In the beginning, Vree lived on Myers Ridge in Ravenwood, Pennsylvania. I created Ravenwood when I was 13. The year was 1970 and I was an eighth-grade student at a small high school in northwest Pennsylvania. I modeled Ravenwood after my hometown and surrounding communities. The town’s countryside was center stage for many of the characters I created from scribbled notes in my trusty 3-ring binders. Many of those notes became foundations for stories typed up on my portable Remington typewriter and shared with friends.
Vree’s character began in 1971 as Vera Erikson, a 9-year-old cousin to a 14-year-old character named Dave Evans. I based them, Dave’s twin sister Amy and best friend Lenny Stevens (and many other characters) on favorite characters from books and television. I soon changed my mind about Vera’s name, made it Verawenda, gave her the nickname Vree, and made her Dave’s same-age friend and neighbor—even a love interest, though she was always attracted to Lenny. By 1975, when I quit writing Ravenwood stories, Vree, Dave, and the others had taken on lives of their own. Or so it seemed.
I don’t think authors of fiction completely control their characters. Mine were always trying to change situations by doing things against my wishes. I learned parenthood early as a young author.
My life’s journey after high school took me on the road as a radio disc jockey, a sailor in the U.S. Navy, a college student, an artist, and a husband and father. I occasionally thought about those characters, but never wrote about them again until I was 41.
One of the first things I did was change the town’s name to Ridgewood, which sounded like a more plausible name for a town. That, and because Myers Ridge and other ridges surrounded it.
I brought Dave back as a 41-year-old artist and teacher who had recently moved back to town from San Diego after a 23-year absence. Divorced and with a daughter at college on the west coast, he stays with his mother at the house he and his twin sister Amy grew up in. Their father is dead—prostate cancer at 65—so Dave takes on the role of “handyman” for the remaining summer before he begins teaching art classes at the high school. And there he meets Mrs. Vree Carlyle, the high school English teacher. He finds that he still loves her, so his world is turned upside down. He ends up stalking her and causes her to wreck her car, killing her. Devastated, he turns to alcohol to ease his pain and chances upon a wizard who gives him a means of going back in time and correcting his mistake.
I never figured out a proper ending for that story, so I put it away for a while before rewriting it and publishing two short stories from it: one, “A Sinister Blast from the Past,” and the other, “Liam’s Kismet,” which changed when I rewrote it in 2002 as “Kismet.”
By 2013, the teenagers Vree, Dave, Lenny, and Amy were back for some short stories I published at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Most notably were “Night of the Hell Hounds” and “Trespassers,” both of which I took off the market in 2016 in a move to concentrate on Vree’s backstory as a witch.
Anyone interested in reading about her can find her story in my book, A Night of Hell Hounds and Other Stories from the Ridgewood Chronicles (available at Amazon U.S. in paperback and digital formats).
Until we meet again next week, have a great one.
Steve, 5/16/2022
This post “Ridgewood and Vree, 1” copyright © 2022 Steven Leo Campbell at stevecampbellcreations.com – All rights reserved.
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