Garden Spells

Interesting Tidbits

• Like Claire in the book, my real sister's name is Sydney.

• Evanelle is based on a dear old woman with the same name, a friend of my great-aunt's, who would come by with surprises in the form of broccoli cornbread and sweet potato pie and buckets of blackberries.

• My original title was Strange Gifts. It was changed to Garden Spells and Southern Belles, then shortened to just Garden Spells.

• Bascom, the name of the town, and Lunsford's reservoir, the local swimming hole, mentioned in Garden Spells, are subtle nods to Bascom Lamar Lunsford, the man who founded the Mountain Dance and Folk Festival in Asheville, N.C., purportedly the longest-running folk festival in the nation.   He was known as the Minstrel of the Appalachians.

• In addition to the US, Garden Spells has sold to twenty countries: United Kingdom, Germany, France, Netherlands, Italy, Sweden, Portugal, Brazil, Poland, Greece, Israel,
  Romania, Bulgaria, Norway, Thailand, Turkey, Russia, Japan, Lithuania and Czech Republic.