A Tale of Vampires - Part 2.5

This Part 2.5 instead of Part 3 -- I said I'd be talking about vampires in part 3, and that was before I checked my schedule.

This will be brief, because I'm getting up early to go to San Diego tomorrow, where I'll be one of the stand-ins at the Elaine Viets Tour-by-Proxy event at Mysterious Galaxy.

So a little more delay. But I think it would be good to give you a couple of quick Web site reading assignments in the meantime, warning that they will still not seem to have anything to do with vampires, or even "The Haunting of Carrick Hollow." But they do have something to do with a key conversation I had with Paul Sledzik about writing short stories, which you'll hear more about in the next post, probably on Monday.

During that conversation, I talked to him about the story "Two Bits." To read about the historical case that inspired that short story, I invite you to visit Web sites about the first (or perhaps first publicized) kidnapping for ransom case in the U.S., the most notorious kidnapping case prior to the Lindbergh case -- a case that gained national attention before there were radios or newsreels.

So click here or here or here to learn about Charley Ross, and on his name to see a portrait of this four-year-old boy on the cover of sheet music for "Bring Back Our Darling," one of the songs written about him in 1874 -- the year of his disappearance. A project that brings attention to missing children's cold cases bears his name.