My Journey Through Spooky America

In two weeks, The Ghostly Tales of Bar Harbor will be released. This is the sixth book I’ve written for Arcadia’s Spooky America series, and its upcoming publication has me looking back on my spooky writing journey.

For those unfamiliar with the series, Spooky America is a collection of nonfiction books for the middle grade audience about haunted places in the United States. The books are written by various authors, adapted from the Haunted America series for adults. That means Spooky America authors don’t do the initial research about the locations; we take the original Haunted America books and modify them for young readers, shortening the content, updating stories as necessary, and making sure the tales deliver maximum spookiness while maintaining the history and culture of the setting.

The fact that these are adaptations and don’t require much research on my part might make you think the writing becomes formulaic after a time, but you’d be mistaken. Every book is different. Some cover a single city, while others cover a whole state or an entire region. Every Haunted America manuscript is unique, each place has its own personality, and although I don’t have to do the historical research myself, I love drawing from my own experiences in the area to give the Spooky America version of the tales a personal touch. That’s why I’m grateful to have been assigned so many books about places I’ve lived or visited.

But it’s not just the writing process that’s different each time. The world is different, too. I’m different.

The first Spooky America book I wrote was The Ghostly Tales of New England. The editor contacted me in the fall of 2019, on the recommendation of a fellow author, to talk about writing for the series. She and I had a lovely phone conversation in October, and she asked if I could start right away. However, the turnaround time for the manuscript was pretty tight, and I was still teaching in Austin, so I asked if I could be assigned a title in the second round of books instead. I was hoping I could do the bulk of my writing work over spring break. Little did I know how different the world was going to look in the spring of 2020.

I ended up writing The Ghostly Tales of New England at the start of the pandemic, while we were sheltering at home and learning how to work and teach online.

On March 24, 2020, I emailed my editor a few questions, but began the message with:

“The news out of New York is quite anxiety-inducing. I hope you’re doing ok. I’m thinking of you all.”

That was just eleven days after my school had closed a day early for spring break and then extended the vacation by two extra weeks. The unexpected break gave me plenty of writing time, but my mind was also preoccupied with the state of the world. (The break was eventually extended indefinitely. We did not reopen that school year.)

Then, on April 1, 2020, I began an email to her this way:

“I apologize for the delay in responding to your feedback. I think I’m suffering from ‘screen fatigue.’ As a teacher, I’m used to being on my feet all day and talking/ interacting for hours at a time. All these emails and zoom meetings and sitting in front of a computer all day are taking their toll on me, and my eyes and head need a rest when I’m done. But enough about me…”

Did I need to share all of that with my editor? No, I did not, lol. But she was very understanding. These were strange times for everyone, and she sent similar emails to me, apologizing for delays on her end and mentioning her struggles working from home with two kids.

Despite the stress of the pandemic and the unexpected work conditions, The Ghostly Tales of New England was published in August of 2020 and became a popular title in the Spooky America series.

My next four books bounced back and forth between locations in Texas and the northeast.

I was thrilled to get to write The Ghostly Tales of Austin about the city I’d lived in for over twenty years. I wrote it in the spring of 2021. That semester, we were back on campus teaching in person and online students at the same time, a scenario I never want to repeat. On the weekends, I took myself on field trips to the haunted locations in my books. Although my visits to the Driskill and Mount Bonnell and Moonshine Grill didn’t result in any ghostly encounters, they provided a much-needed escape from the chaos of the classroom.

Next, I was back among the New England ghosts, writing about the spirits in Burlington, Vermont. I wrote The Ghostly Tales of Burlington during the spring of 2022, while I was teaching my last semester before leaving the profession. I was also packing up my house to move away from Austin. By the time the book came out that August, I was living in my current home in Richardson, Texas.

Richardson is a suburb of Dallas, and it’s where I grew up, so I squealed with joy when Arcadia asked me to adapt Haunted Dallas for the middle grade audience. Having a book come out in the place I was living in a year when people were no longer social distancing was especially exciting because it meant I was finally able to do in-person publicity. I had done radio interviews and virtual readings for my previous books, but I had the privilege of appearing on both Good Morning Texas and Texas Today to talk about The Ghostly Tales of Dallas.

However, before the Dallas book even came out in May 2023, I was already working on the next one. I wrote The Ghostly Tales of Delaware in the spring of 2023, and it came out in August. That was a very spooky year for me.

After the Delaware book, I took a short break from ghost stories to work on some other writing projects, but in the fall of 2025, just after our vacation to Bar Harbor, Maine, Arcadia reached out to see if I’d be willing to write a new Spooky America book… about Bar Harbor, Maine. The decision was easy.

Now, six years after my first introduction to Spooky America, my sixth book is heading to bookstores. This one is full of cautionary tales, creepy cats, spooky ship captains, and a few little personal notes about my own trip to Bar Harbor. I’m proud of this book and can’t wait to see it in the world.

I’m grateful for everyone who has come along with me on my spooky writing journey, especially to those of you who have all five (maybe soon all six?) of my Ghostly Tales books on your shelves. I appreciate your support, and I love it when you send me photos of my books in the wild or share pictures of your kids reading them or tell me that you gave one as a gift or left one in a little free library. Those messages always put a big smile on my face.

Thank you, also, for reading this blog post. If you made it to the end, I want to give you a chance to win a free copy of The Ghostly Tales of Bar Harbor. To enter, you can:

Subscribe to my newsletter.
Share this blog post on Facebook and tag me.
Pre-Order a copy of the Bar Harbor book from my online bookstore. (If you win, I will either refund your money or send you a second copy for free, whichever you prefer.)

If you do all of the above, you’ll be entered to win three times! Best of luck. I’ll announce the winner here on May 5^th.