Origins

When I start talking about I KNOW WHY THE DOGWOODS BLUSH, I get excited because it's a dream come true for me. I've had this basic story in my head since I was about 12 and I began writing it in 1973 when I was 14. So today, let me start with the basic origin of this story of love and redemption from beyond the grave.

I grew up in a small farming community in South Georgia (Colquitt County). Directly across the paved dirt road out in the middle of nowhere was the church cemetery for Oak Grove Baptist Church. Many of my friends would not spend the night with me because of that fact. With funerals happening there on a regular basis, I was able to see first-hand from a very young age the devastating effect that death has on the people in our lives. As movies and TV began to change in the late 60's, tales of revenge and tainted heroes began to populate our entertainment culture. So I wove those together to create a character I originally called "The Night Phantom." He was a ghost who avenged crimes committed against the helpless. Comic characters like DC's Spectre or Lee Faulk's classic "The Phantom" were a major influence on my incarnation.

By 1973, I began writing my own version of an avenging ghost who fought crime. Based on tough guys like Charles Bronson, Clint Eastwood and Joe Don Baker, "The Night Phantom" was Charles Baker (a hybrid version of Charlie Bronson & Joe Don Baker). Charles Baker was a cop from San Francisco (I'd never been to California in 1973, but San Fran was where Dirty Harry lived so I thought it was cool) who, along with his wife, went missing. One year later, there were no clues to what happened to them and no suspects (although Baker's best friend could not explain where he was on the night Baker and his wife vanished). One year later, a masked avenger dubbed "Night Phantom" by the press began killing people at exactly midnight every Monday night. As the story wound down, it turned out that the Phantom was the ghost of Charles Baker, back from the dead to avenge the murder of himself and his beloved wife. His partner was absolved (turned out he had an illegal gambling problem which was why he would not talk about where he was when Charles vanished), the villain revealed and punished (Chief of Police who wanted Baker's wife for himself) and the killers (thugs who took it too far) all killed.

This basic tale of a ghost avenging or solving his own death has since been played out in various books and films (The Crow, The Invisible, The Sixth Sense, etc) but when I created Night Phantom, such a premise was unknown to me. I'd write this tale in long hand and read it to my buddies in shop class aloud the next day. Their excitement helped inspire me to keep writing. The story ended being about 150 written pages. More on that later. Let me know what you think so far and if you have any questions you'd like for me to answer about how the story evolved.

Thanks for joining me today!