Thanks to Barbara for having me on the Roses of Prose blog today. When I asked her if the blog had a theme this month, she said scary, spooky. I’m not sure I can write to spooky or scary...in fact, I hate scary stuff. I avoid all scary movies, and will switch the television station if something scary comes on.
However, I do have a fascination with cemeteries. When I was a young misguided adolescent, I spent many an hour wandering through Forest Lawn Cemetery in Buffalo, New York. Not that wandering through Forest Lawn Cemetery isn’t a lovely thing to do, but I was supposed to be in school. However, I was new in town, had few friends, and the one friend I had spent the hours with me wandering through the cemetery. I haven’t seen the cemetery in years as I moved away the following year, but at the time it was a wonderful park-like setting. It was bright and sunny, and nothing ever scared me there.
I continue to have a fascination with cemeteries. I don’t ditch school any more to wander through them, but I found a calling in doing my family genealogy some years ago, and I must say that has led to wandering through many, many cemeteries over the years. I’ve enjoyed them all, even when none of my relatives were buried there. The inscriptions on the stones bear witness to the lives of those who are buried thee, and the people who loved them.
One cemetery in Iowa caught my imagination such that I wrote a story around it. It was a wonderful cemetery set on a hill above rolling cornfields, filled with wonderful old tombstones and old fir trees that rustled in the wind. The book is called “Across the Winds of Time,” and was just released from the Wild Rose Press. It’s a combination ghost story and time travel. I couldn’t quite decide which, so I’ll let the reader decide.
But no, in case you’re wondering... There is NO way I’d be caught dead in a cemetery at night. Uh uh... NO way!
Bess McBride
"Romances for the Shy Girl in All of Us"
http://www.bessmcbride.com/
