Ghost Stories

[crows]

For NaNoWriMo 2010, I wrote the almost complete manuscript (through the climax; there are a couple scenes of wrap-up that aren't written but I generally know what's in them) of a mystery(?) novel called Ghost Stories. It clocks in at about 75k, and in its original form was the conjectured future story of a side character in Phantom of the Opera, who's mother took her away from France after the fire in the theater (she was a teen). Fifteen years later, she's returned to France after her mother's death and the subsequent inheritance of a small property back home. She commences to try to sort out her life and events surrounding the fire, which she's almost totally blocked from memory, especially where it concerns the unreported death of a girl who was, at the time, a few years younger than her.

Writing it, I defaulted to Paris but realized a bit of the way through that the story I was telling was clearly happening in a much smaller town with a much more intimate community. I'm pretty happy with the story, events-wise, but it occurred to me in my ramblings through back-country Iowa of the last months that... reversing the locations featured in the story could work a lot better for me. Whisking an American-born Megan away to France when she's 15, her frightened mother unwilling to talk about the life they left behind in the Midwest. Returning to a decaying house in a decaying town after an education and the beginning of a career in Avignon because it's all she has left of a family.

Also, I live here, I can visit these fading coal-towns and look up into their broken windows. And I do. Sounds like more direct research than trying to figure out what the life of an existentially-confused 30 year old is like in Europe. Also, that way, the loss is more acute, and I think it will bring the central conflicts of the story into sharper relief. I'm really excited. I start re-writing today.

Comments

[squeemu]

Whisking an American-born Megan away to France when she's 15, her frightened mother unwilling to talk about the life they left behind in the Midwest. Returning to a decaying house in a decaying town after an education and the beginning of a career in Avignon because it's all she has left of a family.

aaaaa I want to read this, the setting sounds amazing

also I am glad you are making posts again! do not have the energy for capital letters or periods, apparently