After taking a few days off after finishing “Didja Know…?” I sunk into brainstorming mode. I get a little antsy, and ideas fly in and out of my head at such a fast pace it is hard to pick one solid idea to go with for my next story. On Thursday, the light bulb came on. I had story. Wait! No, I didn’t. I needed a storyline, I needed characters, I needed goals, problems, conflicts, outside influences, internal problems……

I quickly jotted a few ideas down on paper. I opened up a new Word document, and typed my first paragraph.

The fingernail on Meg’s thumb bent backward and pain shot up her hand. She shook her arm to dispatch the throbbing deep in the nail bed, and gazed down at the new mark she carved under the bed on the wooden floor. Six marks for six days of living in this hellhole they called Eternity Acres.

Oh the excitement! Today I researched cults and communes. I’ve read more about the Davideans, Rajneesh, People’s Temple, Heaven’s Gate, and many more it makes my head swim. For one, I shy away from organized religion, I’m independent, and have a problem with authority….yet, I can see the appeal of living in a commune, becoming a united front within a group, and community living. I can understand how someone who is seeking “something” in their life finds a leader, an idea, to grasp onto as a lifeline to happiness. So, with my great hunt to pick the brains behind these groups, these cults for lack of a better term, I found disturbing things. I often shook my head at what I deemed madness. Yet, it fascinates me.

In real life, I have had a few brushes with the Rajneesh. As a kid, they were in our state. You go to the city, you’d see the members in their purple, pink, red bedsheets and they’d hand you a piece of paper with information about them. Maybe my parents were more opened minded than most people. To this small town girl, they drew my curiosity. I’d ask my parents if I could say hi to them. “Sure, Abby. Go ahead. We’ll wait at the corner for you,” my parents would say. Not long after that, we find out that the Rajneesh people poisoned 100′s of people in The Dalles, OR with Salmonella poisoning. That ended my parents letting me go make friends with the guys in pink dresses. Later in highschool I sat between two Rajneeshes on an airplane. For some reason they didn’t talk to me. I tried, I really tried to talk with them. I received lots of smiles. I felt their arms move against mine as they silently laughed at the topics I brought up…but for some reason they did not join in on my 2-hour-long-one-sided conversation. Although, one of the men nodded his head when I told him he looked very good in the color mauve. Yes, I was a rather precocious child.

I don’t want to give away my idea for my book, but I will tell you this. It involves a cult, a commune called Eternity Acres. With Lord Stephan preaching that only he can bring you eternal peace.

This should get interesting…..