A Good Ghost Story

Tom and Kelly Barrett live a privileged life in their beach cottage along the shores of Lake Michigan, their weekends spent sailing on their sailboat slipped at the local marina. It was a very nice life ... but at what cost, they were beginning to wonder. Unlike many of their wealthy neighbors, theirs was a privilege not given or inherited, but earned. Kelly is a post-op nurse working at a large metropolitan hospital in Chicago where understaffing and mandatory overtime are more the rule than the exception, and Tom is a minority partner in a demanding computer technology business, working feverishly twelve to thirteen hours a day to ensure the company's success; something his greedy partners have grown to expect. Free time has become a seldom luxury for the Barretts. At thirty-four, they are quite frankly burned out. With both the opportunity and the means, they decide to quit their jobs, cash everything in, and open the bed and breakfast they've always talked about. After an extensive search, they find the perfect property … an old Victorian mansion overlooking the Atlantic in the charming town of Gull Harbor, Maine. The house needs some work, the price is right, and the sale ensues. After months of painstaking and costly renovation, The Sleeping Gull Inn stands polished and poised to greet its first guests. But all is not as it would seem at the charming oceanfront inn. Beneath the beautifully renovated façade lay loathsome secrets waiting to be uncovered. Length 60,000 words.