I love history. Yes, that’s #nerdy. This was not always the case. As a kid, my father, a then-history teacher, used to revel at dragging me to every historical monument across the United States—which in my child’s mind was resembled, “Look kids! Big Ben! Parliament!” The history seed was planted, and grew into an odd twisted bush of an interest. As a writer, I try to visit each locale I write about, as nothing imbues setting into a book like photo’s and being immersed in the real setting. My mother related to me how, as a young teen, she and her brother were sent to stay with their aunt and uncle…at an asylum. My mother’s aunt and uncle were caretaker’s, and while visiting, she and her brother attended an asylum ball. She related several hair-raising stories, and a few even made it into REQUIEM RED. *If you figure out that pun and email me, I have a special prize for any who decipher my comment/hint. I visited Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in West Virginia twice—first for a photo day, and the second for a historical tour. This is a picture of a child from the asylum—they wards were separated into men,…

When I was in high school I wanted a pair of Justin Ropers, a type of boots that were very popular in a town where many of the teenagers knew how to ride a horse. I wasn’t one of those teenagers, but I still wanted boots. I did live out in the country and considered myself to have a tomboy side, so having a pair of country-looking boots seemed pretty normal to me. Unfortunately, on the first day I wore them to school, I felt extremely out of place. I remember feeling like a fraud as I walked past a group of girls who it seemed had earned the right to wear their boots, because they had horses and I didn’t. Sadly, I knew I wasn’t the real thing, like those other girls, and everybody else probably knew it. It wasn’t until my real, cowgirl friend, Amy, stopped me in the hall to say she liked my pair of boots that I began to feel like I belonged in them. After that, I wore them as much as I wanted to. The only thing I would change about that story is the part about my needing someone else to make…