And yes, I've started work on Epitaph 5!
Research can be one of the most fun parts of writing a book, and its very easy to get lost along the way. I'm taking virtual tours and GoogleEarth-ing places for a "man on the street" view of some of my locales. Along with the "real" is the artistic license part. For what I'm trying to create, a real venue doesn't exist, so I get the fun part of creating a place, kind of like when I went to Scotland and wanted to visit Craigh na Dun. Guess what? It isn't there!
I have been wringing my hands over this next book, wondering how I was going to write it, how I was going to get it right. It's based on legend, and the more reading I did about the various interpretations of the legend, the more I worried it wouldn't work for what I had in mind. Until... Oh, but I can't give away all my secrets just yet! Once I started looking into things, my imagination opened up to the possibilities.
I've always loved folklore. Legends. Campfire stories. This book doesn't precisely fit with the ghost theme, but it does have supernatural flair. The excitement of a new story has taken hold. If I can stop researching long enough to put it to paper, I think we've got a fun one! What are some of your favorite folk stories and legends?
I recently wrote about the Legend of Huggin' Molly, a ghostly woman who rode the midnight train and who would snatch up anyone who got too close to the tracks. Methinks it was mostly a story conjured up by adults to keep the kids away from the train tracks. And it worked.
ReplyDeleteLots of legends were designed with "an ounce of prevention" in mind
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