Five years ago, after I turned in The Green Lace Corset—the third novel in the Anne McFarland Series—to She Writes Press, I told my friends I was never writing another novel. They were too time-consuming and took up all my creative energy. I wanted to return to poetry and making mosaics.
Then one afternoon my soul brother Corey was hanging out at my house, and he asked about the nearby Point Loma Nazarene University oceanside property. Instantly, memories rushed back. I pictured myself at ten years old, winding the cliffs above the roaring waves, then stepping onto the Greek Amphitheater stage underneath the stoa to perform in Oedipus Rex as his daughter, Antigone. I remembered when I was thirty I returned to take coursework every Wednesday night for an educational specialist degree.
And then another memory surfaced: my mother telling us about a “kooky lady” who had lived there long ago—Madame Tingley—and the rumors that she ran a cult on the property, complete with séances and strange rituals.
Corey smiled and told me that was the topic for my next novel.
I moaned, “No never again.”
But that night I did some light Googling and in the morning this poem appeared on my journal page:
Not Far from Where I Grew Up
rumors were spread about you,
kooky lady, who in 1900 founded
Lomaland north of the lighthouse,
inspired by your childhood vision
of a white city on golden land
overlooking the sundown sea.
Madame Tingley did you design that building
round because you thought your husband
had been reincarnated as a turtle and you
didn’t want him stuck in corners?
I felt it was a romantic notion.
Was your marriage true love?
Was that how you became “Madame?”
Was it his money that paid for it all?
Was it true you practiced unchristian things there?
Communicated with the dead, danced with abandon,
performed pagan plays, produced erotic paintings?
Or did you truly teach children to be brave and true,
initiate peace parades, and spread brotherhood around the world?
Do you still haunt the property like you now haunt me now?
I became obsessed. I began to learn everything I could about her and was sent on a magical journey of professional and personal growth. Strange things began to happen. I will share some with you on my next post.