CANDLELIT CHRONICLES: HISTORIC HAUNTS

March 6_Reversed Directions:( 558 word count

This morning, which got off to a personal painful start following a seriously bad afternoon and evening yesterday, I was composing merrily away on Chapter Ten of The Haunted Greenhouse when I realized that my directions in both this book and the prequel (The Phantom Logging Operation) are transposed! That is, my East is West and my West is East! So when I complete my 2500 or more words today, I will have to reverse myself and edit both books (and TPLO is currently at about 45K) and mutate East to West and West to East. At least North is North and South is South-I hope.





         I am attempting to straighten my geographically-challenged brain now. I redid the map I had made in PaintShopPro in December, to correctly locate the town of Rennald and the County Seat of Collins Junction, since Rory's cabin, the Village of Knox, and The Big Forest itself were already accurately placed. Then I had to draw two maps freehand, one to show the States and Lake Algonquin, and one to show Rory's cabin in relation to the other locales. Now I keep thinking I have to move his cabin to the opposite side of the Road. The difficulty is, I have been working with this locale for nearly three months, since Dec. 12; I have already written 57,777 words here between the two novels, and the locations, including Knox, The Big Forest, The Haunted Greenhouse, Rory's cabin and new Plant Nursery, the Calhoun Family Cemetery, Euphonia, and the charred foundation ruins on which The Haunted GreenHouse is arising, are set so firmly in my mind I am not certain I CAN relocate them.





Here's the Prologue to The Haunted GreenHouse, the Revised Prologue as of this morning:

The Phantom Northern Woods Tales are set in an alternate historical probability, in which The Northwest Territories were divided differently than in our own “consensus reality.” History in this alternate probability, although sometimes similar, does not always adhere to the same time line as the one that historians in our consensus reality record. In this reality, The Northwest Territories became Wisconsin and Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, and Ohio.





In The Phantom Northern Woods, each existing state is called by its full name: “State of-” as in State of Westerley, State of Minnetonka, State of Illustrian. There are three states where today only Michigan and Wisconsin stand: one state between them, like an inverted triangle, heavily forested, bordering Canada to the North-the State of Algonquin. It is this state which harbors the infamous “Big Forest.”


The topography of this “probablility” differs from our own also. In it, Lake Michigan does not divide Wisconsin and Michigan. From West to East are:


State of Westerly (similar to our Wisconsin), State of Algonquin, State of Minnetonka (similar to our Michigan), Lake Algonquin (at the eastern border of State of Minnetonka}. All of State of Algonquin North and East of Knox (which is approximately 1/3 into the State South from the Canadian border) is The Big Forest, which also extends into the entire northern half of State of Minnetonka. South of State of Westerley and the left side of State of Algonquin is State of Illustrian, comprised of our Illinois and Indiana from its west border to central, if a line were drawn North to South.