Marvin Levine
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Lowcountry Author
New release - The Ghosts of Wellington Manor
Now available on Amazon in print, ebook, and Kindle Unlimited
Evil took root in Wellington Manor generations ago. Now, a stranger’s arrival will stir the dead — and expose the living.
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When Denise accepts an invitation to her new boyfriend’s family’s annual pre-Christmas dinner in their South Carolina ancestral plantation home, she has no idea the home’s spectral inhabitants will awaken — and fixate on her. What begins as a holiday gathering soon unravels into chaos as the family’s fractured dynamics come to light.
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The drama follows the family to Brookgreen Gardens’ dazzling holiday light show — and to a murder that transforms dysfunction into full-blown horror. Caught in the aftermath, Denise becomes a key figure in the investigation. But she’s not alone. The ghosts who haunt Wellington Manor have been waiting for this reckoning — and hold the secrets needed to uncover the truth.
Behind the scenes of The Ghosts of Wellington Manor
After finishing The Lost Fleet, I knew I wanted to return to the themes of a murder mystery and a wealthy, powerful but highly dysfunctional family. In 2024 I had the opportunity to do a book club meeting with the folks from the Litchfield Plantation subdivision. I was so enamored with the home and its history, I decided to use a place like that for the setting of the next book. Like the Litchfield Plantation, Wellington Manor is a former rice plantation set on the Waccamaw River, this time just south of Pawleys Island.
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When choosing the family, I wanted to exhibit a good deal of diversity, not so different than many other real-life families – this one maybe a little more so. I embraced the idea of my protagonist, Denise, a young Black law student, as the new girlfriend of the Wellington’s younger son Will. Throw into that mix a powerful corrupt patriarch, a no-nonsense dominant matriarch, a gay lawyer older daughter, a redneck trash older son, and a Yankee son-in-law and you have the making of some real volatility. The fact that Denise is the county sheriff’s daughter (my recurring sheriff Leroy Keating), hidden from the family at first, creates great tension in the family dynamics.
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Since the book is coming out in the fall (as will all my future books) I wanted this one to have a Christmas setting. This then tied into bringing Brookgreen Gardens’ Nights of a Thousand Candles light show into the story. Spectacular in its own right, I tried to keep the details as close to the real event as possible. Readers familiar with the show will identify with many of the descriptions, as well as a few places where I varied. What the show doesn’t have (thankfully) is a murder right in the middle of it. But in the book, somebody is going down.
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One of my favorite scenes in the book is the dinner that devolves into chaos. I got the inspiration for this scene from the Netflix series The Perfect Couple. In that particular dinner scene, secrets and accusations are tossed around like hand grenades. I tried to match the intensity of it in my story.
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And then there are the ghosts. Two former slaves with their own story to (eventually) tell. I started with no ghosts, just a straight murder mystery. Then I added the ghosts to give the novel an added angle. But somehow the ghosts worked their way deeper into the plot. By the time I was halfway through writing, the ghosts deserved to be in the title as well as part of the central plot. It’s my first venture into magical realism since Clairvoyance Rain and I embraced it wholeheartedly. There’s a great legacy of ghosts and haunted houses throughout the Lowcountry. Here’s one more.
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More than anything else, I want my writing to connect with the reader on an emotional level. I want you to feel the joy, the fear, the anxiety, the anger, the astonishment, and the sorrow as they unfold in a suspenseful thrilling plot. I sincerely hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
About
Marvin Levine | A Path To Writing
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I was born on the North Shore of Boston in 1959 in Beverly, Massachusetts. Growing up I was more inclined towards Math and Science and received an Engineering degree in 1981 from
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. I worked as a Quality Manager for the next thirty-eight years in the metals and printing industries in Birmingham Alabama and Decatur and
Chicago, Illinois. I have a daughter Robin from my first marriage who is married and lives with her husband Tom in Sanford, Florida. I also have a stepson Brock and stepdaughter Kristin from my current marriage of close to twenty-five years with Margaret. Brock and his wife Lauren have two children, Grey and Livi and live in Auburn, Alabama. Kristin has three children from
her first marriage, Hayden, Isaac, and Leanna. She is currently married to Kyle and live in Hoover, Alabama.
I have always had a creative streak in me. In the second grade I wrote poetry, much to the astonishment of my mother and grandmother. In my twenties, I learned to play guitar and wrote a
number of songs. I guess I thought of myself as the next Bob Dylan, until I realized I couldn’t sing. Still can’t sing. I have always been an avid reader and made several attempts to write
during my management career, which always seemed to end quickly and badly.
Years later, two seminal events preceded my writing in earnest. The first was at my father’s funeral. In the spring of 2016, my dad passed after a long illness. In the weeks leading up to the end, I decided to give a eulogy and wove a story of past memories, coupled with the meaning of being a father. While others gave tentative, prewritten, nervous speeches, mine was the final tribute and I told the story by memory without hesitation. I thought it went well. Immediately afterwards, as we were leaving the funeral home, the rabbi came up to me and said, “Marvin, I have to tell you this. I have heard hundreds of eulogies over the years. That was one of the best I have ever heard. It was so well told, heartfelt, and sincere.” It was the first time I truly felt I could compile and tell a story to others which would actually hold their interest.
The second event revolved around my stepdaughter’s divorce. In early 2017, Kristin began divorce proceedings after 15 years married to an emotionally abusive narcissist. Margaret and I were thrilled. I started giving her bits and pieces of written encouragement during the six months it took for her to reach a separation. Then I wrote a short piece which became a parable. A single page soon became a 20-page short story. She loved it and for the first time I realized I could put a compelling story into written words.
Later in 2017, I continued to put the emotional juices of supporting her divorce to work, and I wrote my first novel, The Broken Wire. To my surprise, the story flowed easily. In it, a young divorcee discovers an Impressionist masterpiece, secretly hidden in her family for over a hundred years. Next Century Publishing published The Broken Wire in 2018 as an e-book. However, they went bankrupt the next year and the novel was delisted. I then Indie published the book on Amazon and B&N.com.
In 2019, I completed Clairvoyance Rain, my take of a Stephen King style paranormal thriller. It’s the story of a young boy whose dreams of premonitions connected him and his circle of family and friends to some of the greatest tragedies of the 21st century. This book was also Indie published on Amazon and B&N.com.
In 2019, Margaret and I retired to the beautiful beach community of Pawley's Island, South Carolina where I began to devote more of my time towards writing. I wrote Graceless in Salem, inspired by John Boyle’s The Heart’s Invisible Furies. It’s a humorous tale of adolescent love gone horribly wrong, written first person from the protagonist’s adult POV. As of now, this
novel remains unpublished.
In the summer of 2020 I began writing A Trail of Vengeance. I switched genres again and focused on a crime / psychological / suspense / thriller theme. I wanted to write a story set in my
home beach area as it presented an idyllic backdrop to the drama as it unfolds. I also wanted to use the concept of an opening with a traumatic event in the main characters lives, followed by the main story picking up years later. I sought to keep the storyline centered around one main plot line, building suspense throughout in a condensed time frame to an explosive climax.
There are three main factors I focus on in my writing. The first and foremost is to make the story compelling. The plot must be original, exciting, but also based in reality. The characters
must be identifiable to the reader, and I want them to either love or hate them. The second factor is to create tension in the storyline. I love to use chapter ending twists and turns, suspense, and the gradual release of facts to keep the reader surprised and guessing. The third element is to tap into the emotional state of each character, through both dialogue and description, so that the reader ‘feels’ the story as it unfolds.
Above all, I write because of the passion I have for turning ideas, concepts, and pictures conjured in my imagination into words, prose, and a compelling story other people will enjoy
reading. It truly gives me great pleasure to present a finished product.