You Have To Believe To Write About The Supernatural

A sense of place is all important in writing fiction. Readers can sense the credibility in your writing if you’ve been there. To be able to write about the supernatural you have to believe ghosts and paranormal events exist. How can a writer describe how it feels to encounter a spirit unless they’ve experienced terror when confronted with a mist that is slowly taking human form? Paul, Samantha, and Andy Barlowe, the principal characters in my new novel, The Haunting of Aaron House, to be published by Rogue Press in September 2015, have never seen a ghost, although Sam declares she can “feel” the previous owners of the antiques she finds. Writing this book, about ghostly possession and hauntings was easy for me because spirits have always been a part of my life, taken for granted.  I grew up believing in ghosts, spells, and the supernatural in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, the setting for the book. Today I live in Eureka Springs, Arkansas where all things metaphysical are accepted as real.

 My paternal grandmother was a faith healer who cast spells. They were called PowWow Women. In the novel, I use a spell given to my mother when she was a young girl to rid her of a persistent boyfriend, although for a different reason in the story.

     In Aaron House, Paul Barlowe, and his company, Barlowe Films, are shooting a documentary history of the region. He’s brought Sam and Andy to help on the film, so they are all staying in a rented farmhouse, by chance furnished with the antiques Sam loves.

They don’t know that for the last 170 years it has been haunted by two ghosts, Amalie and Phineas Peale, waiting for a human couple, because each needs human energy to gain enough power to destroy the other. Since the Civil War only men have lived there, the Aaron Brothers being the last.

The plot follows Paul, Sam and Andy during the making of the film at various historical sites while Sam, who has been told of the ghosts, tries to unravel the mystery of what has kept them from moving on. Soon, Amalie, who by now inhabits Sam's body, causes her to flashback to the 1860s, and gradually revealing the sinister secret that has kept these two ghosts at war. Paul knows there is something wrong, but cannot believe in ghosts, no matter what Sam tries to explain. One day, when he is alone in the house, he encounters the evil personage of Phineas and realizes they need help to get free. Even worse, Phineas later possesses him during an intimate moment with Sam, which terrifies him.

 The book has a roaring climax, but I won't tell you more, except, to relieve the tension of the ghost scenes and add some humor, I've added a very tender love story between Paul's wealthy playboy partner, Lloyd, also working on the film, and Penny, the terribly repressed and shy assistant working as a script girl. Penny is confused. She's never had a boyfriend, especially a millionaire hunk like Lloyd. He is totally smitten and pursues her. There is also a stray dog who is not exactly what he seems.

 The book will be available on Amazon, as are all my books, in both e-book and paperback, sometime in late September.

We Don't Have Crime in Eureka Springs

We don't have crime in Eureka Springs. When I read about what goes on in Chicago, Boston, and other big cities I wonder what it must be like living with all that fear. We like our police. We know their first names. The police department and the fire department have Facebook pages that tell us what is going on. Oh sure, we have some drug possession, and residents and tourists alike are fond of alcohol. We have two breweries and a vineyard, but things are pretty peaceful. Maybe it is because we are so old. 
      The picture is a shot of our downtown.  The large building far left, the Basin Park Hotel, was built in 1907, a "new" addition. Basin Spring, which started the town, is in the trees next to the building. The entire area was rebuilt after a fire in 1886 destroyed the entire downtown, and all the gingerbread cottages further up the hill.  What you see here was rebuilt with limestone. Living surrounded by all this history lends a sense of security and peace. Our visitors declare they feel the healing energy of the town the minute they enter. You can be safe here, and accepted for who you are, as long as you don't intend harm.  We welcome everybody and by law are discrimination free. Everybody is accepted here. Otherwise, let me remind you that Arkansas is an open carry state, so behave.
     We don't worry about car jacking, murders, or police brutality.  You can walk the streets at midnight in complete safety. We don't worry about burglars.
     Once, in 1922, some crazies from Oklahoma tried to rob our bank. I tell the story in my book, The Hidden History of Eureka Springs.  The word got out--we had a phone or two by then. The entire town responded with outrage, and stormed the bank, guns blazing. The robbers were killed. Hundreds of shots were fired. The coroner remarked later that most of the bullet wounds were post mortem. Everybody wanted to be able to brag they shot a bank robber, dead or alive. We celebrate the event every year during Folk Festival with a re-inaction.
     Even though we don't have much crime, a big favorite of the tourists is the local police report, carried by both weekly newspapers. You'll read more about it in my new book, coming out in October. It's titled, Love in a Small Town, and is a romance set in Eureka Springs. I have bits and pieces of Eureka in all my books, but this one tells what it is like to live here, from the point of view of a teenage girl and her stepfather, newly arrived from Chicago and undergoing cultural shock.
   The report might read:
                  3:09 a.m. - An alarmed citizen discovered an individual sleeping on her porch. 
                                       Official arrested the visitor for public intoxication.
                   4:30 a.m. - Resident reported large bird making noise in a tree outside her 
                                        window. When the officer arrived, the rooster was gone.
                  10:00 a.m. - A domestic dispute at a local motel. Officer arrived to help
                                          settle the issue.
You can buy a copy of The Hidden History of Eureka Springs from the museum by visiting http://www.eurekaspringshistoricalmuseum.org or visit my website for more pictures at:
http://joycezellercom.weebly.com

Where Do You Find Ideas To Write About?

Where do ideas for novels come from? From a lot of sitting, and thinking, and reading. Newspaper articles are fertile ground. The scene in my Accidental Alien, where the medics at a murder scene argue if the victim is dead or not, came from an actual account in a newspaper.
     Conversation yields ideas. One day a friend of mine expressed her negative opinion of another woman with the remark, "Once she gets off the subject of herself, she has nothing to say." That statement gave birth to a character in The Haunting of Aaron House, which you'll get to read this February.
    When I read Lady of Hay, by Barbara Erskine, published in 1986, I knew someday I'd write about reincarnation, past life regression, and time travel. My latest book, Love Out of Time, is that book. The story unfolds on the New Jersey seashore. I love the ocean, and if I can't live there, I can at least be there in my imagination. The main protagonist was going to be a modern day woman who falls in love with the ghost who haunts the beach house she rents to spend time recovering from the trauma of a sudden divorce. My passion is American History. I try to include it in all my books, so I made the ghost a captain of a whaling ship who lived during the Civil War, about 1865. All I needed was some little-known event from the Civil War to cement the whole thing together. Research led me to The Stone Fleet, an idea so far-fetched it is hard to believe it really happened.
     Back in 1865 the whaling industry in New Bedford, Massachusetts was thriving, but the end was in sight. Oil had been discovered in the ground at Titusville, PA, the whales were becoming scarce due to uncontrolled slaughtering. The tall-masted sailing ships were being replaced by steam engines, which were faster, and a lot of old ships, not worth repairing, sat unused and rotting in the harbor.
     The Southern Confederate Army was gaining strength, defeating the Northern Union Army at every turn. The Southern Navy threatened Yankee shipping by sailing up the Chesapeake Bay to strike at Northern ports.
     The War Department in Washington decided to purchase some of the old sailing ships at New Bedford and fill them with rocks so they could sail to the mouth of the Chesapeake and be sunk, thus blocking enemy ships access to Northern ports. The plan was called The Stone Fleet. Thirty of these old ships were purchased and local farmers were paid to bring rocks to fill them. Well, as usual, something went wrong, or, as we would say today, it became one huge clusterfuck. The old wooden ships were so filled with worm rot that they started to fall apart and sink on the way south. Some actually reached the mouth of the bay, but they disintegrated when they sank, and the army discovered that the bay was so deep at the mouth that the Southern navy sailed right over them. Unbelievably, they tried this a second time and the same thing happened. It makes one wonder if some of these people serving in the government today might be reincarnations of past officials.

Book of the Month
If you liked Gabaldon's Highlander, or Dragonfly in Amber, you will enjoy reading Lady of Hay, by Barbara Erskine. An experiment in hypnosis and past life regression goes awry and  journalist Jo Clifford finds herself caught up in royal politics in eleventh century England during the reign of King John, of Magna Carta fame, and his child bride Matilda. Jo's past life identity becomes hopelessly entangled in the unspeakable treachery of King John's court, and affects her in her present day life as she realizes those she knows in her real life could be reincarnations of those inhabitants of her past. This is a long book (over 500 pages) and it sometimes moves slowly, but it is fascinating history. 
The book has gone through numerous printings since it first appeared in 1976 and has sold more than a million copies worldwide.

     

Love In A Small Town

This is a picture of Eureka Springs' one and only main street as it appears today. It is lined with Victorian Gingerbread cottages built around 1880, after the last devastating fire destroyed most of the town. You can see more pictures on my website if you click on the "Hidden History of Eureka Springs" page. http://joycezellercom. weebly.com
     In October, 2015, Rogue Press will release my new book about Eureka Springs titled, "Love in a Small Town." It is about David Martin, newly widowed and  stepfather to, Sarah Graham, fifteen, whom he has only known for the two years of his brief marriage. He's a wealthy financial analyst and he doesn't know anything about parenting. He left that up to his wife, Sarah's mother. They live in Chicago and David, panicked at the responsibility of new fatherhood, decides that Chicago is too full of temptations for a naive young girl and moves, with Sarah, to Eureka Springs, Arkansas, population 2072, and known since 1879 as a haven for the dissident and disenfranchised. It is pure culture shock for Sarah, and she can't fit in. The move was difficult for Sarah, who was used to a privileged life in private school. She's not accepted by the high school kids. She falls in with the wrong bunch, headed for trouble, and is saved by nerdy Logan, closet genius and class nerd, who introduces her to his three friends, also nerdy.
     Meanwhile, David meets Lindsay, owner of a small fragrance shop that caters to the thousands of tourists the tiny town hosts every summer. He's attracted to her but, every time the two meet, something goes wrong and they end up in an argument. But hey, there's a lot of love in a small town, and their affection for Sarah brings them together.
     Eureka Springs has a reputation for being the 'quirkiest' town in Arkansas. Residents take pride in not having any traffic lights and only a few stop signs. Of course, none of the streets intersect because most are paved-over wagon trails on the hillside, made when the town was new, in 1879.
     Indeed, the residents are so colorful that when a Hollywood production company decided to shoot a movie here about a crazy preacher, they decided they didn't need to bring in extras. They hired the whole town instead. the film, "Pass The Ammo," only received one viewing locally before going to video. A local reviewer remarked, "It's the only film I've ever seen where the rolling credits at the end received a standing ovation." In the coming months I'll tell you more about the book, and tell some stories about the characters.
     I've "borrowed" some locals for characters in "Love Out of Time," which takes place in a small tourist town on the New Jersey Shore. If you read that you'll get an idea of small town life.

Authors Helping Authors

Once you've published you become aware that you've joined a new community....that of authors helping authors. You are expected to do your own marketing with a little help from your publisher, and, in my case, a lot of help from my agent, Jeannie Loiacono, but mostly you are on your own. 
I belong to a group very generous writers who will help you me if I reciprocate. This feature is my way of paying it forward. 


Susan York faces the biggest decision of her life. "A baby or college?"
Unmarried and confused, Susan is not looking for a guy. She only wants to get through her classes without getting sick.
Colt Lefevour needs help with his English Lit homework until he discovers Susan is pregnant. Hurt from his ex-girlfriend aborting his baby, he wants to be the father of Susan’s baby, but will he be able to convince her to let him help?

Tina Gayle's books are available on Amazon.com You can find her at:
Home - www.tinagayle.net   Blog - www.tinagayle.blogspot.com

Fiction: How To Start A Novel

If you write, every conversation, every observed happening, every glimpse of an interesting person, or every snippet of dialogue herd on TV, is fodder for a novel.

When I began my last novel, Love Lost in Time, the location came first because I had childhood memories of vacations at the seashore, and when I’m writing, I’m there, in that place. Okay. Who is there?

Thirty-something woman whose life has been shattered and she must find her place in a new life. She rents a beach house in a small seaside, tourist town to think. I know something about this. I’m on my fourth major change. Sara decides she is not going to repeat as perfect wife and mother, simply occupying space. A quote from the book:

“The mildly judgmental way Clover looked at her, suggested she was being compared to the Toy Group at a dog show—amusing but without meaningful purpose.”

Okay. I’ve got my theme. Now for the fun part. She’s going to fall in love with the ghost renting the house, who died in the 1860s. Some of you remember, “The Ghost and Mrs. Muir?” One of my favorite movies.

My books have to be about something new to me, because I thrive on research. In this instance, I settled on the 19^th Century whaling industry. My ghost was a whaling ship captain. By now my imagination was at a full gallop.  I’m an American History junkie, especially the Civil War. Here’s my chance to learn about whaling. I read Moby Dick. Ismael suggested the character of the husband who deserted Sara to find adventure. I read Whalers, the Time-Life Book about early whaling and learned to love whales. I discovered a little-known event in the Civil War called, “The Stone Fleet,” and used it as a mystery Sara has to solve when she is sent to 1860 New Kensington. Time travel research got me into wormholes and vortexes and I sent Sara to a meeting of the local Metaphysical Society to learn about parallel universes. I added a local insurance fraud that Sara discovers that puts her life in danger, and a mystery of the origin of some of the local residents, who look a lot like people she met in 1860.

By now I’m totally engaged and having the time of my life writing this book. I haven’t forgotten the romance, which like everything else, has a surprising twist, and, of course, since it is the New Jersey shore, we have to have a hurricane.

Go to http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00UPMAS9G and read the first ten pages of the book and the synopsis. Of course, I hope you buy it and let me know what you think by writing a review on Amazon. Or you can e-mail me at author@joycezeller.com, or even visit my website to see what other romances I’ve written. http://joycezellercom.weebly.com

How To Create A Fragrance

This is the last of the five part series on perfume making. Please e-mail me if you have comments or questions. The address is at the end of this essay.

The following is a passage from my book, Love in a Small Town, which will be released this October, 2015 by Rogue Press. In this scene Lindsay, the proprietor of a small perfume shop, is making a new fragrance from perfume oils when she is interrupted by a local teenager, Sarah Graham, who is new in town and having trouble fitting in with the local high school crowd. She's taken to hanging out in Lynn's store. Neither one of them is aware that Lynn has met David, Sarah's stepdad, and is very attracted to him. 

       "She laid out a dozen narrow paper strips, about three inches long, on the counter in front of her. Both ends of each strip were bent so they stood straight up when the strip lay flat. Also on the counter were about a dozen small brown bottles, holding samples of fragrant oils.

“Hi, Lynn. What’s all that?”

Startled, she looked up to see Sarah coming into the shop. “Oh, hi. I’m working on a new fragrance. It needs something and I can’t quite figure out what.”

“You mean, like, you’re making a perfume?”

“Yeah, but this will be a cologne. Not too many people buy perfume these days. Too expensive.”

“You know how to do this? I mean, make cologne and perfume?”

“It’s a hobby of mine as well as a profession. If it turns out, I’ll bottle it and sell it in the store.”

“I didn’t know a person could, like, make their own perfume. I thought it happened in a factory somewhere.”

“There’s no mystery about it. It’s all made the same, if it’s Estee´ Lauder’s or mine. It’s like cooking. Instead of tastes, though, you think odor. You know, when you're cooking you taste and decide if it might be better with some nutmeg, or such.

"You decide on the basics first by putting it together in your head; like should it be floral or woody or citrus? When the idea is there, you begin with these scent strips.” She gestured at the narrow pieces of paper with the ends turned up.

“I moisten the end of a strip with one of the oils, and label it. That way I can smell several, in any combination, to get an idea of the finished product. When you have a possibility, you mix a small amount. If it still smells good, you add pure alcohol in a proportion of four to one part mix, if you want perfume. It’s about sixteen to one if you want cologne.”

“That’s it?”

She laughed. “I wish. You have to let the fragrance age in the alcohol, sort of like wine, to see what happens. These are mostly natural oils. When the molecules get together they interact and you might be surprised and end up with an odor like cabbage soup.”

The confusion on Sarah’s face made her decide to take it a little further, enjoying the pleasure of sharing something she loved.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              

“Look at these scent strips. Each one has an oil sample I think I might use. See? I’ve marked them. We have rosemary, lemon, rose, cedar, jasmine, and cinnamon.

“Pick up two of them and hold them together, close to your nose. You can tell if it works without actually mixing it.”

Sarah carefully picked up a rose and a jasmine strip, and sniffed cautiously.

Lynn watched her, amused. Sarah was so intent. It would be fun to teach her about perfume. Having an interest might distract her from some of the unhappiness in her life.

“Yuck, that is really sweet.”

“The jasmine is probably a bit too much. Try the lemon with the rose.”

            “That’s better, but I still don’t like it.”

“Well, you get the general idea. In a couple of hours you might work your way through all the bottles I have here and find a combination.”

“It must take a long time to do this.”

“It helps if you’ve memorized a couple of hundred scents. It’s called, ‘having a nose.’ Professional ‘noses’ can identify about two thousand different odors.”

“Could I learn to do this?”

“Sure. Like any other creative art form, it takes practice, but I’d enjoy teaching you. Of course, if you wanted a career working for a lab somewhere, then you’d need a college degree and a lot of organic chemistry courses to get hired.”

That's how you begin, using oils from your collection. Be sure to label everything and take notes if you have a combination you like. I usually start on the back of one hand with the first oil, the major note. Start simple with three drops. Add two drops of the next oil and sniff. Okay but boring? Does it need to be lighter? Add a drop of citrus. Is it too floral? Add a bit of freesia. When you reach the point where you're adding an oil to fix a mistake, start over.

When you have something you like convert the drops to milliliters and mix in your flask add alcohol at the rate of sixteen milliliters alcohol to the total mils of oil in the flask. I'm going to recommend vetiver and/or patchouli as a fixative because you can get away with using a tiny amount that won't change the fragrance. Here is how you do this:

Mix two mil of vetiver or patchouli (or one of each) in 10 mil of alcohol. Mix well. Add two mil of this mix to your fragrance. Now comes the hard part. Let it sit a week before smelling it. It will change. If you detect the fixative, use a smaller amount proportionately in the finished fragrance. If the sample loses its scent in 30 minutes, add more fixative, cautiously and wait some more. You want a fragrance that will last for an hour at least. Can you use the oil without the alcohol? Sure, but add the fixative to fix it, maybe 1 mil to 10 mil of oil.

There is so much more to this, but if you get this far, you are ready to read some books with understanding and, of course, you can e-mail me at Author@joycezeller.com with questions, anytime. I love talking about fragrance. 

Here are two suggestions to start: For a masculine type: 4 mil amber, two mil frankincense, 1 mil sandalwood, 2 mil bayleaf, 2 drops cinnamon (start with strip samples, then go to drops before going to the milliliters, or you'll waste a lot of oil before getting it right.

For a feminine type: 4 mil mignonette, 1 mil freesia or Lily of the Valley, 1 mil rose, 3 drops clove. If it needs lightening, try 1 mil grapefruit or lemon.

Assembling Your List of Perfume Making Supplies

Okay, you’ve become interested in the art of making perfume and you are ready to start your stash of oils. You are about to enter the exciting world of the collector. I’ll start you out with perfume oils because they are inexpensive and you are learning, so a wrong purchase won’t matter. They are also synthetic and predictable. There’s a good chance that what your mix smells like before you add alcohol will be the same as the finished product.

     Essentials are from living material. They have hundreds of parts and once you get them together in an alcohol solution, they begin to interact. All your formulas will need to age, like fine wine, to get the final result, but you can’t imagine how often, after six weeks, I’ve had to pour my masterpiece down the drain because it smelled like cabbage soup.

     However, soon synthetics will not be enough and you will want to move into essential oils. You think stamp collectors are obsessed? Wait until you are bitten by the “oil collector’s bug,” and will go to any lengths to get a mere dram of one you don’t have.

     We are at my next absolute rule. Write everything down. Every drop. You might think you will remember, but the creative process messes with your mind. If you don’t write it down, and six weeks later you have this to-die-for scent, don’t call me. I can’t tell you how often a distressed beginning perfumer would come into my store and ask, pleading, “What’s in this?” They didn’t write it down and now it is gone forever.

     Sometimes a fascinating thing will happen called an accord. When a combination of oils is mixed, they all disappear and become an entirely new scent. When rose, birch tar (smells like tar), and Castoreum (an oil of animal origin—beaver—which smells like caramel, are mixed the result is tanned leather. Francois Coty, the godfather of perfumery, discovered accords.  Once, by chance, I made one with lavender and patchouli. It was a heavenly floral that I’ve never been able to duplicate, because I didn’t write it down.

     If you search online under “Rare Essential Oils,” or simply Perfume Oils, or Essential Oils, you will find what you need. Some websites will allow a small sample for a price. If you are not familiar with the scent, this is a good way to start. Don’t be afraid to call for advice. Perfumers addicted to the art crave conversation. You will learn that some oils are so scarce they sell for hundreds or thousands of dollars a dram.

     There are three parts to a blended fragrance.

·      Top Notes – These are scents of short duration.  They last about twenty minutes and are what you smell first when you sample a scent.  Orange, lemon, lime, some florals, and violet—which is there, but you won’t smell it after a few minutes. Violet is always a synthetic chemical called ionone. You can’t afford real violet.

·      Middle notes – this is what you will smell for hours.  It will include the bottom notes and, if it is for men, will have woody notes, evergreen, cedar leaf, amber, Frankincense as well as light florals. For women, any flower, vanilla, maybe green tea, or one of the fruits. I’ll include some recipes later on.

·      Bottom Notes – these are the heavier resins and fixatives. They are slow to dissipate—sometimes take days to fade. They are called fixatives because they grab hold of the other molecules in your mix and hold them so they linger longer. There are synthetic fixatives, but the natural work best. The problem is they all have odor, so how much to use without screwing up your formula takes practice. Fixatives are: vetiver, patchouli, sandalwood, and some resins.

     You’ll need some supplies to start: scent strips, eye droppers, a graduated flask that measures milliliters (you can find this at a hobby store, a beaker that holds about two ounces, and some glass bottles to put your fragrance. For perfume one ounce will do, but for cologne three or four ounces. There are about 15 milliliters to a half-ounce; 30 ML to an ounce. You’ll be working with about 7 ml of oil mix to 1 ounce of alcohol to make one ounce of perfume, or about 1-16 to make 4 ounces of cologne. Toilet Water, which is a European formula usually, is 1-8.

This is a long list. You don’t need everything all at once and expect to take time searching the Internet. I suggest starting with two or three oils from each section of the following list.

I’ve highlighted with a * those you might want to start with.

   A beginning list for your collection in usually 15 ml amounts or half-ounce, ES means essential oil, would be:

            Top notes:

            Bay Leaf ES*

            Orange or Bergamot ES*

            Grapefruit ES*

            Lemon ES

            Cinnamon*

            Clove*

            Middle Notes or the body of the fragrance:

            Amber*

            Freesia

            Honeysuckle*

            Iris

            Hyacinth*

            Jasmine

            Lavender ES French

            Lily of the Valley

            Migonette or Reseda (the same thing)*

            Musk

            Rosemary

            Rose*

            Tea Rose (greener than rose)

            Vanilla

            Bottom Notes or fixatives

            Frankincense

            Patchouli ES*

            Sandalwood (very expensive might wait on this)

            Vetiver ES*

The next essay will be on how to go about building a fragrance. In my new book, to be released in October, titled, Love in a Small Town, Lindsay, the perfumer, guides Sarah, her young pupil through the process. I’ll quote from the book and suggest some possible formulas for you to try.