The Story Behind the Story by Karla Brandenburg – Guest Blog and Giveaway

Long and Short Reviews welcomes Karla Brandenburg who is visiting with us today to celebrate today’s release of THROUGH THE VIEWFINDER. Enter the Rafflecopter at the end of the post for a chance to win a free copy of the book.

Today is release day. I’m giving away a paperback version of the new book to one lucky winner, so be sure to enter!

I have a romantic soul, but I also love a good ghost story. My books tend to combine those two elements. While casting about for ideas to write my upcoming release, I got caught up in a local cold case.

I followed along on the local police podcast as they attempted to solve the case of a missing woman in real time. I imagined the ghost of the missing woman throwing a monkey wrench into my characters’ budding romance (my ghosts tend to do that). Listening to the investigation, step by step, was fascinating. The woman disappeared. Poof. Vanished into the ether. She disappeared with her car, so the original conclusion was that she chose to disappear. Got in her car and left. But where did she go?

The inclination is to blame a spouse or lover. She had a boyfriend, the man who reported her missing. They looked at him, suspecting him of foul play, but there was no evidence to support that theory. The case went cold, unsolved, but never closed.

Interestingly, a serial killer had rented the missing person’s apartment before she did. Was it possible he’d returned? Then there was the possibility that the woman, who’d been at a bar immediately prior to her disappearance, might have been harassed/abducted/disappeared by a biker gang who had been hanging around in the parking lot that night. The police had lots of suspects and had to consider whether her disappearance had been orchestrated.

Forty years later, a witness came forward who said they’d seen this woman leave in her car. Alone. So what happened to her if she left of her own volition? The police turned their attention to what routes she might have taken and a new theory began to form. One of those routes runs beside a river. During their historical investigations, they found the river had been at record flood stage when she disappeared. If she’d been drinking at the bar, she might have been impaired. The road ran through a wooded area where deer (or other animals) might have darted in front of her. Could she have lost control and ended up in the river?

The police called in a dive team to check the river. With the assistance of more modern techniques, including sonar, they found three targets and went into the murky water to check. The diver came up with a license plate from a vehicle submerged upside down—the license plate from the missing woman’s car.
The podcast highlighted the entire investigation from following leads to recovering the car, which all happened in a surprisingly short period of time. The recovery was fascinating to follow, as evidenced by the multiple media outlets visible in the video the divers produced. Even after the recovery, the police investigation continued. Was it an accident? Suicide? Foul play? The podcast followed the case beyond the recovery of the missing woman into the remainder of the investigation. They were able to determine the emergency brake had been engaged. The woman had tried to stop the car in a hurry. There was no other visible damage to the car to indicate a collision of any sort. Whether the river carried her in (it was a smaller vehicle, low to the ground) or she encountered something on the road that sent her into the river is a question they might never be able to answer. We’ll probably never know exactly what happened that night. The end result is they brought the missing woman home and gave her family closure after forty-plus years.

Inspiration is where you find it.

The family tour business Shyan Hogan inherited as the pandemic hit is on the verge of closing. Unaware of the state of things, her mother commissions brochures, leaving Shyan no choice but to tell her parents she’s failed.

Nate McGill found magic when he photographed the aurora borealis, prompting him to pursue a career in photography. In the years since, he hasn’t found anything remotely close to that same sense of magic. When he’s hired to do brochures for a tour company, his photo of the tour guide fascinates him in much the same way as the aurora. Her photo could be the key to the photography exhibit that will launch his career if he can convince her to let him use it.

Someone attempts to sabotage her company van after a chartered tour hits a sour note, but Shyan doesn’t want to believe it’s personal. When the vandalism escalates to include her home, she has to consider who is out to get her. Nate vows to protect her, but the threats didn’t start until he showed up. How does he figure into all of this? On top of that, he claims to have seen the local ghost in the river through his “magic” camera, and now he wants Shyan to help him give the restless spirit its peace. He doesn’t really believe in ghosts, does he?

About the Author: Karla Brandenburg is an award-winning author of contemporary romance novels which include paranormal elements, as well as ghost stories and witches. Now that her children have settled into lives of their own, she loves to go out into the world on adventures with her husband, from Milwaukee to the French Riviera, but the Chicago suburbs have always been “home.” She is an avid reader across multiple genres and is a card-carrying cookie-holic (we all have our vices).

Buy the book at Amazon.

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