A sample of the current work in progress: NEW HOPE.

There is a subtlety to the East that the West will never know. A soft shifting of time and seasons, a blending of one moment into the next without fanfare or suspense. Almost, it seems, without recognition. Dawns do not break in the East, they brighten the sky by degree. Middays do not beat upon backs, but pour, liquid and soft, through a suspended veil of mist. And sunsets do not tear crimson and orange wounds across the western horizon. In the East twilight lingers, fading light from the sky through the spectrum shades of blue, lavender and gray before finally giving way to the star garnished blackness. The East is gentle, the West is sturdy. The East has a feeling about it of generational familiarity, the West of rugged individualism. The East was home. The West never would be. Elissa remembered . . . .

Author's note: This is the very beginning of my newest novel, NEW HOPE. Set in the rural Pennsylvania town of the same name, it is a modern gothic tale of loss and acceptance . . . and something that's quite different from anything I've attempted to date.

The story behind the story is almost as haunting.

While visiting Pennsylvania, a friend suggested I might like to visit an artsy little tourist town five mile north of where Washington crossed the Delaware. I jumped at the chance. New Hope was just as my friend described it - artsy and tourist-filled, a with a history that went back before the American Revolution. And I immediately fell in love with it. Funny as it sounds, I felt as if this town which I had never seen or heard of before, was home.

It was a strange feeling and one that stayed with me as I wandered through the shops. Then something happened. As I was crossing Main Street, the novel, of which you just read the beginning, came to me full blown - beginning, middle, end, characters, plot twists . . . and ghosts.

I don't understand what happened . . . well, at least I didn't then.

So, I had a novel - but I also knew I needed to be in New Hope to write it. Yeah, I thought, that's going to happen. I live in Denver, my family's in Denver, Denver is 2000 miles away from New Hope. Maybe someday, I told myself.

This is where the story gets interesting:

The same year I "found" New Hope, a story of mine "Dust Motes" (another ghost story) was up for a World Fantasy Award. One of the judges, Peter Schneider, innocently asked me what I was currently working on and I told him the story I wanted to write about New Hope. Now, Peter (and his lovely wife Jennifer Brehl) live in Ossinging, New York, so I figured he would have never heard of the tiny borough of New Hope, PA.

He not only heard of it, but had a brother, Chris, who owned a house there. A house with a basement apartment that he rented out . . . and which was being rented at that moment.

But that was okay, I told Peter, because I wasn't ready yet to write the book.

And I wasn't. Not then.

So I went back to Denver and started working out scenes on 3X5 cards and fooling around with an outline -- something I generally don't use when I write. That was in October of 1998. By February of 1999, I had done everything that could be done - I had a stack of 3 X 5 cards with scenes and dialog, a detailed outline and questions about the town that could only be answered if I was there. The "Yeah, like that's going to happen" feeling started to come back.

Then, in March, one month later, I got an email from Peter telling me the wonderful news: His brother's tenant died and the apartment was vacant . . . did I want it?

Did I want it? Yes (even though I still have the feeling I was somehow responsible for the tenant's sudden departure from this mortal coil).

I wrote the first draft of the novel, some 550 pages, in little under seven months. There is magic in New Hope . . . at least there is for me.

Of course, being the most haunted township on the Delaware - a fact I didn't find out until I was living there - probably didn't hurt. Especially when writing a ghost story.

Want to see New Hope? Go to www.newhopepa.com