Lynn Bohart believes in ghosts.
Known to many throughout the area for her work as executive director with the Renton Community Foundation, Bohart is revealing a different side of her personality with her latest eBook, “Your Worst Nightmare.”
Available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble websites, the book of short stories delves into the paranormal and eerie concepts.
“I’m the kind of personality that I believe in the possibility of almost anything,” Bohart said. “I really do believe in ghosts, but I don’t know for sure if UFOs exist, or Sasquatch or the Loch Ness Monster or all that.”
But, Bohart of Kent still questions why wouldn’t those things exist.
She explores the idea of ghosts, nightmares, parallel universes and unexplained events in her eBook that she self-published this July.
Bohart has marketed “Your Worst Nightmare” to young adults, but she said it’s appropriate for anyone who loves a good story with a twist.
The first story examines that old wives’ tale about dying in your sleep if you fall and hit bottom in a dream before you wake.
“But, as I created it, it turned into this very different sort of creepy monster,” said Bohart about giving the dream hair and teeth.
It ends with an unexpected twist as most of her stories do in this series.
“Having been a theater major, I’m good at dialogue, but also I’m a very visual person,” Bohart said. “So, creating paranormal stuff creates more visual stuff for me.”
She’s been writing for 15 years and her story “The Boathouse,” which appears in “Your Worst Nightmare,” was published back then in an anthology. The anthology rose to No. 13 on a library most-popular list 10 years ago. Her current book includes other stories she wrote in the last few months.
All of Bohart’s tales take on a certain “Twilight Zone” appeal that clues the reader into some other-worldly plot taking place just out of reach.
She doesn’t delight in gory details that will keep readers up at night but hopes the plot twists are clever enough to make readers think.
The last story in “Your Worst Nightmare” called “Mass Murder” is the first chapter of a novel she hopes to publish soon. The story is about three murders and a ghost in a Catholic monastery.
After being encouraged by her brother, Bohart decided to self-publish her stories as an eBook because of the relative ease and potential exposure it presents for new authors.
It’s free and it doesn’t require all the time it takes to publish traditionally, courting an agent just to get in front of a major publishing house.
“The whole process could take years,” said Bohart. “With eBooks coming along, [agents] are not getting as many clients because obviously we can now publish ourselves so much more easily.”
Bohart doesn’t even own a ereader like a Kindle or a Nook. Users can download a free app through Amazon or Barnes & Noble, like she did, for their PC or hand-held device to view eBooks.
And it has put her in touch directly with the audience she was seeking. Bohart was surprised to find one day that a middle-school student had read her book and posted that is was her favorite on her Facebook page.
Priced at just 99 cents per download, Bohart knows she won’t make much off of sales.
“It just makes me feel good that somebody would sit down and read the stories and enjoy them,” she said. “That does more for me than probably anything.”
To access Bohart’s book, search for it on Amazon.com or BarnesandNoble.com. There is a free application for those who don’t have eReaders.
