Columbia Ghost Story is now a wrap. I posted the last chapter this morning. Arriving at that final page is a bittersweet experience for a story that has been on the drawing board for close to four years. Before moving on to another story, I hit the pause button to leaf through the scrapbook.
The initial idea lies back in The Queen's Jewels, or in terms of Neal's timeline, a year ago. That was my first story to feature Columbia University's underground tunnel system, and I realized then that one day Mozzie would meet a ghost in those dark restricted passages. I nicknamed Mozzie's tunnel plot bunny Ghostie and made a nest for it in OneNote, a Microsoft Office product. OneNote is my version of a writer's commonplace book. I have a folder in OneNote which is a collection of pages for future stories. They're sorted chronologically, so the first question was when to fit the concept into Neal's timeline. Ghostie was ideal for a Halloween story. I'd already written about Halloween 2004 in The Woman in Blue which meant the earliest she could appear was the end of October 2005
I like to pick a title and representative origami early in the writing process. In this case, the title came prepackaged with Ghostie. Most stories aren't so accommodating. Yes, Dark Rabbit, I'm looking at you. I nearly abandoned writing that story because I couldn't think of a title I liked. Inspiration only struck after I'd picked out an origami for the story. Dark Rabbit featured Angela whose childhood nickname was Funny Bunny. When I found a creepy origami bunny, it inspired the title. With Columbia Ghost Story, when I happened upon an origami ghost with outstretched arms, I knew I had my inspiration.
Once I had the title and origami, I let Ghostie rest for a while. She had a page in OneNote for jotting notes and keeping track of website references. She'd also accumulated a meadow—a Pinterest secret board where I could collect visuals and music. As it turned out, it was over three years before I began writing the story. Having such a long development time ultimately worked out to Ghostie's advantage.
From the beginning, the original Ghostbusters movie was an inspiration. It's one of my favorites, and it doesn't hurt that the story includes academics from Columbia University and Upper West Side locales. Ectoplasm and gallons of slime would have to be featured in the story in an homage to the movie. When Penna included Mozzie wearing a Ghostbusters' outfit in her vignette April Fool, she provided a tie-in I could use in my story.
Slowly Ghostie attracted other ghostly bunnies. In An Evening with Genji, Mozzie took up a new cause, the plight of endangered bees, and along with it a new business opportunity—organic honey. At first glance, that may not seem particularly relevant to ghosts, but it was through studying the fractal patterns of honeycombs in The Dreamer that Mozzie became interested in the fractal properties of slime. Around that same time, Travis introduced him to the SETI working group. Can I blame Travis for Mozzie's theory on the extraterrestrial link to tunnel slime? At the very least, Travis supplied fertile soil for Mozzie to grow his gooey conspiracy theory.
Tunnel slime initially attracted thoughts of an X-Files story. That may still happen, but there's another series that spends an inordinate amount of time in dark tunnels wrestling with ghosts, and that's Supernatural. I'm sure Ghostie deserves at least some of the credit for prodding me into writing Crossed Lines. Now I had legitimate ghost hunters to help Mozzie solve his mystery.
But I still needed a plot.
Columbia helpfully provided a ready-made breeding ground in the guise of the Bloomingdale Insane Asylum. Any reader of horror tales knows that ghosts abound in such institutions. Mozzie volunteered a bushel basket of conspiracy theories to choose from. Many of them are now residing on other OneNote pages, waiting their turn. The Culper Spy Ring, a nod to one of Mozzie's canon conspiracy theories was the most relevant to the present case. Electra and her brother Thanatos refused to be left out of the fun. The creepy brick tunnels under Columbia were a natural for rifts into Oblivion, an underworld of vampires, witches, and vengeful spirits.
By this time, I'd added a worksheet for Ghostie. The worksheets I make for my stories are created in Word. I've found the built-in navigation feature a handy sorting tool. The worksheets hold the story outline as well as lists of characters, important dates, and miscellaneous notes. It's also where I keep track of the various subthreads to the story, such as the Clueless con, Arkham Files, and the Electra arc. Once the worksheet was filled, it was time to stop collecting and start writing.
The story is finished, but Ghostie lives on. There's still a matter of the Tudor Crown. That artifact arrived quite late in the development process and is now insisting on its own OneNote page. Thanatos is busily hatching plans for another eidolon while Electra is entranced about a story featuring her stained-glass angels.
Columbia Ghost Story on Archive of Our Own
Columbia Ghost Story on FanFiction
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