Scary Settings for Lights-Out Fright

By Linda Lovely

Halloween is days away, which puts me in mind of all manner of scary things. While it’s always potentially frightening to find yourself in the dark, some settings can add extra heebie-jeebies when you’re alone and the lights dim.

Common advice to authors is “write what you know.” Well, since I know what settings have the power to scare me, it stands to reason they should also quicken the pulse of my heroines. Creepy locations help authors build tension and foreshadow there’s danger ahead. My go-to list of such settings includes forests, caves, and basements.

FORESTS. The woods may be “lovely, dark, and deep” but they’re also home to creatures like coyotes and wolves with bone-chilling cries. And let’s not forget the critters that rustle leaves as they scoot or slither along the forest floor. Well, I’m not certain a snake’s movements actually rustle leaves but I sure don’t want to step on one in the dark.

I’ve forced my heroines onto scary forest trails in several books, including Dead Hunt, a romantic thriller, set in Upstate South Carolina. In Picked Off, the second of my cozy Brie Hooker Mysteries, Brie, who is afraid of heights (like me), is chased along a narrow wooded trail that has dizzying drop-offs. Picked Off is also an ideal read for this time of year since it opens with Brie and friends turning a barn into a haunted attraction and donning Halloween costumes.

CAVES. Since Hannibal, Missouri’s Mark Twain Cave was about 40 miles from my hometown, I visited at an impressionable age. Stalactite daggers looked ready to impale me should the rock ceiling shift. Bats clinging to perches above my head added more menace, and the cool moist air gave me a crop of goosebumps even on summer days.

I used caves as frightening sets in two novels—Lies: Secrets Can Kill, an historical thriller set in 1938 in Keokuk, Iowa, my hometown, and Dead Line, a romantic suspense set in Jamaica, an island with more than 1000 known caves carved from its limestone. While researching Jamaican caves, I contacted the http://www.jamaicancaves.org, and was rewarded with generous help (and incredible videos) from caving enthusiasts.

BASEMENTS.  Hey, basements are underground (like graves), and really, really dark if the lights flicker out. My childhood home’s scary basement had creaky stairs and a black as pitch coal bin. Wood planks covered a damp dirt floor with hair-like sprouts. Dusty bottles holding who knew what lined sagging shelves. We learned what when some of granddad’s root beer spontaneously exploded one hot summer day. His home brew had a real kick. 

In Dead Hunt, a killer sets a trap for the heroine in the basement of her own older home.  

What settings have the power to give you the biggest chills?

Visit my website: www.lindalovely.com for information on all eight of my published novels or to sign up for my newsletter.

Celebrating Romance in Jamaica

By Linda Lovely

Since this month’s blog topic is Celebrating Romance Around The World, I’d like to explain how and why I chose Jamaica as a prime setting for my romantic suspense novel, FINAL ACCOUNTING.

Given that I live in South Carolina and grew up in Iowa, setting my first novel, DEAR KILLER, in the S.C. Lowcountry, and my second, NO WAKE ZONE, in Spirit Lake/Okoboji, Iowa, made perfect sense. I had intimate knowledge of both locations—people, geography, history, culture—and could weave key details into my plots.

I’m the first to admit I don’t enjoy this type of familiarity with Jamaica. Yet, after visiting, how could I resist sending my characters here?

The island is a study in stark contrasts. Paradise and poverty. Lavish resorts and urban violence. Soaring mountains and deep, dark caves. These contrasts give an author everything she could ask for to make setting a character in the story—from fairytale beach backdrops that beg to have a couple kissing in the foreground to steep mountain roads where danger seems to lurk around every corner (even when you’re not being chased by a determined assassin).

Though similar contrasts can be found throughout the world (the U.S. included), I felt Jamaica offered my readers a number of exotic and unexpected extras. Many Jamaican tourists never step foot outside their all-inclusive, walled resorts. But my introduction offered a glimpse at this island’s true diversity.

That’s because my husband and I had expert guides. My sister, Rita, and brother-in-law, Hank, lived in Jamaica for seven years. Hank, an engineer, headed a major highway construction project, and his work took him (and any visitors) to virtually every part of the island. For instance, on one sojourn, we drove into the hinterlands in search of gravel pits. In our travels, we bought coconuts (but not the ganja) offered by roadside entrepreneurs, ate jerk chicken at stands where one hoped the fiery spices killed germs, marveled at the number of goats and machete-carrying pedestrians holding up traffic in Kingston. Of course, we also ate at five-star mountain-top restaurants, visited ritzy resorts, and went for an unforgettable evening cruise on Jamaica’s bioluminescent bay.

In FINAL ACCOUNTING, my heroine and hero visit many of these same places (sometimes because they’re being chased). But they also descend into Dragon’s Throat, a fictitious cave modeled on the Cockpit region’s real—and numerous—caves. Since I’m slightly claustrophobic and don’t like heights, I’m happy to report that I didn’t rappel into a mile-deep cavern for a first-hand experience. However, I did try to capture the reality of what my characters experienced. Thank heaven for the Internet and the wealth of research opportunities it offers authors.

My brother-in-law gave me the idea of using caves in my plot, suggesting they’d be “a great place to hide bodies.” His observation launched me on a research project back home, and it wasn’t long before I found the Jamaican Caves Organisation (JCO) and Ronald Stefan Stewart, JCO’s founder. After I viewed the JCO’s extensive library of videos capturing their exploration of dozens of different caves, I wrote a first draft of my cave scenes. Then I sent them to Stefan for review. His expertise was invaluable. He’s visited more than 250 caves and sinkholes in Jamaica and added more than 50 new ones to the nation’s Register. If there are any errors in my descriptions of the fictional Dragon’s Throat cave, caving, or the Cockpit region, rest assured they are my mistakes. If you have any interest in caving and the JCO’s important conservation initiatives, please visit the JCO website: http://www.jamaicancaves.org/main.htm.

What my research taught me is that authors don’t have to personally visit every location included in a novel—if they commit to doing the research and asking for help. Lots of gracious folks out there, like Stefan, are more than willing to help authors attempting to get the world they live in right.

Writing fiction exercises the imagination.  Taking our characters beyond our own geographic boundaries give us a chance to visit new, exciting worlds. Even if we never leave our computer screens.

Have your written about a place you’ve never visited? Have you read a book that made an unfamiliar location seem so real that you felt you’d spent time there?