Author’s Note

A lot of research went into creating the world of The Diviners. Many hours were logged in various libraries and archives or spent pouring over books, PDFs, primary sources, and photographs. No historians or librarians were harmed in the making of this book, but some were badgered extensively with questions. I am grateful for the aid and expertise of these wonderful, knowledgeable people.

That said, this is a work of fiction, and in order to serve the gods of story, certain liberties must be taken. The author assumes sole responsibility for this willful act of narrative tinkering. (Narrative Tinkering is my new band name. I imagine it’s a postmodern hipster band of varying degrees of beardification. But I digress.)

What sorts of tinkering, you might ask? Well, there was an actual Hotsy Totsy Club run by the famous gangster Legs Diamond. It was located near the Theater District of New York City, not Harlem. But that name proved too irresistible to give up, and so I chose to keep it. There is no secret African graveyard in Upper Manhattan, or else it’s so secret even I don’t know about it; no Museum of the Creepy Crawlies; and no Bennington apartment building occupied by strange, old cat ladies and illuminated by dodgy lighting, except for the one that exists in the imagination.

But much of what you read is straight from the history books, with some of the most disturbing set pieces based on fact: The eugenics movement was quite real, as were those chilling light-up boards at state fairs. Ditto the Fitter Families for Future Firesides, the KKK, the Chinese Exclusion Act (and the Immigration Act of 1924), and the Pillar of Fire Church. Often, the monsters we create in our imagination are not nearly as frightening as the monstrous acts perpetrated by ordinary human beings in the aim of one cause or another.

I’ve tried to remain as faithful as I can to the time period and actual history while crafting a story that includes mystery, magic, monsters, and the unexplained—or as we call that around my house, just another Tuesday.

There are some dynamite resources out there if you’re interested in further research about the time period. A full bibliography can be found on the Diviners website: TheDivinersSeries.com. Happy creepy reading.

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 540