With the Hungry Ghost of Rue Orleans as a kid I had loved ghost stories and one of the Jackson Jones books the 3rd one is actually a ghost story. But I liked ghost stories that were set in unusual environments. So with Jackson Jones and the Curse of the Outlaw Rose, the ghost is actually in the sunny community garden. With the Hungry Ghost of Rue Orleans, the ghost is living in an old house and I never really thought about it but I grew up in old houses and continue to live in an old house.
And you know like Fred the ghost that’s in this old house, he loves the dust, and the squeaks, and the leaks, and the sense of history that’s a part of this house. And then he gets displaced because, and again this is something that happens a lot, his house is bought, and it’s turned into a restaurant and it becomes very spic-and-span and he’s very upset about this and he’s about to leave.
So it was a fun book to do because I got to write a ghost story but a ghost story with a twist, and also a ghost story with a sense of compromise in a way because at the end the restaurant stays but there’s an old room that’s created for Fred so they can coexist together, this idea that the modern and the historical can have a place together.