There’s no place like ‘Homeplace’: Horror novel set in Nelson County evokes supernatural, familial, rural

Story by Chris Graham

That was just - just wrong.

That poor guy - Howard Bryan, I think his name was, though I’m half-afraid to go back and look to make sure - he didn’t deserve that fate.

Nobody deserves that fate.

The guy got, you know, flambéed, right there in front of his cousin Yule.

And - by what, exactly?

I’m still not too sure on that - I’m guessing it was the ghost, but there’s no such thing as ghosts.

Right?

Right?!

Which brings us to the writer who dreamed up this bit about a guy named Howard fishing in Nelson County who got cooked alive by a ghost. Elizabeth Massie is her name - and you meet her, and instantly you think, No, way. This lady’s a horror writer?

You’re pulling my leg!

Former schoolteacher, I can buy that. Anti-death penalty activist - yeah, I can see that one, too.

But - horror writer?

How did this cheery, at times intense but most of the time otherwise unassuming woman end up becoming a horror writer?

Because I always thought the rule for writers was - Write what you know.

So - how does she do it? Or more to the point - how does she get to sleep at night with all that going on inside her noggin?

“I remember doing a panel once at a convention where somebody said, Well, if you write what you know, how can you write fantasy, science fiction or horror? Another of the panelists said, We have done all of this stuff. We’ve gone to these other planets. We have seen all these ghosts,” says Massie, whose latest novel, Homeplace, is due out in bookstores on Aug. 7.
Homeplace doesn’t disappoint readers to that end - well, except for the part about other planets. The earthbound plot revolves around a struggling artist who inherits the family homestead in Nelson County and decides to uproot herself from her job as a community-college instructor in the Hampton Roads area to get back in touch with her roots, artistic and cultural and otherwise.

As that process unfolds, she begins to remember the details of a visit that she had made to the homeplace as a wide-eyed 7-year-old - and begins over time to believe the legend passed around by countyfolk that the stead is haunted.

The part about her protagonist being a struggling artist is one of those where Massie could be said to be writing what she knows.

“I can’t think of a character that I’ve ever written that I haven’t projected myself into in some degree,” says Massie, a Bram Stoker Award winner for her novella Stephen and her first full novel, Sineater, who began her career in the middle of a 20-year run as an Augusta County schoolteacher.

She has since devoted herself full time to writing - “and anybody who tries to make a living as a freelancer, be it a writer or actor or musician, finds those struggles, and you’re constantly trying to do better, make more money, make a bigger name for yourself,” she says, relating herself and her own situation to that of the main character in Homeplace, Charlene.

“This poor artist is really frustrated because she teaches at a community college, and some of her students are doing better than she is. And she lives at the beach, and she’s sick to death of painting seashells and lighthouses, which is all the tourists seem to want,” Massie says.

“She wants to paint things that have meaning - and she figures the only way she can do that is to quit her job, cash in her retirement, which is a dangerous thing, but she does anyway, and she goes to this farm that she inherited from her mother when her mother died, and she’s hoping that this will be a place where she can reconnect with her creative side,” Massie says.

Homeplace

is set in small-town Virginia - which is something else that Massie, a native of small-town Waynesboro, knows well.

“I think anybody who has ever lived in a small town or lived in the country - most of this story takes place on a farm outside the fictional town of Adams - or anybody who’s had a family, or anybody who’s had strange relatives, this means something to you,” Massie says.

“Everybody has a history. Everybody’s family has a history. Everybody has somebody in the past who wore long skirts or hoop skirts or drove carriages or drove wagons. We all have these family members. We might not be able to say who they were, but they’re there. And that’s the basic premise to this story - my main character finds out more about her own family than she even wanted to know,” Massie says.

And for what it’s worth, there’s more to being a horror writer than many who refer to themselves as being horror writers would want you to know.

Hint - it’s not about scaring you with details of blood and guts and gore as much as it is about getting inside your head.

“This one has some supernatural to it - because it does have the ghostly element. But even then, it’s the psychological impact of the supernatural that to me is the most powerful,” Massie says.

“You can have a house that you think is haunted - but if it’s not bothering you, how scary is that? It’s the impact, the psychological impact, on you. It’s what it does to your own mind and emotions,” Massie says.

For further reading
Elizabeth Massie - www.elizabethmassie.com