Guest Post by Sarah Kernochan and Giveaway of Jane Was Here (5 winners, INT) CLOSED

KILLERS AMONG US

In my novel Jane Was Here the reincarnation of souls is central to the mystery facing the title character Jane.  I don’t concern myself whether the reader believes in reincarnation (although, according to statistics, 1/3 of Americans do believe). After all, fiction is all about what if, and reincarnation is a huge what if.

Reincarnation dares to answer the question everyone asks at some point or other: “Why me?” Well, what if there was a reason why you? A reason for why someone seems to have perrenial “good luck,” or why another person suffers like Job, or another dies young, oranother, like me, has an inexplicable fear of snakes? Areason may be buried back in another time: that is,another life time…

On a hot summer night Jane appears in a small New England town. She has come to believe she is the incarnation of another young women called Jane, who in 1853 met a mysterious end in this same town. What happened and who was complicit? Jane is driven to find out.

Many proponents of reincarnation say that souls are often reborn into the same groups, though they take different roles. For example, your past-life sister may be reincarnated as your husband, a husband becomes a son, a son becomes the doctor who saves your life. In Jane Was Here, the question for the reader is: which one in this town was Jane’s killer? Is her murderer reincarnated as a woman or a man? Adult? Child? Who in this town was her lover? Her mother? Her betrayer? Could be anyone…until signs and messages appear, and the town’s nightmare begins.

For myself, I’ve experienced a few fleeting regressions that have opened a window into my own past lives (no, I wasn’t Cleopatra – thank God, speaking of snakes).  Thus I embarked on Jane Was Here as a believer. Like Alice Sebold in The Lovely Bones, I also have my own concept of what the after-life, or I should say the between-lives, is like. The result for me is that I’m paradoxically both attached to this life and also eager to return to the between, and while I’m not crazy about dying I’m not particularly afraid of death.

I’d love to hear from anyone else who has reincarnation stories to tell, so leave a comment sharing them and you'll be entered to win one of five copies of Jane Was Here.

Sarah Kernochan received early acclaim for her Academy Award winning documentary Marjoe. She then recorded two albums for RCA as a singer-songwriter. In 1977, her first novel Dry Hustle was published. Returning to film, she scripted the film Nine and ½ Weeks, Impromptu, Sommersby, What Lies Beneathand All I Wanna Do, which she also directed. She received a second Academy Award in 2002 for her short documentary Thoth. 2010 brought the re-issue of Dry Hustle as an ebook, and a third album of songs. 2011 brings us to Jane Was Here; Sarah’s first love and teenage ambition – a novel about reincarnation. Sarah currently teaches screenwriting at Emerson College in Boston, and is working on a new screenplay.

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The Giveaway: CLOSED

The publisher is offering up five books for giveaway. Three are physical copies and are for US/Canada only.  Two are ebooks and are for international only.  Leave a comment telling us any reincarnation story you may have, or your thoughts on reincarnation. Then tell us if you're US/Canada or International and be sure to include contact info!

Must be 18 or older to enter.
Ends 7/25/2011


Here's the book trailer: