Cleaning out my childhood home was the genesis of Dead People From The Attic. On the final day my sister and I went through the stacks of old photos that we had accumulated as the rest of the house was emptied. After the sorting was done there was a suitcase full of photos neither of us could identify. I told her I'd keep them, I had some ideas that I might use them for, but writing a book was not on the list.
I took a couple of photos to a meeting of our local chapter of the Maryland Writers Association as writing prompts. That didn't gain much traction, but Joan Cooper suggested I start a blog and do some flash fiction with them. As they say the rest is history.
I set myself a task of one story a week for fifty-two weeks and mostly made it. It took about thirteen months to complete.
The stories run the gamut including drama, sci-fi, fantasy, and humor all set in historical backdrops and include a variety of unique characters.
As I rummaged through the stacks of photos waiting for them to "speak" to me I realized that the "Dead People from the Attic" still had a voice and still had something to say. I just had to listen closely to hear the distant murmurs of long forgotten conversations. I went over the photos with a jeweler's loupe like a crime scene detective looking for any forensic evidence that would lead me to the true story behind the photo. Some spoke to me immediately and others took months, and before I knew it a year had gone by and I had a book's worth of stories