The Long and Winding Road

A novel, any story really, any art really, takes time to gestate. Some creators might sit on ideas for years, abandoning it, coming back to it, working and tweaking here and there, like doing tricks with a yo-yo. My debut novel (note, not my first novel) In the House of In Between was just such an idea that took some time to finally find the light of day. All the way back in October of 2007, I had an idea, just a simple idea, and I wrote it down in a Word document and tucked it into a folder where I sometimes stuff ideas that don't have meat yet. Here is what I wrote, on a whim, that day:

"In the House of In-between:  A Ghost Story:

The first official tale set in Malaise, a supernatural thriller surrounding a medium and her scams set in the house that sits on the pathway between the two Earths."

Of course, the book that comes out March 20th, 2018, is quite different from that initial idea, but it was a seed that would grow.

It really starts all the way back in my senior year of high school when I wrote and drew two issues of a comic book that was very much a riff on The Crow, but with some otherworldly trappings much like Spawn. It was about as 90's as you could get. I set it in a fictional town in Minnesota (why Minnesota when I've never been there? Probably a Soundgarden song lyric) that in true brooding 90's teen angst I called Malaise. I set it off a highway, a blink and you'll miss it town off Lake Superior. I kept that town alive when I wrote Suicide King: Last Rant of Drunken Demon (featured in my collection PUNCH/PANTS) in 2001. Around the same time I began writing a short story entitled Violent Echo that also took place in this town. I didn't complete that story, but I was trying to create a shared universe.

Later, as the world became increasingly easier to explore with the internet and faster connection speeds and satellite imagery maps, I wanted to give Malaise a proper home, really set it someplace, find just the right spot...wait a minute, there is a small blink and you'll miss it town off of a highway sitting on the shores of Lake Superior and it's called Grand Marais! A town in the right spot and just a few letters off. It felt eerie. Had I heard of it and subconsciously twisted it to my whims? Regardless of the universe's mysterious ways, I gave up Malaise for Grand Marais. A fictional version of Grand Marais, so if you're from there, if you know it, I mean no disrespect, it's my Springfield, my Castle Rock.

So, all of that out of the way, the concept of Violent Echo was something I always wanted to return to, that hauntings and our concept of time may be intrinsically linked. I'd look up something here and there, read a scientific article that seemed to support a notion or idea; me and this Violent Echo were in that yo-yo pattern. My initial idea-bin musing for In the House of In-Between wasn't even connected, but I wanted to keep the town alive. Having these disparate ideas come together was hardly a stroke of genius, but rather, I had two ghost stories that maybe I could combine to make something bigger. I continued to muse on it. Write a blurb, an idea, read an article about spiritualism or time. Below is one such set of notes that preceded the writing of the actual novel:

I began to build the titular house:

 

And then in 2012 I finally committed to writing this particular idea in full. Well, not in full, but I completed the first draft as part of NaNoWriMo 2012.

 

In the following years, I would continue to work on it, with some greatly appreciated help from industry professionals and friends, right up into just the last few months as more edits and refining continued to polish this thing into a proper novel. To bring things back around, Violent Echo is in In the House of In Between, it's main concept, some plot points, and even the title. In fact, characters from Suicide King make appearances as well.

So here you have it—literally, you can have it, as in, buy it, own it, put it on your shelf or Kindle and ingest it with your brain. If you do, I hope you'll leave me a review wherever you purchase it. Blog about it. Review it on Goodreads and share it with you friends and family! But mostly, I sincerely hope you enjoy it!

You can find it in a variety of places and formats at this link: https://books2read.com/u/4Dodnr