn’t pictured herself coming back like this. Not in a crumpled wedding dress, barefoot, clutching her phone and the ragged edges of her sanity, stepping off the bus like some tragic heroine from a midnight zombie movie.
It absolutely hadn’t featured anywhere on her life’s bingo card. Still, none of it mattered now. Because soon she’d be in her grandparents’ creaky inn, her heart’s true home. Grandpa M.’s estate was finally settled, and her father was now the fourth McMaster to own the property. Sure, it was officially her dad’s, but she knew where the spare key to the kitchen door was hidden.
She’d sneak in and head straight upstairs to her childhood bedroom, a quirky little sanctuary, nestled under the slant of the third-floor roof. With its drafty windows and floors that groaned with every step, it was her secret hideaway. Solstice Deep had always been her soft place to land, the only spot she’d ever felt absolutely herself, no masks required. And right now? She needed that. She needed home like she needed oxygen. She needed safe.
Because, frankly, there was a good chance she was losing her bloody mind.
Who ran away from their wedding because two ghosts told them to?
Crossing Main Street, she ignored the curious looks from tourists and entered the park. Looking around, she sighed.
It was, as she’d imagined, beautiful. Even before Luna—Wren’s godmother––got her Halloween-obsessed paws on the place, Solstice Springs had been quietly charming.
Truth was, the town was easy-to-sell-to-tourists lovely. Add the element of it being settled by an offshoot of the Salem Puritans, who’d been kicked out of Salem for being a little too wild, a little too theatrical, and its wholehearted, year-round embrace of Halloween, and visitors poured into the town. Its soundtrack was the ching of cash registers pinging from tourist income.
Yet Poppy heard another whisper deep in her soul.
“Hey, sweetheart, welcome home. You’re safe here.”
Further along, Main Street curved around the park, the restored Victorian buildings now home to boutiques, galleries, and stores completely committed to Halloween and all things paranormal. The lampposts had already dressed up for the season—velvet bows, old-fashioned lanterns, judgy, fake ravens, and the odd broomstick tied on at a jaunty angle. Poppy looked up and shook her head. Only in H-Town, she thought, as she took in a set of striped legs dangling out of a second-floor picture window. Black-and-white stockings, pointy boots, a poor witch was lodged halfway through the round, small window. A broom was wedged under her one leg, implying the witch had been at a cauldron, drinking too much eye-of-the-frog or heel-of-the-cat or whatever. Her billowing black robe fluttered dramatically down the side of the building. The whole scene suggested she was questioning her life choices.
Honestly? Poppy could relate.
Despite being across the road, the scent of fresh coffee and warm pie drifting out of Spirited Grounds hit her, colliding with a thick wall of patchouli and sage rolling out from Madame Calliope’s. She desperately wanted a pumpkin spiced latte, but picking up a drink would be like taking out a front-page ad in the next edition of Solstice Springs News, announcing her return.
Poppy eyed Madame Calliope—real name Glynis Smith—emerging from her store, with Morrigan, her gigantic pitch-black Maine Coon, draped around her shoulders. Morrigan, like Reggie, the town’s infamous semi-feral turkey, was equal parts local celebrity and living tourist trap: visitors lined up to get a selfie with either creature. Reggie, for his part, treated all humans with the disdain of a true artist, while Morrigan, consummate professional, charged ten bucks a photo. To be fair, if cats read romance novels, he’d be on every cover.
Unlike Wren, Poppy didn’t think Madame Calliope—though capitalist to her core—was an excellent bullshit artist. She had, after all, once predicted that Poppy’s last name would be Sheffield. And honestly? She’d come damn close today. That had to count for something, didn’t it?
If Poppy could say one thing with absolute certainty, it was that Madame Calliope was certifiably odd. Then again, in H-Town, weird wasn’t just tolerated—it was celebrated.
But not at The Bar. Diagonally across the road, The Bar’s plain, square windows stared back at her, as stubbornly undecorated and blissfully ordinary as ever. The faded sign above the door hadn’t changed either. Poppy managed a small smile. Jasper, the owner, was still proudly flying the flag as H-Town’s biggest skeptic. He still hadn’t defected to the glitter-smeared, ghost-worshipping side of the town’s great divide. Gruff and with minimal patience for BS, Poppy knew he never would.
H-Town was in a permanent tug-of-war for its soul. On one side, the True Believers—loud, a little obnoxious, and utterly convinced witches, ghosts, and all things paranormal were as real as income tax. The skeptics were pragmatic, and only interested in the tangible cash Halloween, and everything associated with it, generated. The only energy they believed in was money moving from tourists’ wallets into their bank accounts.
Living in a place that celebrated Halloween most of the year, the skeptics had a tough gig.
Poppy didn’t belong to either camp. Despite her minor encounters with things-she-couldn’t-explain, there were too many variables for her to believe believe, but she’d seen too much weird shit—today’s encounter was weirder than most!—to be a skeptic. She was, she supposed, ghost-curious. Willing to consider the possibility of the paranormal without hopping onto the “let’s have a séance to consult the spirits about every little thing” crazy train.
Although, after what she’d seen in that mirror—two ghosts, clear as day, talking to her—she might have to stop calling herself curious and book herself an appointment with a psychiatrist. Or Madame Calliope.
Poppy stepped off the path and onto the grass of the meadow and walked down the slope toward the lake, the water dancing under the autumn breeze. Like H-Town, the park along the shoreline was already deep in its annual transformation for the month-long Halloween Festival—a month of events, candles, crowds, and absolute mayhem.
Ambling down the path, with the lake on one side of her, Blackweather Green on the other, she took in the plastic jack-o’-lanterns, each roughly the size of a chubby toddler, dangling from the branches of the red maples, oaks, and birches. Fairy lights and fake cobwebs zigzagged between the trees. Poppy caught the faint outlines of the painted glow-in-the-dark “ghost” footprints on the path that wound through a dark portion of the woods, skirted the boathouse, and ended at the bandstand. On weekends, tourists could join an organized walk through the woods, where they’d be scared shitless by volunteers dressed up as ghouls, zombies, and witches. H-Town, because Luna reveled in being different, boasted a haunted wood instead of a haunted house…
Poppy walked on, the hem of her dress scrunched up in her hands, catching the odd glimpse of Solstice Deep. She was breathless, heartsore, confused, overdressed, underprepared, hoping—praying—that her grandparents’ Victorian home and her favorite town would provide her with the healing and the clarity she so badly needed.

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Book Info:

Poppy McMaster was supposed to be getting married, not climbing out of a bathroom window in her wedding dress…

She’s leaving her life behind and fleeing to the only place she’s ever truly felt like herself: the small town she grew up in, where Halloween lasts all year.

But home isn’t waiting for Poppy the way she imagined. Her grandparents’ beloved inn is now owned by Thom Sheffield, who just happens to be:

Her childhood hero
Her ex-fiancé’s brooding older brother
The last man on earth she should be fantasizing about…

Because in a town full of pumpkins, cosy traditions, and Halloween magic, falling in love might be the scariest thing of all…
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Meet the Author:

Joss Wood writes romances packed with messy emotions, crackling chemistry, witty banter, and hard-won happily-ever-afters. Her books feature independent heroines, hot heroes, quirky small-towns, lovable chaos magnets, nosy neighbours, fast friendships and enough spice to steam up a window or two.

She’s been telling stories for as long as she can remember and has written more than eighty books for various publishers. She aims to feature characters who are flawed, funny, emotionally exposed, and deeply human.

When she’s not writing, she’s usually fuelled by too much coffee, avoiding exercise with impressive dedication, plotting her next adventure, checking in on her grown children, laughing with her husband, or being expertly manipulated by two cats and one enormous, spectacularly ill-behaved dog.
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