Writing: Setting Sketch: Old Rainy Meadow

Hi everyone! I am having a good week despite a twisted ankle (a climbing accident. I should have let go before gravity forced me down on a bad angle.) The writing is going better, and I have all my characters in a row doing what they are meant to do. That is rare as they often misbehave and disagree with me.

Also, I finally redid my Amazon ads which are working better but not delivering yet. I think I have to redo the description to draw people in better or they are drawing in the wrong kind of audience. When I have the energy to do that, I go back and see what is going on. For now, I take most out of the sudden burst of stamina to write and whip the last part of the story into shape.

Here is a sneak peek, a place in the book:

 

Old Rainy Meadow, Cemetery

 

Role in Story:

Important. Establish the city’s atmosphere and social latter and relationship with death and dying. Ties together the beginning and end of the book. On the Old Lich St.

Related Characters:

Morris, Hubert, Ignatius, Petula, Ira, Herbert, Agatha, Cruxh, the driver (dead) Jeffrey Gilliam, Dow.

Season:

Night time. Late summer. Thick, almost touchable mist drapes over the cemetery grounds. You can’t see the sky or even see feet ahead, making your every sense scream danger.

Unique Features:

Black, heavy metal fence circles around the cemetery. Huge spiky gates lead into the grounds. Old Rainy Meadow is the oldest cemetery in Necropolis. Thus the gravestones are old and deteriorated here and there. Some of them have forgotten languages written on them, but those stones are hidden at the back of the place. There are newer rich looking gravestones which represented the latest trends of burial with quotes, little statues, golden finishes, and drawn images even portraits. On the grounds, there are old statues representing both the living and the death. Solemn-looking things. There are also a few mausoleums for the riches families of the city. And lastly but not least a groundskeeper’s hovel.

Description:

Old Rainy Meadow is reserved only those families who have a claim on it, to the old rich and powerful families who descend from the first necromancer to habit the city. There are empty graves whose residents are up and running in the city, but there are also forgotten, old graves whose habitats didn’t want to be awakened for some odd reason or couldn’t be awakened, having deteriorated minds or bodies. There are also newer residents who have opted out of being turned into undead. They complain about living making a racket and often enough about lousy relatives who don’t visit. All around the cemetery stunted, diseased, and mangled trees grow. A few of them are scorched black from the last Zombie war. A legacy when ghost and undead hunting had been legal. The final battle had been on the cemetery grounds, burning both the hunters and the zombies, ending the war.

Sights:

Graves, mausoleums, fence, gates, statues, hovel. Rosebush, cut flowers, vases. Offerings, candles, skulls, candy, scythes. Wild weed, groundskeeper’s hovel, the groundskeeper himself.

Sounds:

Moaning, wind wailing, trees and hovel creaking from the wind, the quiet whisper of the dead and accompanied with loud complaining about the living.

Smells:

Moistness, flowers, candles, tobacco of the groundskeeper.

Notes:

It was one of those nights that made your back hair rise. You knew something was coming as the dead were restless. The groundskeeper turned on the rough wooden bed he had made. Even the small hovel didn’t keep the feeling away. His house was just out of the cemetery gates, but sometimes it was best not to attempt to make his way across the cemetery. This was such a night. He had ended his battle with weeds, unwanted invasive flowers, and ever growing grass too late to get safely back home to the missus. It had been the lawn. It refused to obey him, growing faster than anything else in the city. He had heard that the typical lawn grew two to six inches a week from his foreign pen pal, another groundskeeper. But not his. His lawn grew the double the speed. It baffled him as much as his friend, who knew greatly about flowers, grass, and roses. More than he did. But he told his friend about how to deal with growing hands, grave robbing scavengers, and wandering zombies. Sometimes he was sure the pen pal didn’t believe him. But that wasn’t the reason for his melancholy. It was the constant ache in his back from all the reaping.

The groundskeeper stood up from the bed. He sniffed the air. Sometimes he could smell the zombies beforehand. Maybe this odd pressure he was having was just that, the dead rising on their own. Of course, it could be another dare from the nobs at the University. Their lot were always running around here, thinking it was funny what they did. Ha, he knew better. They were destructive and disturbed the peace he so carefully kept. He moved to the door, opening it. The door creaked. The groundskeeper peered outside to see if there were any zombies coming at the hovel. There was no one. If there was the mist hid them. But he had worked here so long that he knew the mist’s temper, and how to tilt his head to look past the first appearances.

There it was, the pressure again. He tilted his head more and saw what stirred the cemetery. At first, he thought them to be a group of students, and he was ready to chase them out, but a careful observation revealed they were a lot worse than pranking college kids. They were the bankers. He shut the door, retreating back inside on to the bed. He lit his tobacco and waited out the storm.

Thank you for reading!