Holding it triumphantly.
Insane, I thought. I'm going insane.
If anything, you're here to save your sanity, if it's not too late.
Granted, others didn't need to know I was going insane. No, that honor was reserved for me and me alone; or, at least, until my insanity was so obvious I couldn't hide it anymore. Anyway, calling this a research trip - rather than, say, a fool's errand - seemed the safest route to take, even if it confused the hell out of my editor.
Especially since my next novel was supposed to be a supernatural thriller about ghosts, tentatively titled Ghosts. Yeah, I know. I'm not great with titles.
Well, I had begun the ghost story, and had gotten quite a bit into it, when something unusual happened:
I hit a wall. I just couldn't write it anymore. I discovered I was tired of writing about murder and mayhem. And I was tired of thinking up new and creative ways of killing people.
So I decided to take a break from writing about murders.
And that's when the dreams started.
* * *
Yeah, you're losing your mind, James, I thought again, looking at the old-world, bed & breakfast before me.
And with the sun setting behind a row of gnarled elms, plunging the cobblestone street and hotel in shadows, I took hold of my two suitcases and headed for the ivy-covered courtyard door.
What awaited me within, I didn't know.
But I was about to find out.
Chapter Three
The old hotel was haunted.
I was sure of it. Then again, I had ghosts on the brain these days.
Actually, the hotel looked haunted. There's a difference. The long entry hall consisted of an ornate marble floor, wing-back chairs, antique bureaus and elaborately-designed wallpaper. Fresh-cut flowers were everywhere, and the hotel, I felt, had a decidedly turn-of-the-century feel to it. Heck, it had a decidedly turn-of-the-millennium feel to it. As in, one thousand years ago.
Then again, I grew up in Southern California, and any building older than, say, fifty years was deemed an important historic monument.
Anyway, an old man behind an older front desk smiled at me warmly, his teeth surprisingly straight. I gave him my name. He punched it in, found my reservation, confirmed my credit card info, and told me where to find my room.
Following his directions and fumbling a bit with the key card, I soon found myself standing in an ornately decorated room, complete with a fireplace, loveseat and a massive, decorative curtain hanging just beyond the headboard. I wasn't sure what the curtain was all about, but it looked nice enough. I happened to know that this was called the Winston Room. As in Winston Churchill, who had not only stayed here but had even lived here for a brief period.
Yeah, I felt special.
I generally don't immediately unpack and hang my clothes on hangars. I'm on vacation, after all, right? Granted, an alleged research vacation, but a vacation nonetheless. And when I'm on vacation, wrinkled clothing is acceptable.
Who are you kidding? I thought. I'm here to see what the dreams are about. Plain and simple.
And then it hit me all over again, harder than ever, perhaps because I was here. I was finally here:
I had traveled halfway around the world because of a few crazy dreams.
No. Not a few crazy dreams.
Wildly incessant dreams. Persistently haunting dreams.
Sighing, I dropped my bags and did what I had been itching to do since first touching down in England. I jacked in my laptop, went on-line, and checked my email.
There were a few dozen Facebook notifications (someday I'll figure out how to stop those from blasting my emails). There was an email from a publisher in Turkey interested in buying the Turkish rights to one of my vampire books. I tried to remember if the book had been published in Turkey but for the life of me, I couldn't. I forwarded the email to my agent. He would deal with it. There was an email from an up-and-coming writer wanting to work with me on a project. I politely declined. I have more books to write than I have time.
And there was an email from my editor, Rita, asking me if I had arrived safely. I replied that I had not, that, in fact, the plane was currently spiraling out-of-control. She would be my last email ever, and did she feel privileged?
My editor liked me. I liked her, too. We had a nice working relationship, probably because I mostly stayed on deadline and she didn't edit the crap out of my books. I also made my publisher a lot of money, and that reflected positively on her, even while it reflected damn positively on my bank account. Making lots of money smooths a lot of wrinkles.
With the advent of the persistent dreams, something interesting started happening to me creatively. I started losing my taste for mystery novels. In particular, for death and destruction. So much so that it affected my writing output and I had to stop work on my ghost thriller.
Rita my editor hadn't been pleased. Especially when I informed her that I was thinking of writing a different kind of book, one that featured a decidedly lower body count. Now, the book idea had been brewing since the dreams began plaguing me. No surprise there. Any writer who suddenly starts dreaming of Christ, King Arthur and the Holy Grail is bound to start thinking about plot, structure, and theme.
Yeah, I was thinking about writing a King Arthur novel.
"King Arthur?" said Rita. I noted the mild hysteria in her voice.
"But not just any King Arthur book," I said. "A spiritual King Arthur book."
"Spiritual?"
"Yes," I answered. "A sort of spiritual adventure."
"What, exactly, do you mean by spiritual adventure?" she asked. She enunciated each word slowly and carefully.
"You know, something in the tradition of The Alchemist or The Celestine Prophecy."
"Those books were flukes."
"The authors would beg to differ."
"I mean publishing flukes. It's like hitting the lottery."
"I'm not looking to hit the lottery," I said. "I'm looking to write something that heals, rather than hurts."
Rita snorted. I didn't blame her. This was a lot to absorb, especially coming from a guy who's last book featured a machete-killing high school teacher and his cult of honor student followers.
"Your audience will never go for it," she said. "They want murder mysteries, James. They want a thriller. They don't want God on Harley, or whatever the hell you're thinking of writing about."
"The Holy Grail."
"Oh, Lord."
"Deep breaths, Rita."
"Will you at least consider putting some sort of murder mystery in it?" she asked, nearly pleading.
"I'll see what I can do."
"Please, James. One corpse."