Disclosure / Disclaimer: I received this post, free of charge, from the author, via Partners in Crime book tours, for blog posting purposes on this blog. No compensation, monetary or in kind, has been received or implied for this post. Nor was I told how to post about it.
Question:
How can one live in New Orleans, and not be swept up in the history, and magic of the place, when writing your stories?
Answer:
You can’t, and for me, being born and raised there has influenced my writing like nothing else. I blame a childhood spent in the French Quarter, for making me gravitate toward stories with otherworldly themes.
You have to be from New Orleans to understand the influence of magic and ghosts. It is everywhere and the past, the previous tenants of each building in The Quarter,
and the stories of their lives become part of the romantic wrought-iron balconies and painted
stucco. You remember buildings by the tales told about them, good and bad. The legends are reshaped by ghost tour guides to mesmerize the tourists, but the locals know the real tragedies and heartaches.
When you grow up hearing about the love and loss suffered by those who lived in a house before you, it becomes part of the fabric of who you are. And their ghosts, yes, they
haunt you as well, but spirits aren’t as scary when you know why they came to be in the first
place.
In the building where I grew up, a Spanish captain arrived in New Orleans to take charge of a garrison of soldiers. He came with his wife and four children. He lost his family to the yellow fever epidemic which lasted through most of the 1800s in the city. His wife and children were buried under the fountain in our courtyard. The captain haunted the front part of the home, the children the courtyard, and a nun, all in black, climbed the staircase in the carriage house, her spirit still tending to her yellow fever patients.
When I was small, I was terrified of the faces I would see, voices I would hear, and the cold drafts plaguing the Creole cottage. But once I learned the stories of the family, saw their names on historical documents, I was no longer afraid,but intrigued. They weren’t ghosts anymore, but people.
My experiences forever opened my mind to the possibility of the supernatural.
Having spent a little time with the ethereal, made me want to show the world that ghosts are no different from the living and that life, whether on this side of the veil or the other, still matters.
Welcome to our first spot on the Blackwell tour! More info on Blackwell and the giveaway, will be in the next post! But first, some thoughts on writing from Alex!
Question:
How can one live in New Orleans, and not be swept up in the history, and magic of the place, when writing your stories?
Answer:
You can’t, and for me, being born and raised there has influenced my writing like nothing else. I blame a childhood spent in the French Quarter, for making me gravitate toward stories with otherworldly themes.
You have to be from New Orleans to understand the influence of magic and ghosts. It is everywhere and the past, the previous tenants of each building in The Quarter,
and the stories of their lives become part of the romantic wrought-iron balconies and painted
stucco. You remember buildings by the tales told about them, good and bad. The legends are reshaped by ghost tour guides to mesmerize the tourists, but the locals know the real tragedies and heartaches.
When you grow up hearing about the love and loss suffered by those who lived in a house before you, it becomes part of the fabric of who you are. And their ghosts, yes, they
haunt you as well, but spirits aren’t as scary when you know why they came to be in the first
place.
In the building where I grew up, a Spanish captain arrived in New Orleans to take charge of a garrison of soldiers. He came with his wife and four children. He lost his family to the yellow fever epidemic which lasted through most of the 1800s in the city. His wife and children were buried under the fountain in our courtyard. The captain haunted the front part of the home, the children the courtyard, and a nun, all in black, climbed the staircase in the carriage house, her spirit still tending to her yellow fever patients.
When I was small, I was terrified of the faces I would see, voices I would hear, and the cold drafts plaguing the Creole cottage. But once I learned the stories of the family, saw their names on historical documents, I was no longer afraid,but intrigued. They weren’t ghosts anymore, but people.
My experiences forever opened my mind to the possibility of the supernatural.
Having spent a little time with the ethereal, made me want to show the world that ghosts are no different from the living and that life, whether on this side of the veil or the other, still matters.
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