Guest Post and Giveaway - Mary Lindsey

GUEST POST AND GIVEAWAY

MARY LINDSEY

 

Do you hear a buzzing sound?  That’s the buzz surrounding Mary Lindsey’s debut novel, Shattered Souls.  The book comes out in December, but you can read my review tomorrow.  Guess what?  Mary is here today as part of The Teen {Book} Scene blog tour.  Guess what else?  There’s a really fun giveaway too!

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I was so excited when Melina invited me to be a guest on her blog. I was asked to write a little bit about the setting for my book, Shattered Souls, specifically addressing my choice of Galveston Island. 

I set Shattered Souls on the Texas Gulf Coast because it’s my home and I think it's a unique place with fascinating history. I needed ghosts for my story, and part of the plot centers around The Great Storm of 1900. Somewhere between eight and ten thousand people died in that storm. Plenty of ghosts! 

Galveston Island

The research was a blast. I took the kids to Galveston Island and we explored. After visiting a museum dedicated to the Storm, we found the perfect cemetery, hotel, and restaurant for the story.

Above is my 4 foot-tall daughter near a mausoleum at Old City Cemetery. When this mausoleum was constructed in 1888, the door would have been at least 6 feet tall.  It's under 4 feet tall today, because the level of the entire island was raised after the Storm of 1900 in an effort to prevent another deadly flood. I found this so interesting, I used it in Shattered Souls in the scene when Alden and Lenzi meet for the first time. 

Hurricane Ike

First-hand familiarity with my century old story-world came roaring into my life while I was revising it for the first time. Hurricane Ike slammed into the Gulf Coast. Ike was similar in intensity to the Storm of 1900. Fortunately, we now have radar, satellites, internet, radio and television to warn us that entire communities may be swept away. No such system existed in 1900.

The effect of Hurricane Ike was similar to the Storm of 1900, but the death rate was negligible thanks to modern technology. I've been through several hurricanes in my lifetime, but this one made the others look, feel, sound, and smell like babies in comparison. It was terrifying. I can only imagine what it was like for people a century ago who didn't have days to prepare like I did.

Picture time!

It shocked me how similar the pictures of the devastation are. I got to witness first-hand my story-world from a century ago.  I have a few examples of then and now:

Surveying the damage on wheels: Storm of 1900 and Hurricane Ike

Sorting through the debris then and now

The power of nature that my characters experienced in their past-lives was terrifying first hand. Fortunately, I was up in Houston when Ike hit and not in Galveston. 

Below is where one of the buildings in the first draft of Shattered Souls used to stand. Murdoch's Bath House was rebuilt after the Storm of 1900 and was lost again during Hurricane Ike. The pilings were all that remained when I drove down after Ike. It has not been rebuilt, and so I had to remove it from the later drafts. 

The statue below was built as a tribute to the estimated 10,000 people who died during the Great Storm of 1900. The seawall under the statue is 17 feet tall. In the second picture, check out the storm surge hours before Hurricane Ike hit. 

Thanks, Melina for having me on your blog today! If anyone has questions about the Storm, Galveston, or Shattered Souls, they can ask them in the comments and I’ll be happy to answer them.

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Now for that giveaway.  On each stop of the blog tour, you will find a letter of the alphabet.  Collect all the letters, unscramble them, and send your answer to the final tour stop.  It’s that easy.

The winner will receive a signed copy of Andrea Cremer’s Wolfsbane!  How awesome is that?  I hear that Andrea blurbed Shattered Souls, so these gals are connected.  

Today’s letter is I

The blog tour schedule:
Sunday, May 8: Mary’s blog
Monday, May 9: 365 Days of Reading
Tuesday, May 10: Reading Vacation
Wednesday, May 11: Hopelessly Devoted Bibliophile
Thursday, May 12: Books Complete Me
Friday, May 13: The Elliott Review
Saturday, May 14: A Good Addiction