CANDLELIT CHRONICLES: HISTORIC HAUNTS

March 4_775 word count

         I announced in this blog a while back that one of my pet topics would be the process and progress of my writing-for don't all we writers love to talk about ourselves? So today I'm going to orate on the current intriguing process of the newest novel, The Haunted Greenhouse, which was intended to be the sequel to the novel I began on Dec. 12, 2009, and will finish this month: The Phantom Logging Operation. Both take place in the context of my Phantom Northern Woods Tales and these two novels comprise Books One and Two of The Testament Logging Corporation Chronicles.





I began The Haunted Greenhouse on Monday, March 1, since my intention about mid-February had become to use MarNoWriMo (March Novel Writing Month) to write a sequel to The Phantom Logging Operation. I had expected my protagonist, Rory Lewes, to simply carry on, muddling his way through the continuing parade of horrors The Big Forest throws at him, while demonstrating a fine grasp of moral integrity. Sorry, Gentle Readers! The Haunted Greenhouse has plans of its own, and by Day 3-yesterday-this novel had already begun to demonstrate clearly that it is determined, like its namesake, to go its own way, do its own thing-and to do it IN ITS OWN VOICE.





         Yes, Gentle Readers, The Haunted Greenhouse is no longer “just” the sequel to The Phantom Logging Operation. It's not even just Rory's book any more. Sure, some of the characters carry over, including Rory, Grave Ghost Girl, and Alice down at the Village of Knox General Store; and of course the ubiquitous, anthropomorphized, conscious Haunted GreenHouse (to be distinguished from the regular, ordinary, “normal,” Greenhouse Rory is constructing as part of his new Plant Nursery). But the differences were clear from the first day:





1.as soon as I had written the Prologue on Day 1, I knew that this was not going to be the first person point of view I used so successfully in The Phantom Logging Operation, which is written in Rory's first person POV. No, THG is third person point of view, and what a style of third person POV it is!


2.THG is written in double, alternating, third person POV's. The recurring, constant, thread is the third person viewpoint of The GreenHouse, that haunted, haunting, and consciously evil entity Rory is impelled to construct on his land, across the driveway and beyond the line of pines, atop charred foundation ruins whose provenance he doesn't know and The GreenHouse doesn't yet recall.


3.The alternating third person point of view will be from the standpoint of one of the other characters. So far, in five chapters, we have seen it from Rory's side, and from Grave Ghost Girl's side. Young Alice, I am sure, will also take her place on stage in providing a turn at the alternating third person POV, as toward the end of ”TPLO” she returns to draw Rory's attention at a time when he very nearly loses his life while inside The Big Forest-which would be a serious drawback for him (not just dying, but doing so inside that monstrous locale).


4.My writing style has changed completely. ”The Phantom Logging Operation” has that trademark wry, ironic, style that I exerted throughout the “Mediumistic Mary” series-where the protagonist there, 14-year-old Mary living in South Alabama and later South Georgia in 1911 adds her own smart-mouth, cynical flavour. That cynicism is not present in ”TPLO”-Rory is an idealist after all-but the ironic tone carries throughout.


Well, The Haunted Greenhouse”reads, and writes, to me as if it is being composed by an entirely different author. Flowery and “19th century” is the only way I can describe it: sometimes it feels as if I am writing Vanity Fair. Or perhaps I am reincarnating William Dean Howells, without the syrup. I have never written in this particular Voice before, and if this is what is meant by “finding one's Voice,” I find myself-astonished.





5.”The Phantom Logging Operation” is pure, straight-out, no pretensions, horror. My protagonist Rory returns to the region of his birth, where he has not lived since age 2, and the evil Big Forest and evil Testament Corporation makes his life a living scarefest. Meanwhile, Rory develops his already sterling character even further.


But The Haunted Greenhouse,” on the other hand, which I expected to be a subsequent straight horror work, has somehow immediately transmuted itself into horror cum magic cum fantasy (fantastical plus phantasmagoria) plus metaphysics plus medieval worldview type of plot lines. Very unexpected-see, Gentle Readers, I'm apparently just the amanuensis here, and not the author .