walking with the dead

9 Sep 2018 news 0 Comments

It feels like fall here in Philly, which is a nice change after last week’s heatwave. The temps won’t stay this low but for now it’s perfect writing weather. It rained all night and was still going this morning, but I went out for a run anyway; forgot my pedometer so all those steps didn’t “count,” but I knew I needed to be in the cemetery. The great thing about rainy days is that most people stay inside, so it feels like you have the city to yourself. I’ve started a new novel and it’s set in the cemetery and surrounding neighborhoods; I watched a lot of TV yesterday but I also worked out my summary and got a few chapters underway. I realize that I’m often thinking about doors—last week I was headed to the bank when I saw a freshly painted interior door resting against the outside of a corner house. The yard was a bit wild and the exterior of the house needed some work, but that lone door was perfect. I must have tucked that image away because it came back to me yesterday as I was writing. When I visited the website, I didn’t find any African Americans among the “notables” buried in Woodlands, but there was an adjacent orphanage, asylum, and poorhouse: Blockley.

1838_LithographSo if my teen protagonist finds a lone Black boy in the cemetery, he might have been an orphan buried in a mass grave near Woodlands (1,000 burials were discovered in 2001 and reinterred at Woodlands). That area was considered rural in the 19th century even though Center City isn’t that far away from West Philly today. My second ghost is called Cin (short for Lucinda); she’s a Black woman wrongly committed to the asylum for working “black magic.” In reality she’s a psychic, a formerly enslaved woman who can sense portals that offer a way out for those in need. When her wealthy White mistress asks for her help, Cin complies and is then charged with her murder. I’m getting ahead of myself—a lot of this probably won’t end up in the book. But Cin matters because the protagonist’s mother is on disability due to mental illness; he’s terrified of having his mother taken away and so he’s become the adult in their household. But what he wants most is a place where his mother can heal, and Cin seems to offer that possibility.

It’s no coincidence that I’m writing about portals after watching Season 2 of Westworld; I’m also close to finishing Exit West by Mohsin Hamid. Think I’ll make another cup of tea and try to get an outline done for this new novel. For now I’m just calling it “Philly Story #1” because I’ve got two others in the works…