Thankfulness #99: Haunted Tours

I’m still struggling along to finish the book. Okay, I’m not really struggling now. I was. It was that final big, multi-chapter battle where I had to kill so many people off *cough*. I won;t give away a bunch of details, but I’ll say that I was trying to keep the setting vague (like I usually do) except I had to name the city earlier in the story. As I was plodding along, it occurred to me that since I named the city, I should probably make sure that a place like the one I was using actually existed there. So, I hit google images and the third image down was pretty much exactly what I had in mind, not just in appearance but location. So then I hit Google maps to make sure and yes, the location was just what I needed. But, if I’m using a real place – even if I don;t name it specifically – I like to kind of know things about it so that someone who might read the book and recognize it doesn’t go “pffft. That’s not how it is”.

Usually I spend days scouring the internet for photos and trying to piece things together, but not this time.As it turns out, the location is haunted, and they regularly have ghost tours, and people – god love them – have filmed these tours. I found everything from a video of the inside of the antique elevators to one showing the roof access area. I do need to rearrange the pool’s location in one scene, but otherwise it is 100% what I envisioned for the place to be. How awesome is that?

Anyway, armed with that inspiration, I’ve finished the battle, am moving through the immediate aftermath, and will soon skip the months necessary to bring me to my closing event. Yay!

We did have some storms today. Nothing horrific. They hit about 5:30 and were done by 6:00, but we did get some hail:

And of course the dog was terrified, so we spent time hanging out in the bathroom (he likes to lay next to the bathtub when it storms – or in the bathtub.) Speaking of Fido, he is doing much better. Tonight is the last of his three Lasix a day and tomorrow he gets cut down to two. Yay!

Not much else. Before the storm it was in the 70s. Now it’s in the 40s. So that gets a BOO from me!

Back to writing. Have a haunted video kinda day!

Jo 🙂