Too Many Ghosts is now available!

Just eleven days after my 30th play (Route 66) was released, my 31st play has now been published. This one is titled Too Many Ghosts, and I can't wait for you to read it.

Here's the blurb:

Jo Crenshaw dreams of turning the abandoned house she inherited in Salem, Massachusetts, into a successful bed and breakfast. But that could be a problem when she and her teenage daughter discover the place is home to five rambunctious ghosts. And none of the ghosts are particularly keen on sharing it with an endless parade of guests.

The level-headed Jo quickly lays down the law. There will be absolutely no haunting of the guests. But Roland, a cobbler from the 1790s, can't help himself. He ends up scaring off the very first guest they have: a popular travel blogger who dubs the place "the most haunted B&B in New England." Within days, the place is mobbed by thrill-loving tourists seeking their own ghostly encounters. 

 

Unfortunately, this draws the attention of Julia, the greedy owner of the largest hotel in town. After her plans to sabotage the property fail, she decides there's only one way to put the B&B out of business: hire a trio of "ghostbusters" to get rid of the ghosts for good.

The play has a cast of 24 (7M, 11F, 6 any) and runs about 90 minutes. The scenes primarily take place in two locations: the lobby of the B&B and a guest room. To eliminate need for set changes, these locations share a split stage, with three brief scenes being played in front of the curtain.

I'm super proud of the play. I think it's just as funny as any of my earlier comedies, but it goes much deeper into the emotions of the characters and there's an element of melancholy, of sadness even, which will hit audiences right in the heartstrings.

Too Many Ghosts didn't start out that way. I originally planned it to be a straight, laugh-out-loud comedy. But the very first character I came up with was a young ghost who was searching for a locket she'd lost. Although the character herself wasn't pushy by any means, she almost immediately took over the storyline and as I delved into how she lost the locket and what it meant to her, the story of her previous demise turned out to be rather tragic.

In the original version of the story, the young ghost was named Pip and she was only ten years old. I wrote the first two scenes in a couple weeks, and although I liked them very much, I ended up setting the script aside. The idea of a young ghost meant that the character herself must have died young, and I came to realize that this made the story almost completely unmarketable (Casper the Friendly Ghost notwithstanding).

Still, young Pip kept calling to me. She wanted to come to life, if only in spectral form. I had to figure out how to make it work.

It would be another sixteen months before I returned to the script. And that's because it took me that long to admit what I'd known all along. The girl had to be older. Like nine years older. Yes, the death of a nineteen-year-old is just as tragic as that of a ten-year-old, but it's somehow more palatable to audiences.

I wish I'd figured that out earlier. Because as much as I'd fought the idea of making her older, once I had, the writing flowed. I changed her name to Sophie, which was driven by a surprise twist near the end of the play. And instead of a lively preteen who was interested in dolls and cheap jewelry, she became a giddy young woman who was madly in love with--

Well, you'll have to read the script. But trust me. It's really, really good.

Even from the beginning, this young ghost developed a close friendship with the daughter of the woman who inherited the house. Well now, to make that friendship more meaningful, I had to make the daughter older as well. So twelve-year-old Millicent became seventeen-year-old Lily. And instead of being afraid of ghosts, she became an avid horror-movie fan, which gave me all sorts of stuff to have fun with.

 

The lesson for writers? There are two:

1) Don't fall in love with your writing.

2) Don't fight the changes you know you need to make.

It may take some time and a lot of effort to rewrite what you wrote, but in the end, it will all be worth it.

So, yeah, Too Many Ghosts still has some sad parts. But the ending is so full of hope and love and joy that I'm sure it'll make your heart all toasty and warm inside.

Oh, and if you want to read a sample or order a perusal copy of the script, click here.

Sophie would approve.