Several years ago (this is what we say when we get old and can't remember how many) I started writing a murder mystery novel. I had a couple of characters in mind, a vague outline and a lot of enthusiasm. I decided to write a murder mystery because I have read a lot of them and they say to write what you know. I figured the first novel is the hardest, so make it as uncomplicated as possible. Reading mysteries and writing them are two different things. I found that I really didn't know that much about murder and making it believable. I argued with myself that it is fiction, it isn't going to win any awards, so just write and see what happens. I started coming up with questions. Lucky me, a friend from high school is a homicide detective in California. Why not make him a character and start asking him my questions?? Sounded feasible. Thank God he has the patience of a saint and puts up with my quirkiness. I can see why he is a good detective, the problem is when you are writing the story takes on a mind of its own. It takes you in places that you didn't see it going. The characters take on their own identities as well. You may base them on someone, but they turn into someone else entirely.
Facebook had a part in making the first major change in the novel, then my life. A friend of a friend saw me on Facebook and sent a note. He didn't realize I was from White Salmon and he had a couple of friends there. The friends that he had were ghost hunters and they had taken him ghost hunting in White Salmon. He wondered if I knew them and if I had ever been to these haunted locations. I have always been fascinated by ghost stories, so this intrigued me. Of course we encountered ghost stories in White Salmon. I had a few experiences myself on Slaughterhouse Road, an old house on that road and in the home of my friend's grandmother. The grandmother's house was both the coolest and creepiest place that I had seen in my young life. I spent a few sleepless nights there praying for morning to come. Of course the grandmother was a true believer of ghosts, she had to be, she lived in a haunted house. She even drove us out to Slaughterhouse Rd one day so we could explore the old house. She was unable to maneuver the overgrown terrain of the yard or the broken down stairs, but she waited in her car while we went in and promptly freaked ourselves out. I tried going back with cousin's later. We almost made it all the way up the stairs in that house. Two of my older cousins were in front of me going up the stairs. They got to the top, screamed and ran over me on the way down. I didn't ask questions, I just ran out screaming after them. I never went back. The house was torn down years ago. I may just have to research it to see if there is any particular reason for it to have been haunted, or if it was just a rundown, neglected old house.
Steven, my Facebook friend, said I should have ghost hunters find the body. He even suggested that I use his name and have him be on the ghost hunt when the body was found. That sounded like a great twist to me, so I said I would. I went back to work rewriting the second chapter. I added in that the body had been found by a group of ghost hunters. I didn't know anything about ghost hunting, but it seemed plausible that they would be in a cemetery.
Not long after I made these changes, I heard from Steven again. He had told the ghost hunters that I was writing a book and that they were going to be in it. They thought it was pretty cool and wanted to invite me to come to White Salmon and go ghost hunting with them. I am always up for a new adventure. I figured this would be good book research. I found out that my detective friend in California would be in the area during Christmas, so maybe I should bring him in on the ghost hunt too so that I could have a better visual when writing the story. Book research sounded so much more fun than the actual writing!
I was very excited about the ghost hunt, so was very disappointed when a big snow hit the area. The cemetery had several feet of snow and the roads into it were not plowed. There was no way we could do the ghost hunt. Not to be deterred, the ghost hunters invited us to their place to meet them, learn about what they do and to view some "evidence" that they had. A small group of us made the journey twenty minutes east of White Salmon to an RV park where the ghost hunters lived in a "Tin Twinkie". The Airstream trailer was a bit crowded, but it gave me an experience much stranger than I could have thought up on my own. Between the snakes, the computer equipment and the cheap beer, I got my first lesson in EVPs, Orbs, Mists and tools used to detect Paranormal Activity. At the time I had never seen any of the ghost shows on Discovery or the Travel Channel. I was clueless, but very intrigued. I wish I would have snapped some pictures or taken better notes, but I did go back and twist the experience around to fictionalize it and wrote it into the story.
My novel writing did have a few more awesome research trips that I took including my first real ghost hunt six weeks later. Life got in the way and my writing stalled. I put it on the back burner for a few years. I haven't stopped the research though. I have gone on several ghost hunts, taken classes, looked at a new spiritual perspective and have learned so much. I have learned a bit about Mediums which is interesting because my character had some experiences in the book that I wasn't sure what to call or hot to write about. Picking up the book and finishing it is proving to be harder than I realized since I have changed, I have a different view of the characters and I'm not sure which direction I want to take it now. I do know I want to finish it. Maybe I need to leave it the way it was meant to be as my first novel, get it under my belt and then get to work on a second. We will see what happens. I am on my way to check out now to a Writer's Group. The one thing I do know about myself is that I need a small team to help me through this process. I need to be able to bounce ideas off of someone, be accountable to someone and to have another set or two of eyes. Not sure if this group will help, but wanted to check it out, so who they are, what they do and if I fit in. If I do, then I will spend my Wednesday afternoons there. If it isn't a fit, I will need to pull something together on my own.
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