Okay. So... I get asked this all the time, too: Did any of the things that happened in your book happen to you, and where did you come up with the characters?
Well, most of the things that happen, or even get mentioned in passing, in Ghost Medicine happened in some way to me. Yes, I did have to slaughter my own turkey, and I was happy to see him go because he was so mean to me. Like the character in the book, every time I'd turn my back on that thing, he would watch me with his beady little black, soulless eyes and then come jumping at me with his razor-sharp talons. I am not freekin' kidding. I hated that thing. I even hit him in the face one time with a rake and made him bleed, and I kind of felt sorry for him. Okay... I'm just making that part up. I didn't feel sorry for him. But I did feel sorry for me when I had to clean and dress his corpse.
I wonder why they call it "dressing" when you're ripping the bird's guts out and you're up to your elbows in blood and stenchy turkey goo.
Yeah, I became a vegetarian after that. For a couple years, too. In fact, I eventually had to force myself to start eating meat again (I did it as a New Year's resolution... honest story). One of these days, I'll probably make a New Year's resolution to start smoking.
The characters in Ghost Medicine are all composites of people I've known or grew up with. None of the characters is much like me, I think, but the character of Rose was really a person that we knew when we had horse property in Central California. To the letter... Rose was a neighbor of ours. Other than that, they're all made up.
As far as the eyes at the bottom of this post are concerned... I must say they have a certain Bill-Clintonesque quality to them. And the left eyebrow could use a waxing to get it down to the size of the right. But I'll tell the unnerving story about that guy in a future post.
Five days until Ghost Medicine is in the stores.
BEDFAM 4
--A.S.
