Something Wild #5: Lost Places

Lost Places

It was the height of lock-down, when I couldn't leave my house except for groceries, when I became obsessed with infamous lost places.

I found myself fixated on mysterious and often mythical places in the world that aren't always findable on maps, places where people disappear, places where tragic things are known to happen, places that have been lost—the Bermuda Triangle, Aokigahara Forest, Roanoke, Lemuria. I collected urban legends about mysterious places that couldn't be found a second time—such as a gas station off a highway where someone stopped in the middle of the night and yet swore they never saw on that same road again, no matter how many times they drove it. Or a part of the forest glimpsed down a hidden path that could never be reached afterward, no matter how many times someone went searching.

These places fascinated me. (Writers who've worked with me know how much I love a list of fascinations!) But many of these legends have unhappy endings and frightening underbellies, and I didn't want to write a horror story. I had it in mind to write about a place you'd want to find... because the world outside is the horror.

This place in Wake the Wild Creatures is an abandoned hotel at the top of an unnamed mountain in the Catskills. The hotel—once called the Grand Neves—is hidden down a forest path that is cloaked in a mysterious mist, making the hotel findable only by those meant to reach it.

There, in the ruins of what had once been an opulent hotel, is the Neves. This once-abandoned hotel is now occupied by a group of women who've built a small community there. There is no running water or electricity. All decisions are made by consensus. A ritual of commitment comes when someone wants to make the vow to stay. This place is where my narrator, Talia, has been raised. Her mother is the founder of this community, and Talia was carried on her mother's back up the mountain when she was just a baby, making this protected place on the highest mountain in the Catskills all she's ever known. Talia knows the heart of the Neves is worth protecting. She also knows it's the towns below the mountain and the authorities in the world outside that are the true danger.

This is the place that I wrote, a place lost but meant to be found.

As I share these words, it's another full moon. We're about three weeks away from Wake the Wild Creatures hitting bookstore shelves on May 6. I have some news to tell you about the book—scroll down to where it says Book News. I also have a Signed Book Giveaway open only to you, my wonderful newsletter subscribers—scroll down to where it says Giveaway!

But before I share all of that, let me speak a little more to the inspiration that captured me as I wrote about the abandoned hotel in the book.

If you're from the Catskills, as I am, you know that our forests and our mountains hide the remains of a number of hotels and resorts. (You can see photographs of what still stands from many of these lost hotels in Marisa Scheinfeld's book The Borscht Belt. I found such thrilling inspiration in the ragged, waterlogged furniture of the old hotel rooms and the rotting swimming pool. The pictures in this book are beautiful memories of a time long gone and a piece of history.)

So, yes, my fascination with lost places carried me all over the world—and I'd love to hear more urban legends if you have any to share. But also, my fascination led me back into my memories, to the places that had once been in my own backyard...

For example, did you know there are the skeletal remains of a hotel called the Overlook Mountain House in Woodstock, New York? My senior year of high school, I skipped class to climb to it and poke around. And there are other inspirations from other abandoned hotels as well, including the Granite, where my grandparents would stay when they'd come to the Catskills to visit us when we lived in Kerhonkson. And the Nevele Grand, which legend says was named Nevele because it is the word "eleven" backward. Apparently eleven schoolteachers "discovered" a waterfall on the grounds where the hotel would be built. (In my book, the word Neves is "seven" backward... I absolutely borrowed that and owe the Nevele Grand my homage.)

But there is one lost and closed-down hotel specifically that dangled in my imagination after I found this old photograph:

This is—well, was—the Grand Hotel in Highmount, New York, which was built by the Ulster and Delaware Railroad. They literally erected a line of the railroad up the mountain slope only to reach this hotel. When that line of the train stopped running, the Grand Hotel shut down. This, too, I borrowed for the book: the vision of the hotel high on the mountain peak, the dead train line, sabotaged by the women of the Neves so no one could follow the path up to find it...

Research like this led me into and through some wondrous rabbit holes that ended up shaping the book, physically and also fantastically. There were a lot of discoveries and many fascinations found on the way, and I want to give grateful thanks to the Bassini Apprenticeship program at the University of Pennsylvania for help with this research. In 2021 I was one of the Penn faculty chosen to be gifted an apprentice for a semester, and my book would not be what it was without the research from my apprentice, the phenomenal Leah Baxter! (Thank you, Leah! This is just one of few books Leah helped me research.)

In the end, the hotel in this book is very much its own place and a singular community. But every detail and piece and strand of fascination among all these lost places helped me flesh it out.

Read an Exclusive Excerpt on People.com

Want to get a taste of Wake the Wild Creatures? You can now read an exclusive excerpt on People.com! The very beginning of the novel starts like this:

At first it was beautiful. A hunter’s moon hovered in the sky, tremendous and pulsing with light, making the air glow warm all around me. I was spending the night out on my own, near the perimeter marked with subtle symbols and stones, wandering for the joy of it, then running because I could. I lost hold of time passing, or maybe the hours themselves held still. Tree bodies everywhere. Knotted oak shoulders and the rough, ridged skin of red spruce and tall firs. The forest I’d known all my life was awake, and so was I: two quick legs whipping through the bright-gold dark, more animal than girl.

Keep reading at People.com for an exclusive early look at the whole opening chapter!

Six-City Book Tour May 4–9

I’m going on an in-person tour to celebrate Wake the Wild Creatures the first week of May, starting on May 4! I’ll be at bookstores in Philly, the DC area, the Boston area, New York City, Austin, and Houston. If I’m in a city near you, it would mean the world to me if you came!

More details and RSVP links to the events can be found on my Appearances page.

April NOVL Box

I got to curate the April NOVL box and you can enter to win! You could win three of my novels including Wake the Wild Creatures, as well as some specially selected items connected to the book… I was also able to choose one book by any Little, Brown Young Readers author to include with mine, and of course I had to pick my Algonquin Young Readers sister Samantha Mabry’s latest, Clever Creatures of the Night… making this a “wild creatures” themed NOVLbox!

ENTER TO WIN THE BOX HERE

(Rules and details can be found at the above link. You must be 13 or older in order to enter and also a US resident. You can enter until April 30, 2025.)

Signed Book Giveaway! ENTER HERE

I'm giving away two signed & personalized hardcovers of Wake the Wild Creatures today! That's because two boxes of these landed on my doorstep the other night:

Want a signed hardcover before the book comes out on May 6?

All you have to do is tell me one of your own fascinations in this form:

ENTER THE GIVEAWAY HERE!

(US only.)

I'll sign and personalize the books, and include a Wake the Wild Creatures bookmark. I'll also ship them before the pub date, so you'll get to read it early!

Wait, One More Thing!

Thank you for slipping into a piece of lost history with me today! Don't forget that you can still pre-order Wake the Wild Creatures in hardcover, ebook, or audio before the release on May 6! If you'd like a hardcover signed and personalized to you, you can pre-order from my local bookshop Head House Books here in Philadelphia!