The Revenge of The Crazy Old Lady?

I've mentioned before that my characters have a habit of bossing me around and pestering me to spend time with them when I am busy doing other things. Sometimes this is really aggravating and sometimes it is really interesting. In my experience characters are much like children – they get really sulky and whiny when they feel like they have not been given enough attention. It gets exhausting.

For the last few weeks I've been completely absorbed in the sequel to Ghosts of a Beach Town in Winter but now Ghosts of a Lighthouse in Autumn is off being reviewed by a couple people and I have been doing things like sketching out ideas for new stories and also for a novel I have in mind. And promoting – endless promoting, a thing I do not have enough time for. Then last night some old characters started chattering at me and, oh dear, they brought up some interesting questions. What, they waned to know, ever became of GrammyLou's house after Stan forced Mattie to leave it and go back to Cape Cod.

I asked them what they thought became of it and they said they were pretty sure it was haunted and that the new people who bought it were having a hard time. They also mentioned that before Mattie sold the house she had that body under the back porch dug up and properly buried. They reminded me that when bodies like that are dug up they can unleash unforeseen forces that do not bode well for peace and serenity. I forgot about that. It's a good thing I have bossy characters to remind me of these things.

As we were discussing this one of the characters said it seemed awfully suspicious that Digger up and died about that time because he had always been quite healthy. Another character mentioned that they had heard about a couple of other people from that story meeting untimely deaths. They thought it was too strange to be completely coincidental. They expressed the opinion that it was my responsibility as their author to look in to all of this. I mentioned that Stan had vowed never to let Mattie go back to Boston and that she was close to an emotional breakdown after everything that occurred. They said they thought it would be good for her to man-up and do something about the godawful mess that GrammyLou created.

Well, I guess I have my marching orders. The Crazy Old Lady in the Attic has been my most successful book to date but, as the characters point out, it left some strings dangling. Is the literary world ready for The Revenge of the Crazy Old Lady or The Crazy Old Lady Rides Again? I don't know but I have a sense I'm not going to get any peace until I at least look into it.

More to come and thanks for reading.