INSPIRATION

Where do the stories come from?

 

Wow, it’s been way too long since I last wrote here! But building a retirement home out of state and the early arrival of twin grandbabies seem to have sucked up all my time and all my brains!

Sadly, still no big news on my book. Plenty of rejections, but I guess you aren’t a real author until you’ve been rejected by a plethora of publishers. I’ve quit taking it personally and to be honest, don’t really think about it much anymore. If it will be, it will be!

But, I keep writing. Someone asked me where I get ideas for my stories. I think that’s a very good question. One with no definitive answer.

Before I wrote Gangster’s Gold, I frequently said I really wanted to write a book but had no idea what to write about. Then, one day, my sister told me the story of how when our father purchased a dry cleaning business back in the Fifties, he’d found an old raccoon coat in the storage area. Upon closer examination, he was amazed to discover the coat had a bullet in the lining. I began to think about that coat. How did a bullet get there? Had someone been shot? Had the owner been carrying a gun? Was he some kind of gangster? Raccoon coats were especially popular in the Twenties, so maybe the coat belonged to a rumrunner or mobster. It was fun to speculate about its story and in the end, the provided the seed of the idea for my book.

My second story, about a psychic boy called on to help the spirits of children who had long ago been lost in an Alaskan mine, was inspired by a trip to the Kennicott copper mine in McCarthy, Alaska. It was a large operation that eventually was abandoned when the cost of mining the copper became too prohibitive. But, the ghost town and the remote area made me think about what if long ago, children who had lived in a mining community similar to Kennicott had disappeared. What could have happened to them? So, off I went.

My third story is about a girl who encounters a malevolent spirit in an old New Hampshire house. This story was inspired by a legend of “Yankee Vampires”. Back in the nineteenth century in New England, many in a single family might contract tuberculosis and over time, one after the other would die. Some people, especially in more remote areas, believed that the first to die was keeping their spirit alive by consuming the life energies of the living family members causing them to weaken and eventually expire. This could only be stopped by someone digging up the grave and if the investigators found fresh blood in the liver or heart, they were supposed to burn the organ and mix the ashes in a potion to be given to the afflicted. This medieval belief fascinated me. When Sophia, my main character, finds a diary of a girl whose siblings and cousins all inexplicably die at the age of seventeen of consumption,  she becomes concerned when her older sister turns seventeen and falls strangely ill. Is it the result of a virulent infection, or something more sinister?

There are stories all around us. I’ve learned to be more aware of things that might inspire future stories.

For example, I recently read an article about an old man whose family farm was about to be lost to a highway. He couldn’t bear the thought of losing the only home he’d known and that had been a part of his family for generations. In the end, he barricaded himself in his house, set it on fire and killed himself rather than see it go. It’s a very tragic story, but I think it has the potential for a fascinating story. Perhaps one I’ll even write!

Oh, I changed the music on my trailer. Take a look and see what you think! Thanks!