Hello friends!
So when I was around 9 years old I invented a ghost story that terrified my girl scout troop. Little did I know then how it would influence the path of my life.
So I wrote about this entirely true and utterly ridiculous scene from my youth over at Kensington's Between the Chapters Book Club. Check out "The Girl in the Woods"...
Welcome to Glazier's Gap, Colorado-- a small, gossip-filled hamlet started by the mysterious owners of a now-abandoned silver mine whose unwitting rivalries set the town on a cursed trajectory. From an enormous luxury resort hotel destroyed years ago in a landslide- whose wreckage remains half-buried today- to unexplained fires in grand mansions, the town isn't known for good luck. It’s a place with a bright side, though: tourists visit its rickety old ski resort, hike shadowed mountain paths and locals attend its small college. There’s even a defunct book publisher starting up again. But underneath it all: Glazier's Gap is full of secrets and ghosts.
Order now via Amazon or in paperback from your favorite local bookstore!
Cheers and Happy Haunting!
The day is finally here!
"Deliciously eerie.” —Leslie Rule, Bestselling Author
From the notorious Lizzie Borden to the innumerable, haunted rooms of Sarah Winchester's mysterious mansion this offbeat, insightful, first-ever book of its kind explores the history behind America’s female ghosts, the stereotypes, myths, and paranormal tales that swirl around them, what their stories reveal about us—and why they haunt us . . .
Here's a little excerpt from my "Existential Questions" Introduction, explaining why I do what I do!
Darlings! Head over to the wonderful FANTASY CAFE for my GHOSTS OF THE FORBIDDEN COVER REVEAL! Not only do I have an amazing modern cover but I have a VINTAGE STEPBACK COVER that replicates the 70s-era Gothic novel my heroine 'falls into' in the book. Designed by the talented In Churl Yo, check out the delicious Gothic pairing here...
I'm SO excited for my debut contemporary Gothic Romance! Releasing Oct. 11th 2022 via Castle Bridge Media in digital and trade paperback!
This book features an adorable slow-burn romance, an inclusive, found family of loveable characters alive and dead and an eerie, gaslit, gilded age NYC!
About the book via Kensington Books: Solving crime isn’t only for the living.
Her name is Eve Whitby, gifted medium and spearhead of The Ghost Precinct. When most women are traveling in a gilded society that promises only well-appointed marriage, the confident nineteen-year-old Eve navigates a social circle that carries a different kind of chill. Working with the diligent but skeptical Lieutenant Horowitz, as well as a group of fellow psychics and wayward ghosts, Eve holds her own against detractors and threats to solve New York’s most disturbing crimes as only a medium of her ability can.
But as accustomed as Eve is to ghastly crimes and all matters of the uncanny, even she is unsettled by her department’s latest mystery. Her ghostly conduits are starting to disappear one by one as though snatched away by some evil force determined to upset the balance between two realms, and most important—destroy the Ghost Precinct forever. Now Eve must brave the darkness to find the vanished souls. She has no choice. It’s her job to make sure no one is ever left for dead.
“There is something truly magical about Leanna Renee Hieber’s writing.”
—Shana DuBois Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi/Fantasy Blog on Perilous Prophecy
Pick your favorite eBook vendor here and follow Leanna on BookBub!
Like the idea of THE SPECTRAL CITY? The whole trilogy is available wherever books are sold with A SANCTUARY OF SPIRITS and A SUMMONING OF SOULS, which just released at the end of July!
Please tell a friend!
Cheers and Happy Haunting!
It's release day, darlings!
So this weekend saw my sweetheart and me attending the Danvers Literary Festival in Danvers, MA at the gorgeous Peabody Institute Library as a Fantasy panelist along with these two lovely and talented ladies, Margaret Ronald (below) and N.K. Jemisin (above me). What a great panel and what a great day of talent! Thanks to Michelle (who fate directed me towards because of her blog, Tempting Persephone) for setting up such a lovely day at this lovely venue! With a hot-off-the-press book in my hand, I was there talking about The Darkly Luminous Fight for Persephone Parker and fielding 
questions about the Strangely Beautiful series, (see me looking like I'm talking about something super important?) on craft, process, world-building and, of course, chatting a bit about the possibility of the Strangely Beautiful musical and what will happen next. The crowd was, as I hoped, fiercely intelligent but warmly friendly, our moderator was fabulous and it was such a delight.
I couldn’t be so close to Salem and not visit Salem. Truly, it would be criminal. Welcome to Salem, MA, land of the Puritans. Where this cheery guy here, Roger Conant, The First Settler of Salem in 1626 said: "Nope, I'm not going any 
further, screw you. Y'all can go elsewhere, I'm staying put." And Salem was born. Okay. Here's what he actually said (quoth the fancy plaque): “I was a means through grace assisting me to stop the flight of those few that then were here with me and that by my utter denial to go away with them who would have gone either for England or mostly for Virginia.” Them's plaque-makin' words right there, I tell ya. The sculpture makes him seem far more dynamic than his quotes.
- named for that beloved Salem son and famous author who I'll speak more of later, and set off exploring. To be very clear, I’m not interested in the sensationalism or the marketing of/obsession with the Salem Witch Trials of 1692, or identifying Salem only with that unfortunate few months in our nation's history, despite the fact that everywhere you look in Salem they've had to embrace it, from witches on broomstick icons on hair salons, police cars, schools, to even a bronze Bewitched statue. What I am interested in is not a false and material iconography of witches but I'm interested in the history itself. Because those trials had nothing to do with witchcraft and everything about politics, land, money, gender, power and the exercising of it. And, of course, what I am interested in is the ghosts. What’s as important to me as the knowledge of the history of a place is the energy I feel in it walking the land, streets and the buildings and meeting the people. After admiring our lodging for a bit, we of course, booked a Ghost Tour.
A good ghost story needs no embellishment, its just a tale well told. The picture here is of the admittedly, totally creepy former Salem jail. (Now, of course, this is being turned into Condos. Have fun with those ghosts of the executed, folks!) If you go to Salem, find Tahra, she was great. Visit Salem Historical Tours. As a former tour guide myself, I’m telling you, take her tour. (And then, of course, tip her, she earns it and tour guides work hard). And let me tell you, Salem has some good ghost stories. So good I even have one of my own to tell. Seriously. Yes, for real. But more of that in a minute. Let me tell you about our lovely, sunny-if-not-quite-cold Sunday about Salem.
A primary mission in Salem was to pay homage to a wonderful writer, a pioneer of the Gothic novel and an influence of mine: Nathaniel Hawthorne. I was particularly charmed by our ghost tour guide Tahra showing us the “Grimshawe House” beside the town cemetery where he took down names for characters and where he began courting his future wife who lived in that house that would be immortalized, Sophia. (Seriously, how much do I love the graveyard courtship?) I visited the home where Hawthorne was born, learned about the room where he did much of his early writing, a place he called “the castle dismal” on Herbert Street, saw and explored the House of the Seven Gables (a side of which is pictured here) which he immortalized in his novel of that name, and generally soaked up as much as I could, gaining a new appreciation of a man I’d admired since high school when I read (and loved) The Scarlet Letter.
I did want to visit the Salem Witch Memorial that commemorates that time of horror and hysteria, politics, fabrications, human rights violations and all manner of wrongs against the innocent. Each name of the hanged victims (with the exception of Giles Corey who was pressed to his death beneath stones) are marked chronologically from Bridget Bishop in June of 1692 into September of that year, each victim marked on a separate bench. I was touched that on Mother's Day, many of the memorials had these little flowers bestowed upon them. The memorial is a sobering sight. The stone plaza is next to that town cemetery where Hawthorne courted Sophia and brainstormed ideas for his novels, and where I too took down some amazing, historic names for possible use in my fiction. I am nothing if not influenced by the actions of my predecessors. *s*
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