Darke House, the first novel in the Dreamtime series, introduces a world that is invisible, but all around us. A parallel dimension, if you will, between our living world and the world beyond. Populated by ghosts. You see, dreamtime isn't a measure of time. It's a place.
The story unfolds in Milltown, a small town on the southeast coast of Connecticut. There is nothing remarkable about it, about the beach and meadows across the bay from Point of Ospreys. Nothing you can see, anyway. Within dreamtime, however, it is beyond remarkable. Amazing. Extraordinarily good.
Imagine that two modern Connecticut casino tribes acquire that Milltown beach and meadow, and then build a spectacular shoreline resort directly superimposed upon a Victorian ghost house, a house that its dreamtime residents call Darke House. What would happen if, one September, they were threatened by two storms - one, a vicious hurricane from the physical world, and the other, a monstrous storm from the parallel dimension?
No one within the ghostly walls of Darke House need worry. However, if you are not within, you need to be very, very afraid.


Summerland is the kind of book you take to the beach.
In fact, it happens at the beach - a little Connecticut beach town called Shoals Crossing - directly across the bay from Milltown, where Darke House, the first book in the Dreamtime series, happened.
It's all about Nora Reiss. Young, almost beautiful, and determined to be a novelist, Nora has dropped out of college in her senior year and moved into a sweet little cottage in the Evergreen Grove section of Shoals Crossing to finish her first novel, Crying Time.
Someone else has moved into the neighborhood - the ghost of a girl who lived five million years ago, give or take.
Darke House set the stage - Summerland fills that stage with a cast that will change Nora's life forever: A man with strange green eyes who claims to be the darkness to her light. A best friend who can read minds. And a mysterious, beautiful - and mad - woman who wants to kill her.
And, of course, a black cat or two.
If you're looking for deep, important literature, keep looking. If, on the other hand, you want to escape to the beach where there's just enough melodrama to keep it fun and the bad guys get what's coming to them - well, welcome to Summerland.


Crying Time is Nora Reiss' novel, set in 1950 and included within Summerland. Meet Tony Maloney, private investigator. His client is Evie, who witnessed a murder and is now on the run.


About the author (from the back cover of Summerland):
Pat Kelbaugh is a green-eyed bookworm who's never seen a ghost (she's only heard one). She has a fondness for black cats. She's an accomplished watercolor artist. She writes poetry. She spent over thirty years working an office job in Corporate America.
Makes you wonder...
How could she not write ghost stories?



Darke House and Summerland are the first two novels in my Dreamtime series, now out on Amazon in trade paperback format and as Kindle eBook!

Follow this link to my page on Amazon.com
This is an imaginary nautical chart showing where the stories take place.
Some of it may seem vaguely familiar...