So it's not quite spring yet, but I'm finally emerging from my post-Christmas hibernation. I haven't been idle, however. During my self-imposed solitude and social media blackout, I officially finished the first draft of book three in my Haunted Hollow series. Actually, it's a novella and a novel. But more about that later.

Who else out there thinks spring can't come too soon? And what do you like to do during the cold, wet winter months to keep from getting cabin fever?

Speaking of coming out of hibernation, I discovered inspiration for a new character in the "bear doctors" of the Pomo Indians who populated Northern California for ten thousand years before the arrival of white Europeans. He'll be bringing a new perspective and a new mythology to the world of the Haunted Hollow. 

But this new character needs a name. 

Long before Jamison Donovan Radley settled in the area that eventually became Radley’s Hollow, California, the Pomo Indians lived there. The Pomo built their villages along the Russian River in fertile valleys thick with oak and madrone forests. They hunted elk, bears and mountain lions. Despite exploration of California's coasts by European sailing vessels, from the 1500's to the early 1800's the Russian River Valley and its inhabitants remained unchanged.

In the early 1840s, Jamison Donovan Radley, heir to a wealthy East Coast family, set up mining and logging operations in what will eventually become west Sonoma County. In 1847, he founds Radley’s Hollow, but not without tragedy. His beautiful second wife, Madison, is mysteriously murdered. Her ghost will haunt the town for the next three hundred years.

Known as a place of dangerous visions and unstable power, the Pomo treated the hollow Radley’s Hollow is named for as a sacred place. They warn JD Radley that settling near it will lead to catastrophe. Undaunted, JD is drawn to the hollow and to the secret buried underneath it. It’s thanks to that secret that JD becomes an extremely wealthy man and launches an empire. Losing his wife is just the beginning of the price he and his descendants will pay for treading where no human should go.