Coming Soon
Watch for Book Two in the
Abi Wunder Series
Secret in the Mist
In 1875 . . .
Faith! Come quick, I must see you! Before it’s too late!
I called and called but no one could hear me. Ma and Pa will be so sad. But they must understand. I'm just a young girl who loves her horse. Now fate has dealt me a final blow, and Faith will no longer be by my side.
Today . . .
Late at night when the moon is full and the temperature is just right, the ghost of a young girl rises out of mist that forms over the marsh. No one knows who she is or why she appears, but for years it has been rumored that she roams around the old deserted farmhouse and beyond, searching . . . searching. Abi’s ability to see into others’ souls, even those of the departed, can’t fail her now. Who is this ghost? Where is she bound? Abi has a week to find out.
Inspiration for Secret in the Mist
Purchase Secret in the Stars
Both Secret in the Stars and Secret in the Mist are based on our old neighborhood in Purcellville, Virginia, with lots of fiction sprinkled in, of course. 😊 The inspiration for Secret in the Stars came from an experience I had at a nearby inn, and can be found in “Linda’s Eerie Encounter.”
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Our house of five acres stood on the northwest corner of Virginia, near the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. I could look out my bedroom window and see a grassy hillside on the West Virginia border. It felt like living in a corner of the world. That part of Virginia is known as “horse country.” Jackie Kennedy Onassis rode horses there. The Appalachian Trail, a trek of about 2,200 miles from Springer Mountain in Georgia to Mount Katahdin in Maine, that many people hike year-round, was a few miles up a dirt road. There were two horse stables nearby, and an alpaca and peacock farm down the road. That road, which bordered our house, is an official Virginia byway, a scenic road known for its beauty and cultural and historical significance. The Hilltop Inn, where Secret in the Stars takes place, is based on an inn built in the 1700s located about a mile from our house.
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There are thirty-three homes on my street in the shape of a horseshoe, each with three-to-five acres of grass. Originally, the property had been a farm that had been developed, and eventually became our neighborhood. All the homes were new except two, the original farmhouse and barn, and across the street, an old deserted farmhouse and barn. A marsh separated the deserted farmhouse from the road. During warm months lots of creatures lived there, including a bull frog that croaked on and off throughout the day. My favorite sounds came from the tree frogs that chorused the entire neighborhood in early spring. Perhaps you can see why I have revisited our old neighborhood to write my first two Abi Wunder stories.
Speaking of horses, my fourteen-year-old next-door neighbor owned a horse that she kept at a nearby stable. She wanted very badly to keep her horse on her property during the warm months in a lean-to where her horse could have shelter. But her property was not quite five acres, only a little over four. Our neighborhood association said fine, but that she would have to get every family’s signature to make sure no one would object to having a horse, which no one had yet done, in the neighborhood. The neighborhood covenants allowed up to two horses on five acres or more.
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So, she prepared a petition and went around getting signatures. Everyone signed but one neighbor, who lived behind her. The woman said she didn’t want “horse sounds and smells” to ruin her “peace and quiet.” My next-door neighbor told me that horse manure dries up quickly, does not give off an odor that say, cow manure does; and her horse wouldn’t make much noise because of the great care she gave him. Nonetheless, at a neighborhood meeting her petition was denied because she couldn’t get this one neighbor to sign.
From these circumstances and the Civil War history behind our neighborhood, which I’ll share with you in another post, the story for Secret in the Mist was born.
