Good Evening Readers,
Yesterday we began our five-part series by author, H.G. Ferguson. You can read about that interview here. Today we are going to hear from H.G. in the second installment in his writing journey towards publication.
After writing Jezebelle - I
finished it about a year later, it was a tough, tough project – I felt so
polluted inside from making the main character SO THOROUGHLY EVIL I had to
write about someone the total OPPOSITE of the vain, cruel, selfish, proud,
life-annihilating MONSTER I had created.
And then another image gradually came into my mind – about
February/March of 2008. This time
instead of a voluptuous beauty I saw a slight, pale, petite young-looking woman
in a black cloak and hood also walking through the night – lifting up a voice
that rivals the angels in Latin Gregorian chants of praise to God. Sweet, gentle, humble, selfLESS, no great
beauty, with haunting eyes, pale complexion – deathly pale – speaking in the
musical tones of the Welsh – and her name came to me, almost as if I heard it
spoken: REBECCA.
And after this image, I remembered an idea I had BACK IN
HIGH SCHOOL WHEN I WAS 17 YEARS OLD – and virtually THE ENTIRE STORY FLASHED
BEFORE MY EYES. I knew where it was
going and what its elements would be. I
wasn’t exactly sure how it would end, but I knew the story from that
very moment.
Every single thing just fell into place. The most important thing – the central
character – crystallized like ice. I
knew who this woman was before I ever wrote a word. It was easy.
She was the opposite of Jezebelle.
In every way. Jezebelle is an
unclean spirit of the dead. Rebecca is
alive, alive in her Savior Jesus Christ.
Rebecca is also…a vampire.
The idea I had when I was 17 is WHAT IF what we call
vampirism is in reality an extremely rare GENETIC DISORDER, like MS, with
certain specific characteristics which account for all the vampire folklore in
the world. And what if one of these people
comes to America in the colonial period?
Almost immediately I knew it had to be during the time of
the French and Indian War. The
Revolution has been done, and redone, and done again, but apart from the works
of James Fenimore Cooper and his Hawkeye and the Last of the Mohicans tales,
this period of American history – with its inseparable ties to FRENCH CANADA –
is largely forgotten and untapped. So I
set out to do research.
When I sought out our local library, I searched for
COLONIAL AMERICA online at their website and a book popped up: OUTPOSTS OF EMPIRE – WESTERN PENNSYLVANIA
1754-1763, the time of the F&I War.
So I checked it out. It was a
goldmine. It told me everything, and it
became clear to me the story MUST be set in Western Pennsylvania in 1755, the
year the war actually began there. Other
pieces of information came together.
Everything I needed fell into my lap.
I spent two months researching and in July of 2008, I wrote the first
chapter. In the last week of November
after Thanksgiving I wrote THE END. 5
months writing.
This was only the beginning, as I was to discover.
Don’t give up – join us tomorrow for Part 3.
Here are the links for H.G.'s information.
Here are the links for H.G.'s information.
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