The Joy of Creating a Haunted Speakeasy
The Joy of Creating a Haunted Speakeasy Beneath an Art School
By Teresa Trent
I enjoyed writing Color Me Crimson because I’ve always been fascinated by a secret room that is locked in time. I’m not sure where the idea for the haunted speakeasy came from, but once I started seeing the room in my mind, I couldn’t stop throwing characters down there. If walls could talk, right?
One of the reasons I put Henry Park in the Rocky Mountains had to do with an episode of Ghost Hunters I saw years ago. They went to the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, and because of the mineral deposits, the readings on their equipment went through the roof. If you have ever stayed at the Stanley, and I have, you feel it. The place is creepy, and you quickly understand why Stephen King used the Stanley as his inspiration for The Shining.
For the speakeasy, I imagined it being built into part of the mountain, and the people who lived and died in it were still there, fighting the battles they had in life and collecting others in death. When you throw in the history of speakeasies, which includes people drinking and gambling, it gets even better. What could go wrong? Everything. (Cue the evil laugh)
Color Me Crimson is the second book in the Henry Park Series, so I wanted to include characters readers grew to love in the first book, Color Me Dead. I also included Tobias Mueller, who was inspired by a man I met in a beauty salon. That’s the joy of being a writer. Your characters might be walking around anywhere. Once I had Tobias and then Charlie, the most irritating character I’ve ever written, the story kept heading to my haunted speakeasy.
Color Me Crimson will pull you into a murder mystery and maybe scare you a little bit with what lies beneath the art gallery.
This was featured on Christy’s Cozy Corners in November of 2027.
