One is the genesis of a novel the other a humdinger of chase scene. The idea for the historical novel came from an old slave tale, "The Legend of Ebo Landing." I first heard the story at a Savannah waterfront bar while doing research and writing for my PBS Television Series, "Georgia's Heritage." The legend came from a story of, strong willed, West Africans that chose death over slavery. It is said that while that group of Ebo's was debarking the slave ship they simply slipped into the water and drowned. The human tragedy got my attention and I followed up by going to St. Simons Island, the source of the story. When I got to the island I asked some questions about the legend and was directed to an African-American woman known as the Voo Doo Lady. I located her house and introduced myself, and was pleasantly surprised at the reception I got. After I explained what I was doing she led me on a walking tour of the island. Our first stop was a reed-covered estuary on the west side of St. Simons Island, which according to the Voo Doo Lady was the place called Ebo Landing, the scene of the actual tragedy. After that first stop my guide gave me a short history lesson of the place and we walked from one church and cemetery to another with the Voo Doo Lady talking and I taking notes. At the end of the day, after thanking my guide, I had only one nagging question -- why? Two years of research and ninety thousand words later I eventually found the answer.

Years ago while flying high above the Great Smoky Mountains I saw a huge donut shaped cloud wrapped around one of those tall mountains. At the time it reminded me of smoking a cigar and blowing smoke rings. But it never occurred to me that that cloud formation and blowing smoke rings would later play a part in one of my novels. Now while the Ebo Landing story quickly worked its way into one of my manuscripts the Smoky Mountain scene didn't crop up for more than two decades. It's a chapter in a novel about art stolen by the Nazis during World War II and an international cartel marketing those same paintings. The Smoky Mountain scene takes place when two of my main characters fly out of Asheville, North Carolina in a small XR-3 plane with the bad guys flying a small jet in hot pursuit. Trying to get away from the jet the XR-3 flies into the Smoky Mountains and the chase is on. The XR-3 suckers the jet to follow his lead into a great slalom race using those treacherous mountain peaks as pylons in a strategy to doom the bad guys.

Another take on long time process and mulling over an idea comes from J.H. Wheelock's "Editor to Author. The Letters of Maxwell Perkins." Maxwell Perkins edited many of the top authors of his time Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Thomas Wolf among them. Perkins writes in one of those letters about a day he spent fishing off the Florida Keys with Hemingway. Perkins noticed the beauty of the deep blue Gulf Stream their surroundings, and asked Hemingway. "Why don't you write about all this?" And he said, "I will in time, but I couldn't do it yet," and seeing I did not get his meaning, he pointed to a pelican that was clumsily flapping along, and said, "See that pelican? I don't know yet what his part is in the scheme of things." He did know factually in his head, but he meant that it all had to become so deeply familiar that you knew it emotionally, as if by instinct, and that that only came after a long time, and through long unconscious reflection." Years later it all came out in Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea."

About the Author

Tom Barnes, Actor, Writer and Hurricane Hunter.

Check out my website for books, blogs, western legends, a literary icon, reviews and interviews, my novels The Goring Collection and Doc Holliday's Road to Tombstone along with a non fiction remembrance of The Hurricane Hunters and Lost in the Bermuda Triangle. www.tombarnes39.com