The Strangely Beautiful Haunted London Blog Tour day 7 (Plus a Giveaway!)

A big welcome today to Leanna Renee Hieber, author of The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Percy Parker!! I just started her book and I already love it. I am thrilled to be included in the Haunted London Blog Tour! London is one of my favorite cities and my husband and I always visit Cleopatra's Needle when we go there! Welcome, Leanna...

From the Back Cover:
"What fortune awaited sweet, timid Percy Parker at Athens Academy? Considering how few of Queen Victoria’s Londoners knew of it, the great Romanesque fortress was dreadfully imposing, and little could Percy guess what lay inside. She had never met the powerful and mysterious Professor Alexi Rychman, knew nothing of the growing shadow, the Ripper and other supernatural terrors against which his coterie stood guard. She knew simply that she was different, haunted, with her snow-white hair, pearlescent skin and uncanny gifts. But this arched stone doorway offered a portal to a new life, an education far from the convent—and an invitation to an intimate yet dangerous dance at the threshold of life and death…"

Thank you, dear Tome Traveller, for asking me to haunt your blog today, I’m thrilled to be here at such a gorgeous site as this.

Today our Haunted Tour leads us to Cleopatra’s Needle – Victoria Embankment, WC 2

For those of you just joining us, the purpose of this Haunted tour is to celebrate the release of my Gothic Victorian Fantasy Romance debut, The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker. This Tour will introduce you to some of the real, documented London haunts who “ghost-star” in my book. When Professor Alexi Rychman and his Guard of spectral police make their rounds, it is to any number of London phantasms. Since these characters are familiar to The Guard, I don’t get to tell their full story in the book, but here on the tour I can give them their due. Leave a comment and you’ll be entered to win a signed copy of the novel, first in the Strangely Beautiful series!

Cleopatra’s Needle at Victoria Embankment, WC2

The obelisk known as “Cleopatra’s Needle” first towered outside the Temple of the Sun at Heliopolis, having been erected by Pharaoh Thotmes III in 1450, BC. It was moved to Alexandria in 14 BC, then becoming “Cleopatra’s Needle” as it was brought to London in 1878 where it has stood a tall sentry on the banks of the River Thames. More suicides happen near this obelisk than at any other spot along the river. The dark granite itself seems to moan. Londoners out for a foggy night’s stroll along Embankment have seen shadowy figures hurl themselves towards the river but no sound or splash is heard.

I used the Embankment area in what has now become a deleted scene! This is Exclusive Content!

Deleted scene from The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker:

Later in the evening, Alexi felt far too restless to return to Hampstead, knowing he would only pace about his vast estate. He longed to walk dim city streets instead.

Something dank hung in the air as he made his way towards the Thames; a moisture beyond English climate alone. An elder wetness clung to his fine black clothes and impeded his lungs like a toxicant.

Dread filled him as he passed immaculately coiffed ladies and gentlemen, glittering in finery and laughing lightly as they drifted out of the Savoy, just three blocks from where a small child stood shivering on a church stoop, asking two pence for the dirty handkerchief he held in his dirtier hand. Alexi felt sure the boy was far more attune to what London had become than those who flitted about in their hansom cabs, intentionally ignorant of those who peered out from the shadows…

Those accustomed to the great city’s darknesses, surely, were the people who felt the same ugly wet air that Alexi breathed, the same cloying anxiety that still caused one to glance twice and jump at abrupt noises.

Dark eyes staring out over the water from an Embankment parapet, Alexi watched the countless spirits float over the river that had seen more woe in its days than he cared to imagine. The dim, wavering luminescence of the dead gave the Thames the odd quality of a silent ocean, the dead like lapping whitecaps atop the water. They were all looking at him. They all, perhaps, expected something of him.

The finely tuned instrument inside Alexi’s blood that alerted him to specific spectral disturbance was at a loss. The feeling he’d had of late was an unknown and dangerous variable. A man of order, though The Grand Work defied conventional reason, there was an odd science to it that he relished. But his instrument was clouded by a heavy foreboding, a helpless inevitability that something terrible was coming and he had no way to stop it.

The Professor didn’t need another handkerchief but he bought the sullied one from the disheveled child anyway. Looking down on the boy, framed in the shadows of a gothic arch, guarded by a vacant-faced stone saint who could do nothing at the sign of trouble, Alexi was greatly saddened. There was something in the child’s eyes that knew as well as he did that the nights were ripe for terrors.

I’m indebted to Richard Jones, founder of the fabulous Discovery Walks of London and author of the fantastic compendium “Haunted London” and “Walking Haunted London” published by Barnes & Noble Books, a main resource for my research. Visit him at http://www.haunted-london.com/. Come visit me at http://www.leannareneehieber.com/ to find out more about The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker and follow along on the rest of the Haunted London Blog tour! I hope you’ll also pick up the book and love it as much as I loved writing it! Be sure to comment to be entered to win a signed copy!

To enter, just leave me a comment here with the title of your favorite classic ghost story. This will be a short giveaway, enter thru midnight eastern time on September 4th (My Mom's birthday, Happy Birthday, Mom!!). Winner will be drawn at random and must have a US mailing address. (FYI-For those of you who read or have read the book, Leanna is hosting a great contest on her website - enter here through Sept. 16). Good luck everyone! And a big thank you to Leanna for stopping by today!