New Release​

White Ghost Blues

If he weren’t a celebrity, 17-year-old Wyatt “White Ghost” Dumaine would probably serve as a piñata for any bullying group at his New Orleans high school. After all, he’s brainy, small and skinny, an orphan — and an albino. Even his fame, as a blues guitar prodigy, isn’t exactly a big deal to his classmates. All it provides is a sort of hands-off notoriety.

Ghost has one true friend, the gorgeous Allison Pernot, a New Orleans Saints cheerleader who, oh yeah, also happens to be a vampire. Insofar as the shallow emotions of the Undead allow, Allison enjoys Wyatt’s company and his extrasensory ability that helps identify potential victims who aren’t great citizens and won’t be missed. For his part, Ghost would love it if Allison would make him a vampire so they could be together forever.

But he also loves Tante, the elderly woman who adopted him when his parents died after Hurricane Katrina. Tante is distraught after a family tragedy — so how could he, in good conscience, abandon her? Too, he finds himself bonding emotionally with a classmate, Poe Watkins, the girl who runs his website and is reeling after a breakup with her boyfriend. Then, on the eve of the biggest gig of his life, Ghost discovers a terrible secret. Can Allison provide the only solution to his problems? Or should Wyatt decide to ensure happiness for Tante and Poe at great personal sacrifice?

WHITE GHOST BLUES is what might have happened if Anne Rice had written The Fault in Our Stars while listening to scratchy old blues records.

WHITE GHOST BLUES is published by the esteemed dark fiction house JournalStone. Available in paperback ($16.95) and eBook ($5.95) from journalstone.com, Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble and other major bookstores and distributors. 

About Rick

I live in southeastern Connecticut with my wife Eileen and the latest in our succession of rescue dogs, Virgil and Mabel. Our house is close to the beach, which sounds cool, but we can’t see any water from where we live. Lotta ticks, though.

Education and experience:
I went to Baylor, flunked out and never got a degree. I played rock music for a decade-and-a-half and, once I achieved the goal of ruining my hearing. I retired. For 109 years I worked as an arts journalist and columnist for New London’s The Day newspaper. Then I was laid off without so much as a farewell cupcake party, so I went home and took a nap.

What Famous People Are Saying​

“WHITE GHOST BLUES is full of love and music, mystery and longing.  Rick Koster writes with a musician’s knowledge of New Orleans–he turns the city into a character as much as a setting–and he fills the novel with characters you’ll never forget. I felt their yearning on every page, and by the end I had tears streaming down my face. It is a love story that’s wildly alive, madly undead, shockingly funny, utterly devastating (as all the truest love stories are), and completely compelling.”
Luanne Rice WatersNew York Times bestselling author

“Vampires, Voodoo and the Blues. WHITE GHOST BLUES is a supernatural tale of all that is cool in New Orleans, with a surprisingly profound meditation on what makes life.”
— Peter FilardiScreenwriter of Flatline and The Craft