Writing a novel is an incredible investment of time. So writers have to make sure they like their general premise enough to devote months (sometimes years) to “living” with these characters.
With Haunted, the idea came to me in a dream.
I dreamed that I was in the woods and came across a quaint stone cottage. It seemed abandoned. I approached the front door and then all of a sudden realized, this was all a trick! The cottage was connected to miles of house: it was simply the end of one wing of the gigantic and evil mansion that I had been trying to escape from. Although I was now too terrified to enter, I knew I had to climb to the roof, hand over hand on the rough stones. An enormous iron grille covered a hole in the roof. I lay down on it, completely trusting my weight to it, to look down into the interior hall covered with old-fashioned family portraits. The painting closest to me was of a woman with makeup and hair akin to Marie Antoinette’s. I dared myself to touch it, so I reached down, down, down to touch that cheek covered in rouge: and found it was warm. And that the face began to laugh at me. I flew back down the stones of the façade.
When I woke up, I jotted down as much of the dream as I could remember and began crafting a story to incorporate it.
I was able to give in to my darker side and let loose with a truly bloodthirsty character. The first draft spilled out of me in a week, much of it handwritten. In that early draft, Phoebe had a twin. The Arnaud Manor was originally ten stories tall, until a critiquer pointed out no one built that high in the 1700s. My working title for the book was Blood Parlor.
Lynn Carthage is the pseudonym of an acclaimed fiction writer who has been a Yaddo fellow and teaches novel writing. Connect with her on Facebook and Twitter.
