“Fiction with Fangs”
photo credit: John Ewing, Portland Press Herald
Thanks to Bob Keyes and the Portland Press Herald for a fabulous article about Mercy! It was my first- ever photo shoot in a cemetery. Eerie and appropriate (and cold and a bit damp, too).
“Sarah Thomson puts her own spin on the vampire tale and, say critics and her young-adult audience, it’s a bloody good read.”
Check out the complete article here.
Read MoreMercy on YouTube
If you google “Mercy Brown” on YouTube, you come across a fascinating variety of videos. I viewed this one from The Devil’s Hopyard–a great summary of the historical events around Mercy’s death and exhumation, although I don’t know about the bell they mention as possibly inside the crypt. I know that was sometimes done in Victorian times. (People got oddly hysterical about the idea of being buried alive–it was kind of a trend. Despite the fact that there were, I believe, no verified cases where it actually happened. I mean, even before embalming people were not stupid and could tell if you were breathing or not. But I digress.) I’ve never actually heard of such a bell as a piece of the Mercy Brown legend. Still, it’s a very clear and succinct recounting of what went on, and you can get a clear view of the Chestnut Hill Cemetery where Mercy and her family (Edwin too) are buried.
Of course, if you search for “Mercy Brown Book Trailer” you’ll also come across our awesome trailer for Mercy, featuring the lovely and talented Emily as both Mercy and Haley. Doesn’t Emily look absolutely haunted in that eerie final shot?
Read MoreHooray!
Mercy makes the Voice of Youth Advocates’s Top Shelf list–their best middle grade fiction of 2011. Thanks, VOYA! Check out their February issue for the full list.
30 Odd Minutes with Vampires
They say you can still smell Mark Twain’s cigars here in his billiard room. Could his ghost be smoking them?
I went for a little wander at ghostvillage.com, a site collecting information on paranormal occurences. I was pleased to see that they had a long, well-researched entry on Mercy Brown, and even more pleased that the writer had interviewed Michael Bell, folklorist and author of Food for the Dead. If you want to know more about the history and folklore of the New England vampire tradition, this is the resource to check out.
This is an interesting and spooky site–if you’re up for a little wander among ghostly photographs, unexplainable phenomena, and haunted hotels, it’s worth a visit! And for other ghosts and spooky occurrences from Southern New England, you can listen to author Jeff Belanger chat with some experts about whether Nicholas Cage is a vampire, haunted kitchens, the ghost of Mark Twain (or just his cigars), and Mercy herself, at 30 Odd Minutes. The expert interviewed implied that Mercy’s corpse, taken out of her grave, had fangs–not something I have ever heard elsewhere, and not really consistent with the tradition of New England vampires. But the liquid blood in her heart–yes, that was confirmed by the newspaper at the time.
Read MoreSarah L. Thomson
A children’s book author publishing award-winning nonfiction, poetry, picture books and novels including…
“Readers will treasure the blossoming friendship between opposites in this whimsically illustrated tale. Short chapters and plenty of action make for an accessible and appealing reading experience. . . . Touching and inspiring.”
—Kirkus Reviews