Why I Set November in Salem in Danvers, Mass.

L.C. Russell and November
Originally uploaded by November in Salem

Summers in my corner of the world are long and lonely. The tiny orange orchard that shelters Dove Cottage from the merciless southern Arizona sun is no match for the blast furnace that drops down from a sky seemingly stretched above the earth like a cheap party balloon about to snap. Those who live in these parts during the summer months, hide. Interaction with neighbors, mail-carriers and the errant landscaper looking to drum up business by hacking the dead palm leaves from the dried out fan palms, is restricted to a wave, a dash across brown lawns to the mailbox and back, or a mumbled excuse about why your palm trees look like that in the first place.
It was during such a spell in the waning days of June, 2006, after a particularly mind-numbing afternoon spent sitting at the kitchen table listlessly picking up one of a thousand puzzle pieces , twisting it this way and that before tossing it back onto the table, that I looked out the kitchen window at the pool, sparkling in the back yard—the pool that was too hot to swim in. I knew I needed to find an escape. Needed to find someplace dark, and dank that reeked of ancient mystery and an ominous past.
And so I went searching…and discovered just the place I'd been looking for—the website is www.opacity.us. It is there that I discovered the ruins of Danvers State Asylum, a 300,000 sq. ft. mental health facility long abandoned atop the Hill of Hathorne in Danvers, Massachusetts. The Hill of Hathorne is named for Judge Hathorne—the hanging judge of the Salem Witch Trials of 1692, when Danvers was still called Salem Village and witchcraft was a hanging offense.
As so often happens when I'm sitting at my computer (as I presently am), in my nook, the characters of my novels begin to emerge and make themselves known. And so, Dynnis the gnome stuck his head round my bookcase that day and began to tell me the tale of the celebration of Hollantide, and of the sea journey of the terrible Lord Astaroth. As I listened, my fingers began to fly across the keyboard and so the story began. But as I sit here just now—Dynnis and Hob have both begun to whisper of the next story…the one in New Orleans…and the dark voodoo of Astaroth. L.C.