How it all started...
Before we were married, my husband and I began camping on Cumberland Island in South Georgia. It started as just a couple of days of tent camping over New Year's Eve. It has turned into a week-long trek of expedition-style camping.
One New Year’s Eve, someone got the idea to tell ghost stories with the island as setting. We had so much fun that I wrote down the stories the next day. And then I wrote some more, and then some more. That first story has evolved into a collection of back-stories and chapters for what I hope will be a book someday. All the characters are animals on the island—with a bit of a twist. There are raccoon warriors, canoe-paddling squirrels, spying stealth opossums, attack armadillos, dancing deer, ne’er-do-good wild hogs, noble horseshoe crabs and many others. I use a combination of Timucua, Creek and Cherokee names for animals and plants and have expanded to other Coastal Georgia islands (Ossabaw and Sapelo). There are even a few humans made up from a montage of personalities met over the years. The spirit of the story as a whole is the natural environment taking up the fight to protect itself. So instead of using pen and ink to give form to my characters, I decided to sculpt them. When I’m sculpting, I get new ideas for a story or subplot. When I’m writing, I may think of a new character or situation that I later translate into clay. In this way, Cumberland Island supplies the inspiration. Sculpture and writing inform each other. |