TheCemetery.net

THE DEATH OF MOONLIGHT THE RABBIT

This view into the front lobby, from the dining room, was my office for one chilly season. It was the dead of winter, a cold December night. All the other artists had moved out of the hotel and I was stranded, snowed in here and working alone, writing a ghost movie screenplay for Hollywood movie producers to be set right here in the hotel. The movie was called Wintergrave. This later became the novel Wintergrave. The novel is actually much better.

I had a pet white rabbit I'd bought in Los Angeles which I'd brought across the country with me. She had rich black eyes and black fur lines drawn around them that came back into points that reminded me of Cleopatra. She was just a baby when I bought her. I named her Moonlight.

(Moonlight, the original hotel pet)

Moonlight lived that entire first year among all the other artists. But after they left it was just Moonlight and I alone in the entire 32-room silent hotel. I sat in that front office typing the creepy screenplay. I was already in contact with three movie producers who were discussing their interest with the potential story, and I'd flown out to LA for a few meetings over the story treatment already. Movie producer Jon Davison was spearheading the project for a while. Movie producer Roger Corman also took an interest for a while. But for that month, while I wrote it, it was just Moonlight the rabbit and I and whatever creepy sounds the building produced that cold lonely winter.

It was an interesting experience in that I was entirely alone in the building when I was creating the screenplay. The story was "very death-heavy" in that it revolved around a character who was a coroner. So the character's every day experience involved bodies and the scenes of death. And the story was set here in the hotel as well, with the coroner character staying here alone in the winter inside the hotel.

(RoboCop producer Jon Davison, Blair Murphy,
and The Empire Strikes Back director Irvin Kershner)

Discussions with movie producers were geared also to actually film it here using the very hotel as the set. The building was legitimately being researched as being haunted, so many of the stories incorporated were real and could be touted as "partially based on a true story." Yet for that December I was still in this center of this creepy frozen hell-hole and reading the screenplay as the story unfolded around me off the typing keys. I would listen, and then type. I'd imagine a scene set in a certain room, type out the scene as I saw it unfolding in my head, and then go upstairs into that room and check it out... imagining it around me... and then go back downstairs and see what happened next in the old hotel. It was one ghoulishly creepy winter, all solitude and death stories in the air, and walking around alone in the dark halls of the big old place.

It was so cold I could see my breath in the rooms and halls upstairs. The windows had frozen over and cold not be seen through. Thrashing frozen winds blew open one window on the third floor one night and shattered all the glass. What a nightmare that was. Just nailing boards over the freezing opening in the dark!

It's one thing to read a spooky story in a book. It's very much another to be watching one unfold on the pages before you and be sitting in the actual supposedly-haunted location the story is set within, and also not knowing what is going to happen next because it hasn't happened in the rooms around you yet!

Days went by with no contact with the outside world. No one in Windber was even aware anyone was still living in this old hotel. The shades were drawn and I typed most of the Wintergrave screenplay to candlelight. It was just the rabbit Moonlight and I.

As the story was about a local coroner, in addition to stories he'd heard in the past I incorporated many local stories I'd gathered from locals offering their stories of deaths from in the area. Like this story from a local woman about her grandfather dying nearby. "My grandfather died in an unusual way," she told me. "He was riding his cycle and an accident happened up ahead with a hay truck and a car wreck. He was speeding along and when he reached the accident it was too late and his cycle slammed into them. He was thrown, and they said he would have lived because his body landed in the bed of hay. But there were sickles and pitch forks hidden within the hay. So he died anyway. This is the only photograph that exists of him. I think it's unusual that he's with his cycle in it and that's also how he died."

(photo of a local man who was thrown from his motorcycle to survive a car crash only to be speared by pitch forks in the hay truck he'd landed within)

Some time in mid-December I was thick in the frenzy of writing and actually completing the screenplay first draft. "I'm really in that space," I thought as I typed the climax and rounded up its final touches. "I'm so there," I kept thinking as I finished.

"I'm so in that death space," I was imagining to myself as the final details of the death-related story seemed to almost write themselves. Everything was ghosts and spirits and the speaking creaking walls around me and all the history that was breathing and moaning up and down the long frozen hotel halls surrounding me. Anything unusual that happened in the building that winter went right into the screenplay as actual details of the environment the story was set within. It really seemed the building was writing the story in those final pagfes. The typing flew off my fingertips.

Moonlight, the rabbit, sat in a pen in the room beside me as I typed.

And then a pretty dramatic thing happened. Just as I finished the first draft, which felt so "there" and "right on in that death space", Moonlight dropped dead right in front of me!

I was typing, and finishing, and to my left Moonlight began to shiver. And then she fell forward and was suddenly dead. The timing was outrageous! I swear it was like the screenplay killed her. It was like it knocked the life out of her!

Because the ground was frozen solid there was no way to bury her. Only the office was heated, the halls of the hotel were ice cold sub-freezing temperatures, so for the next few days as I touched up little points of the screenplay, Moonlight the rabbit sat frozen solid in the hotel halls. When I finally finished I went out for a late night beer at a local bar to reread the screenplay in a different environment. Some locals recognized me, crying out, "We didn't even know you were still around! You've been living alone in that big old haunted place all winter!? We want to come over tonight. Can we come over to your hotel and have a tour?"

"No," I told them, "tonight's not the best night. The hotel is really cold, and I've been writing some pretty death-saturated material so its all just really strange right now. I even have a dead rabbit in the hall."

No one took me serious and the small local bar crowd came over for an after-midnight winter hotel tour of the spooky building. Inside they discovered I wasn't lying. They toured around, seeing their own breath. Guests were freaked out, "Uh, there really is a dead rabbit in your hall."

Later, Moonlight was buried in a little wooden box as a casket.


	The novel WINTERGRAVE I just finished typing the novel Wintergrave. Approx 215 pages. Much of it takes place in Windber and the hotel. I wrote the story first as a screenplay a while back (you can read the earlier tale of "The Death of Moonlight" here and what happened). The novel is so much better than the screenplay. Its pretty exciting to be done. -Blair _________________________________________________________ THE DEATH OF MOONLIGHT THE RABBIT This view into the front lobby, from the dining room, was my office for one chilly season. It was the dead of winter, a cold December night. All the other artists had moved out of the hotel and I was stranded, snowed in here and working alone, writing a ghost movie screenplay for Hollywood movie producers to be set right here in the hotel. The movie was called Wintergrave. This later became the novel Wintergrave. The novel is actually much better. I had a pet white rabbit I'd bought in Los Angeles which I'd brought across the country with me. She had rich black eyes and black fur lines drawn around them that came back into points that reminded me of Cleopatra. She was just a baby when I bought her. I named her Moonlight. (Moonlight, the original hotel pet) Moonlight lived that entire first year among all the other artists. But after they left it was just Moonlight and I alone in the entire 32-room silent hotel. I sat in that front office typing the creepy screenplay. I was already in contact with three movie producers who were discussing their interest with the potential story, and I'd flown out to LA for a few meetings over the story treatment already. Movie producer Jon Davison was spearheading the project for a while. Movie producer Roger Corman also took an interest for a while. But for that month, while I wrote it, it was just Moonlight the rabbit and I and whatever creepy sounds the building produced that cold lonely winter. It was an interesting experience in that I was entirely alone in the building when I was creating the screenplay. The story was "very death-heavy" in that it revolved around a character who was a coroner. So the character's every day experience involved bodies and the scenes of death. And the story was set here in the hotel as well, with the coroner character staying here alone in the winter inside the hotel. (RoboCop producer Jon Davison, Blair Murphy, and The Empire Strikes Back director Irvin Kershner) Discussions with movie producers were geared also to actually film it here using the very hotel as the set. The building was legitimately being researched as being haunted, so many of the stories incorporated were real and could be touted as "partially based on a true story." Yet for that December I was still in this center of this creepy frozen hell-hole and reading the screenplay as the story unfolded around me off the typing keys. I would listen, and then type. I'd imagine a scene set in a certain room, type out the scene as I saw it unfolding in my head, and then go upstairs into that room and check it out... imagining it around me... and then go back downstairs and see what happened next in the old hotel. It was one ghoulishly creepy winter, all solitude and death stories in the air, and walking around alone in the dark halls of the big old place. It was so cold I could see my breath in the rooms and halls upstairs. The windows had frozen over and cold not be seen through. Thrashing frozen winds blew open one window on the third floor one night and shattered all the glass. What a nightmare that was. Just nailing boards over the freezing opening in the dark! It's one thing to read a spooky story in a book. It's very much another to be watching one unfold on the pages before you and be sitting in the actual supposedly-haunted location the story is set within, and also not knowing what is going to happen next because it hasn't happened in the rooms around you yet! Days went by with no contact with the outside world. No one in Windber was even aware anyone was still living in this old hotel. The shades were drawn and I typed most of the Wintergrave screenplay to candlelight. It was just the rabbit Moonlight and I. As the story was about a local coroner, in addition to stories he'd heard in the past I incorporated many local stories I'd gathered from locals offering their stories of deaths from in the area. Like this story from a local woman about her grandfather dying nearby. "My grandfather died in an unusual way," she told me. "He was riding his cycle and an accident happened up ahead with a hay truck and a car wreck. He was speeding along and when he reached the accident it was too late and his cycle slammed into them. He was thrown, and they said he would have lived because his body landed in the bed of hay. But there were sickles and pitch forks hidden within the hay. So he died anyway. This is the only photograph that exists of him. I think it's unusual that he's with his cycle in it and that's also how he died." (photo of a local man who was thrown from his motorcycle to survive a car crash only to be speared by pitch forks in the hay truck he'd landed within) Some time in mid-December I was thick in the frenzy of writing and actually completing the screenplay first draft. "I'm really in that space," I thought as I typed the climax and rounded up its final touches. "I'm so there," I kept thinking as I finished. "I'm so in that death space," I was imagining to myself as the final details of the death-related story seemed to almost write themselves. Everything was ghosts and spirits and the speaking creaking walls around me and all the history that was breathing and moaning up and down the long frozen hotel halls surrounding me. Anything unusual that happened in the building that winter went right into the screenplay as actual details of the environment the story was set within. It really seemed the building was writing the story in those final pagfes. The typing flew off my fingertips. Moonlight, the rabbit, sat in a pen in the room beside me as I typed. And then a pretty dramatic thing happened. Just as I finished the first draft, which felt so "there" and "right on in that death space", Moonlight dropped dead right in front of me! I was typing, and finishing, and to my left Moonlight began to shiver. And then she fell forward and was suddenly dead. The timing was outrageous! I swear it was like the screenplay killed her. It was like it knocked the life out of her! Because the ground was frozen solid there was no way to bury her. Only the office was heated, the halls of the hotel were ice cold sub-freezing temperatures, so for the next few days as I touched up little points of the screenplay, Moonlight the rabbit sat frozen solid in the hotel halls. When I finally finished I went out for a late night beer at a local bar to reread the screenplay in a different environment. Some locals recognized me, crying out, "We didn't even know you were still around! You've been living alone in that big old haunted place all winter!? We want to come over tonight. Can we come over to your hotel and have a tour?" "No," I told them, "tonight's not the best night. The hotel is really cold, and I've been writing some pretty death-saturated material so its all just really strange right now. I even have a dead rabbit in the hall." No one took me serious and the small local bar crowd came over for an after-midnight winter hotel tour of the spooky building. Inside they discovered I wasn't lying. They toured around, seeing their own breath. Guests were freaked out, "Uh, there really is a dead rabbit in your hall." Later, Moonlight was buried in a little wooden box as a casket. _________________________________________________________ I know you must be happy to have it completed. But you know that feeling won't last long. As soon as we have read it, we will all be clamoring for more! Looking forward to seeing it. -Andrew ________________________________________________________ congratulations on your novel Blair, that must be such a rush to be a author, following in the footsteps of kerouac. Hey how is the post going with "coolsville"? Going to be awesome for you to have a book and a film out in the same year. -cool hand jaemi ________________________________________________________ Congratulations on finishing the book! It's quite a task for anyone...see you soon I hope! -Adam Blai ________________________________________________________ awesome, blair!!! are you going to self-publish? -Leah ________________________________________________________ I just completed the edit of Blair's book, Wintergrave. After he works out a few bugs, he's ready to find a publisher. These are my thoughts, and Blair, I MEAN every word. Blair Murphy’s novel, Wintergrave I had the privilege and pleasure of being the first reader of Wintergrave as well as its editor. When Blair first approached me about his novel, I was apprehensive. I have known Blair for some time, and I knew he was a champion for the arts and a mad Viking kind of guy, but what kind of a writer was he? I opened the book and read the first paragraph, and I was hooked. I have read a lot of books, some great, some not so great, and some downright horrible, but I can say without a doubt that Blair’s book is one of the most entertaining, well-written books I have read. It is filled with memorable characters, amazing visual images, far-out thoughts, and no shortage of chills. When Blair first brought me his book and I asked him what it was about, he said, "death". He couldn’t be more wrong. It is a life-affirming book that I hope everyone will read. -Barbara Purbaugh ______________________________________________________ Yesterday my day began as any other, with children to feed and get ready for my work day. However, as I was gathering my things off of the kitchen counter my eyes fell upon a plain black binder that was not there the previous night. Curious fingers opened the cover to reveal a few simple but yet dramatic words: Wintergrave ...a novel by Blair Murphy? Like so many of you I had heard the delicious news of Blair's finished novel. Closer inspection of the area held take-out containers from the Orchard bar.....Jim had seen Blair...and somehow he'd been given or lent or whatever happened a copy of the novel. Being completely and totally me and assuming that if it is in my kitchen then I can read it. So again I turned a crisp white page.... I was a mere 2 pages in when I had to leave for my job....all day a little nag in the back of my head, I wonder what happens? Blair has only given me the most basic of information...but over time has slipped enough one line comments to truly peak one's interest. After work, and dinner, and playtime when my daughters had snuggled into their blankets and drifted into dream, I myself snuggled into a blanket, wih Wintergrave resting on my lap. Nearly three hours later I closed it, never once putting it down. I will not mention anything relevant for the sake of those who have yet to read it, I will not attempt to use large fancy words to convey what I can in clear simple ones....CREEPY COOL! I instantly called Blair in the middle of the night and left him a message on his machine....I truly am so very proud of you my friend. Congratulations Blair... -Joey ________________________________________________________ Subject: on completion of reading the novel inside the Midway. You glorious fucker! -Dylan Fornoff ________________________________________________________ It took me a bit longer than I would have liked to finish reading Wintergrave due to my general chaotic lifestyle, but I am pleased to say that as of two nights ago, I am done. Never a spoiler will be gotten from me, but I MUST make a few vague remarks or this post would be pointless! First, it's time for a juicy old cliche. I laughed, I cried. It's true! I really did. I genuinely found myself alternately laughing like a loon and literally weeping at times as I read along. (Blair, I apologize for any tear stains on your pages hehehe.) Second, I actually learned things! No really, I did! (Man, this sounds like I'm mayor of Cliche City here.) Barrels of cool trivia about the area were emptied into my eager brain, but more importantly, I was able to take away an absolutely beautiful life lesson from the end. And speaking of the end, it rocks! Trust me, it will blow you away. It was excellent to be able to read a book and discuss it with the author as I went along. Not just general remarks, but commenting on specific lines, words, even punctuation. It was a gift. I was anxious to finish it, but now that I have I know I'll miss Blair coming home from work, seeing the binder containing his work out, eagerly demanding to know what I'd read that day and what I thought of all of it. It was like playing a small role in the creation of someone else's masterpiece. Man, I was lucky for that. Well, in short, it was EXCELLENT. Extremely brave, poignant, and creepy. I look forward to seeing its future. I'm sure it will be bright. And of course, in the words of gifted linguist Dylan, You Glorious Fucker! I am so proud of you Blair. It is an honor to be a part of all this. -Renee ________________________________________________________ Blair, Now that the manuscript is free(?) am I next, dear sir, to read? -Skot Jones ________________________________________________________ Congrats Blair!!! It must feel amazing. Maybe I could sneak a peek at it the next time I'm home. -Sarah ______________________________________________________ I went to the Pen-to-Press Retreat down in New Orleans. It is run by author Deborah LeBlanc (Grave Intent, A House Divided). Author Katherine Ramsland (Piercing the Darkness, Ghost, Prism of the Night: a biography of Anne Rice) suggested I meet Deborah. Some 400 people submitted novels, and Renee Angle's and my books got in! There were only about 45 of us total. We drove down instead of flying to make it more an adventure. It took place at the Hotel Monteleone in the French Quarter. I love New Orleans. My God. I used to live down there and it all came back to me. The beer, the sweat, the sexy enchanted everything, just walking the streets. Anyway, the first day there New York Times Best-Selling author Cherry Adair (Kiss and Tell, Hot Ice, In Too Deep) came up to me saying she "just had a feeling" about me and my work. I asked her if she'd like to read a chapter or two. She said she would, so I handed her about the first 30 pages right there. A little later at the first banquet, she came up to me saying, "Oh, I see you've changed your clothes. I haven't. Do you know why I haven't? Because I couldn't stop reading your novel. You are going to be published this year. Your work is wonderful. I am going to contact my agent immediately and see if she'll represent you." I wanted to hug her right there. By the week's end four more agents had requested copies of my novel. Wintergrave actually got a lot of attention. Renee's novel Two Heartbeats also took on a lot of interest. She was the youngest person there. The entire week was a blast. Nights were spent combing the French Quarter, touring old memories from Anne Rice to the Westgate Gallery. I took Renee to the Columns Hotel, where they shot that Brook Shields movie Pretty Baby. Renee ate alligator twice! One night we ran into author Sarah Langan (The Keeper) and Founder and President of Artists Literary Group Joe Veltre in a voodoo shop. This led to a late night with them of eating craw fish, more alligator, lots of story telling, and beer. We spent an evening with old friend musician Damien Youth, visiting the Circle Bar, and stayed at his friend Dawn's place. She just gave us the keys. We stayed with my old friend Louis Wolf for several nights. Louis is also working on a book. Louis, long ago, movied to LA at the same time I did and we worked in Surfer Bars together, riding motorcycles and climbing in the film industry. We relocated to New Orleans around the same time when we began stretching out into other career moves and adventures. I'm sure Louis played a role in part of what I wrote in Wintergrave. Long ago he used to host these tiny two-person events he called Poe Nights, where he'd dress up in a black suit, pour the finest wine, light candles, and read Edgar Allen Poe on the anniversary of his death. This probably led to my fleshing out goth culture into a full feature when I was collecting footage for Black Pearls. Here we sit in Lou's private garden yard sipping Absinthe during this most excellent week in New Orleans. -Blair (with my secret friend Louis Wolf)