Where do you GET those ideas?
I started with one Halloween-themed short story, "Morgan Roehmar's Boys," which I wrote for the anthology Gothic! (The idea for that came after being on a haunted hay ride and thinking that was a lovely setting for a scary story--especially if you didn't know what was spooky stage-setting and what, if anything, might be real.)
That one story made me want to write a collection of stories for teens, all centered on the spookiest night of the year.
The idea for "Cemetery Field Trip" came after I did an author visit for a class of kids and the class was held--really!--in Rochester's Mt. Hope cemetery. In real life, nothing bad happened there to any of the students. At least... not that I know of. (By the way, I'd set another of my short stories in the same cemetery, "For Love of Him," which was published in Being Dead.)
"Only on All Hallows Eve" was inspired by an All Saints Day sermon.
With "Best Friends," I wanted to tell a story from alternating viewpoints--and each time I switched, I wanted to pull the rug out from under you and show you that everything you thought you knew from the previous sections was wrong.
The origin of "MARIAN" should be clear to anyone who has ever been in a car with a GPS. Those things seem to have minds of their own. |