The Howl

The genre of the story I'm currently writing, Changeling, is called 'Young Adult Urban Fantasy'.  It's the first story I've ever successfully sat down to write.  I've gotten it through the first, very rough draft, and I'm currently on the second draft, fixing things like continuity and plotting problems.  It's definitely been a learn-how-to-write-while-writing experience.  It's also been about as much fun as you can have out of bed--a total blast.

The story's complicated, so I won't go into much detail here.  Suffice it to say that the main antagonist of the story, the B.B.M (Big Bad Monster) that my two teen FMCs (Female Main Characters) must face, is... well, I'll let them tell you:

“Okay, Sis, listen to this.” I read from my laptop’s screen what my Googling had turned up.

“…there stood a foul thing, a great, black beast, shaped like a hound, yet larger than any hound that ever mortal eye has rested upon. And even as they looked the thing tore the throat out of Hugo Baskerville, on which, as it turned its blazing eyes and dripping jaws upon them, the three shrieked with fear and rode for dear life, still screaming, across the moor. One, it is said, died that very night of what he had seen, and the other twain were but broken men for the rest of their days.”

I turned around in my chair to look at Katie, lying on her belly at the end of my bed, with her chin resting on her hands. “Sound familiar? That’s from The Hound of the Baskervilles. Arthur Conan Doyle is supposed to have based the hound in the story on old legends about something called a ‘black dog’ or ‘barghest’.”

See what I mean about this story being a blast to write?  I mean, how cool is it be able to work in a reference to The Hound of the Baskervilles?

Like a lot of people, walking helps me think.  I live in a rural neighborhood in North-Central Florida, and the walking is great here.  Not only are there plenty of woods, fields, and low-traffic roads, but it's early spring here, and the weather is perfect for walking.  Later in the year, it'll become too hot and humid during the day, so I'll switch to walking mostly at night, but today, I took a long walk around a big, tree-lined hayfield.  The field is still mostly brown, but here and there are patches of green clover, with a few early spring flowers.  In a few weeks, before the brown grass turns green, fills the field and gets tall, it will be covered in a blaze of bright flowers.

So this morning I'm walking around that field along the treeline, deep in thought, working out a plotting problem in my story, when suddenly a long, mournful howl comes through the trees.

It's one of the neighbor's dogs, of course.  But my very first thought was Holy crap, it's the Hound of the Baskervilles!  Flee, flee!