Author Notes
Couple of credits to acknowledge: The music on the main page is by Midnight Syndicate, from The Dead Matter, Cemetery Gates (Lullaby). The music in the opening video is a clip from Twisted Children, by Two Steps from Hell, off their Halloween album. What you are hearing now is another part of Midnight Syndicate's The Dead Matter, being the appropriately titled End Credit Suite.The graphic images were purchased from CanStockPhoto.com plus a few I picked up from freebie sites.
This has been, by far, the biggest writing challenge I have ever set for myself. Writing and posting 31 chapters over the course of 32 days has been quite the experience! I started getting days confused in my head, thinking it was Thursday in real life if that’s the day I was writing about, and even forgetting the time of year at one point. *face palm* I’ve no doubt I missed many typos, and at some point, after sufficient time has passed and I can see this again with fresh eyes, I will probably come back and clean it up.
I originally conceived of the idea for this story as something to do in October, as a Halloween thing. I’m not sure now what I’ll do when that time rolls around, but I moved this up for something fun and different to do for JixeWriMo. One advantage to writing a whole new universe? You don’t have to spend any time making sure things are consistent with previous stories.
When I began on February 1st, I knew that Dan, Trixie, and Mart were going to go to Lisgard House, find an amulet and journal, and start seeing dead people, an idea borrowed partially from the short-lived (ha!) 2001 television show Dead Last. I’d also come up with the titles for each chapter. (Meaningless really, at that point. Simply takes on songs.) And that was it. Everything else was formulated on the fly.
I did discover something interesting through the course of writing this story. Trixie Belden was a huge part of my elementary years. No. I did already know that. I did not truly understand, though, how embedded the world of Trixie really is in my head. As I was writing Day 8, I mentioned that Professor Lee was waiting near the statue of a town founder, Horace W. Mundy. At that point? That was actually a “throw away” line for description. I needed a name, and the one that came to me first was Horace Mann. I knew he was a real person, though - an education reformer and politician from the 1800s, so I couldn’t use his name as is. Without any real thought at all, I changed it to Horace Mundy. Several days later, I decided to have The Three run into Ruthie Kettner and Lester… Mundy. I remembered Lester’s first name, but couldn’t remember his last, so I went to look it up and *thunk* realized that’s where the Mundy name came from, buried somewhere in the back of my mind. Suddenly, my story changed and Lester became a much bigger part of it, with all the town history falling (at least loosely) into place.
Other things, too, were settled very last minute as I went along. I was all the way to Day 27 before I decided for sure how this thing was going to end, making it a rather interesting experiment in the process of writing in general!
I want to thank everyone who came along for the ride. I appreciate your comments, as they kept me thinking, and I also appreciate the willingness to accept something that treated canon with only passing respect.
By the way? I hid an Easter Egg for you on the main 31 Things page. :) The userID is: thethree and the password is: ghosts. (It's rated-G. The password is to prevent anyone from accidentally stumbling across it and reading it before finishing the main story.)
Couple of credits to acknowledge: The music on the main page is by Midnight Syndicate, from The Dead Matter, Cemetery Gates (Lullaby). The music in the opening video is a clip from Twisted Children, by Two Steps from Hell, off their Halloween album. What you are hearing now is another part of Midnight Syndicate's The Dead Matter, being the appropriately titled End Credit Suite.The graphic images were purchased from CanStockPhoto.com plus a few I picked up from freebie sites.
This has been, by far, the biggest writing challenge I have ever set for myself. Writing and posting 31 chapters over the course of 32 days has been quite the experience! I started getting days confused in my head, thinking it was Thursday in real life if that’s the day I was writing about, and even forgetting the time of year at one point. *face palm* I’ve no doubt I missed many typos, and at some point, after sufficient time has passed and I can see this again with fresh eyes, I will probably come back and clean it up.
I originally conceived of the idea for this story as something to do in October, as a Halloween thing. I’m not sure now what I’ll do when that time rolls around, but I moved this up for something fun and different to do for JixeWriMo. One advantage to writing a whole new universe? You don’t have to spend any time making sure things are consistent with previous stories.
When I began on February 1st, I knew that Dan, Trixie, and Mart were going to go to Lisgard House, find an amulet and journal, and start seeing dead people, an idea borrowed partially from the short-lived (ha!) 2001 television show Dead Last. I’d also come up with the titles for each chapter. (Meaningless really, at that point. Simply takes on songs.) And that was it. Everything else was formulated on the fly.
I did discover something interesting through the course of writing this story. Trixie Belden was a huge part of my elementary years. No. I did already know that. I did not truly understand, though, how embedded the world of Trixie really is in my head. As I was writing Day 8, I mentioned that Professor Lee was waiting near the statue of a town founder, Horace W. Mundy. At that point? That was actually a “throw away” line for description. I needed a name, and the one that came to me first was Horace Mann. I knew he was a real person, though - an education reformer and politician from the 1800s, so I couldn’t use his name as is. Without any real thought at all, I changed it to Horace Mundy. Several days later, I decided to have The Three run into Ruthie Kettner and Lester… Mundy. I remembered Lester’s first name, but couldn’t remember his last, so I went to look it up and *thunk* realized that’s where the Mundy name came from, buried somewhere in the back of my mind. Suddenly, my story changed and Lester became a much bigger part of it, with all the town history falling (at least loosely) into place.
Other things, too, were settled very last minute as I went along. I was all the way to Day 27 before I decided for sure how this thing was going to end, making it a rather interesting experiment in the process of writing in general!
I want to thank everyone who came along for the ride. I appreciate your comments, as they kept me thinking, and I also appreciate the willingness to accept something that treated canon with only passing respect.
By the way? I hid an Easter Egg for you on the main 31 Things page. :) The userID is: thethree and the password is: ghosts. (It's rated-G. The password is to prevent anyone from accidentally stumbling across it and reading it before finishing the main story.)