By Julia Train
Jaime Roff, 47, of Northfield, works for the Atlantic County clerk’s office day-to-day. However, on book covers, she’s known as Emma Reilly.
In 2023, the local author published two paranormal romance books, the first of which she’d been working on for 10 years.
Roff fell in love with writing as a girl. Although she went to college for art and illustration, she took writing courses and wound up finishing with a minor in writing.
She also said that she has always been obsessed with ghost stories. Roff recalled being fascinated when learning about local lore, like the Jersey Devil, and when her grandmother recited ghost stories.
So, when coming up with the book’s storyline, it was almost a no-brainer.
Her premier book, “Haunted Hearts,” was released on March 3, 2023. The story’s based on the headless horseman story but with a twist: he’s not the bad guy in this one.
“In most stories, the headless horseman is kind of the bad guy who comes out to kill everyone, but in this story, there’s a killer who’s obsessed with him and is mimicking him,” said Roff. “I love the paranormal. I love people that have unique abilities… something with an element of the spirit world in it.”
The novel centers around a main character who has psychic abilities and her mom was killed by the story’s killer. Years later, she’s reconnected with someone she went to school with as a kid who’s a reporter now and lost his mom the same way. They team up to find the killer and figure out what exactly happened to their moms.
The story’s based in Sleepy Hollow, New York, and features a great deal of the town’s ghost stories — like ghost ships and the woman in white — and real places and events in the town. Since her son was young at the time she began writing, she conducted her research online and wandered the town on Google Maps.
“I went through a long break where I didn’t work on it at all because it wasn’t going in the direction I wanted it to. I really just wanted something spooky. I didn’t want horror, and I didn’t want a killer,” said Roff. “So I stopped approving of it, and I stopped thinking that it was going to be any good.”
But after that pause, she wanted to finish it for herself because she wanted to know how it was going to end.
“The moment I started approving of it, the whole thing just started pouring out of me very easily… It was almost like channeling. The whole book just came through,” Roff said.
Within a few months, she was done writing her first book.
While her editor was finishing reviewing that, she wrote her second book and released it within nine months, on Nov. 1, 2023. The sophomore novel is a sequel, titled “When The Music Dies”. It focuses on a character from the first book and follows his own story, involving ghosts, love and past lives.
The books, which are recommended for ages 16 and up, are available both electronically and in print. They can be purchased online through Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Books-A-Million Online. Physical copies of “Haunted Hearts” can also be found at A Local Boutique in Margate.
Roff is currently working on an audio version of “Haunted Hearts” and is hoping to have it out in a couple of months.
