How the Bloodlines Saga Began: From Family History to Cove Point Manor

The Bloodlines Saga didn't begin with a plan to become an author.

It began with a wooden box.

In the summer of 2002, shortly after my maternal grandmother passed away, I found myself sitting late one Saturday night in my basement rec room with my two dogs and cat, going through a wooden box that contained some of my grandmother's most important memories.

Inside were photographs, postcards and other pieces of family history, many of them almost a century old.

Then I found something I had never seen before.

It was the original telegram my great-grandmother received in 1916 informing her that her husband had been killed in action during the Battle of the Somme in France.

Beneath that very formal and remarkably cold telegram was a newspaper article describing his life and death.

One detail stopped me: he was only 27 years old.

Twenty-seven, with a wife and three children. One of those children, my great-uncle, had actually died as an infant while his father was serving in France, adding another layer of tragedy to an already heartbreaking story.

Suddenly I realized something: I didn't know nearly as much about my own family history as I thought I did.

That discovery sent me on a genealogical journey that would eventually span decades.

From genealogy to DNA

Over the next few weeks, I began asking my parents and my maternal uncle questions about our family. What I discovered was surprising.

I knew very little about my paternal family beyond my immediate cousins, and I knew almost nothing about my maternal family beyond the relatives I had grown up around.

So I started digging.

By 2016, I had uncovered a tremendous amount of information about my family, particularly on my paternal side. Then DNA testing opened an entirely new door.

I took several DNA tests, followed by tests involving my parents. My Y-chromosome results, combined with my father's results, unlocked an extraordinary amount of information that I'm still discovering today.

One of the biggest surprises was discovering that I was fairly closely related to the Woolworth family, including Frank Winfield Woolworth and his brother Charles Sumner Woolworth, founders of the famous Woolworth five-and-ten-cent stores.

But the most important discovery for the future of Bloodlines wasn't necessarily the genealogy itself - it was a conversation.

The Christmas Eve conversation that planted a seed

On Christmas Eve in 2016, I reunited with some family friends who had been so close when we were growing up that we referred to each other as “cousins.”

I told them about my genealogy and DNA discoveries.

The conversation became increasingly amusing. Someone suggested that perhaps I might eventually discover that I was the heir to a long-lost family fortune.

Then came the inevitable warning: there were two other “family friends” who would definitely want to get their hands on that fortune.

From there, our conversation went completely off the rails. We started imagining what might happen if I suddenly discovered that I had inherited a huge mansion somewhere.

What if the mansion was haunted?

What would our two “friends” do if they discovered there was a fortune involved?

How would I deal with them?

How would they behave?

The discussion went on for about an hour.

And somewhere in that conversation, the seed of a novel was planted.

Over the following weeks, we continued the discussion by email. I would write out how I imagined this increasingly ridiculous scenario playing out. Eventually one of my cousins said, “You should really make that into a book or something.”

That was water on a seed that had already landed in very fertile soil. I had never written a long story before, let alone a book. But I thought: Why not?

So I started writing.

And before I knew it, the story and its characters began taking on lives of their own.

Bloodlines: Cove Point Manor was born.

Alex, Maggie and a Cadillac named Maybelline

One of the things I discovered very quickly was that characters don't always arrive fully formed.

Alex Tinsdill came to life as I wrote him.

He isn't based on any one person I know, although, like most fictional characters, he contains pieces of me. For example, Alex shares my love of vintage cars and some of my tendency to look at the world from a fairly balanced perspective. But I also wanted him to be the right kind of protagonist for the story.

If Alex was going to suddenly become wealthy, Canadian and the owner of a Gilded Age mansion, he needed something that would keep him grounded. That's where Maybelline came in.

I've always loved vintage cars. I've owned several over the years, including a 1957 Cadillac Sedan deVille. But my dream car has always been a 1956 Cadillac Coupe deVille, preferably black.

So if Alex was going to have an extraordinary new life, I thought he might as well have my dream Cadillac along for the ride. Maybelline arrived almost immediately.

She's more than transportation. She's part of Alex's identity.

And there's something about driving an old car that is difficult to explain unless you've actually experienced it — the smell, the feel, the history and the sense that you're driving something that has already lived another life.

I didn't want Alex arriving at Cove Point Manor in a BMW or Mercedes. He might be wealthy, but he isn't defined by his wealth - he's different — but grounded.

Maggie developed alongside him.

I wanted her to be strong, independent and intelligent. I didn't want her to exist simply as a potential love interest for Alex. She needed to be someone who could handle life on her own.

Part of that comes from the strong male and female role models I grew up with, and part of it simply comes from the fact that I like people who possess those qualities.

And Maggie has continued to develop throughout the Bloodlines Saga. She's not the same woman she was when she first appeared in Cove Point Manor. Neither is Alex.

Why is Cove Point Manor haunted?

My fascination with the Manor also has roots in my genealogy research.

As I explored my family history, I discovered an extraordinary number of distant relatives who had once owned enormous mansions and estates — and even castles. Some still do and no, I'm not expecting an invitation to visit any time soon.

I've always been fascinated by the architecture and history of these old European mansions and castles. Strangely, I've always felt at home in places like that, even though I grew up in relatively modest homes.

Apparently, my DNA came from the mansions-and-estates side of the family tree.

That fascination became part of Cove Point Manor.

The supernatural side of the story has an even longer history. I've always loved ghost stories, legends and anything supernatural.

When I was a kid, my grandmother and I would watch a television program called Creature Feature, broadcast from Buffalo, New York, on her old black-and-white television. The supernatural never frightened me as much as it intrigued me.

I thought — and still think — that it makes life more interesting, whether it's real or not.

Apparently I was already developing my storytelling skills at a fairly young age.

I once got into trouble telling ghost stories to a group of children at a family friend's country home. The stories apparently frightened some of the kids enough that they went looking for their parents.

Looking back, I suspect the parents may have been more annoyed that their children had interrupted the adults' evening than they were concerned about the ghost stories.

But the supernatural fascination stayed with me; eventually it found its way into Bloodlines.

Rebecca and Annie: Two sides of the supernatural

For the story to work, I needed to explain why Cove Point Manor existed and how a family could seemingly lose something so significant.

My own family history had left me wondering how families could go from great wealth to becoming ordinary people — and where that wealth had gone.

So I created the family tragedy of 1921, the death that took place at the Manor and the lingering spirit of Rebecca.

Rebecca is bound to the house.

Annie Cooper is different - Annie isn't trapped. She can cross between the living world and the spirit world when she chooses.

I wanted those two characters to provide a balance.

Rebecca represents a spirit whose circumstances have left her unable to move on, while Annie represents someone who has control over where she exists.

I thought that gave readers two different possibilities to consider.

I'm not trying to tell readers how the supernatural works.

I'm simply opening the door to the possibility that perhaps there is more than one way for a spirit to exist.

I didn't plot the story. I watched it.

Writing my first novel was a challenge.

I had never written anything remotely that long before, so I didn't have a tried-and-tested writing process.

Rather than plotting and graphing everything in advance, I decided to put myself in Alex's place.

I already knew the Cadillac was important.

I knew Alex was going to Long Island.

I knew he was going to move into his newly discovered Gilded Age mansion.

So I imagined how I would make the journey if I were driving from Toronto to Long Island, towing my classic Cadillac behind me.

I've driven from Toronto to New England several times, so I could mentally skip over the boring parts of the journey.

Once Alex reached Long Island, though, I slowed everything down.

I imagined the property.

I imagined arriving.

I imagined driving up that long, dark, tree-lined driveway.

And then the mansion appeared.

At that point, something changed.

I sat back and “watched” the movie play out in my mind, and let my fingers document everything I was seeing.

That's when writing stopped feeling like work. It became easier because I wanted to find out what happened next.

And then there were Brenda and Connie...

If Alex and Maggie grew organically, Brenda and Connie were a somewhat different recipe.

Let's just say I had all the basic ingredients for two very dysfunctional women, along with plenty of experience dealing with real-life crazy.

I had the ingredients. I had the instructions.

But I decided to add some extra spice, bake everything at 400 degrees and see what came out of the oven.

The result was Brenda and Connie.

I think my personal recipe produced two of the strangest — and best love-to-hate-them combinations I've ever created.

And they didn't stay still either. Brenda kept pushing the limits.

So did Connie.

By Brenda's Revenge, all four of the main characters were being pushed into territory that would have been difficult to imagine in the first book.

Brenda did things that would have seemed unthinkable earlier in the series.

And Connie?

She went from an unmotivated sidekick to something resembling a commando.

Her physical and emotional coordination still left quite a bit to be desired, however.

When one book wasn't enough

It only took a couple of weeks after finishing Cove Point Manor for me to realize that I couldn't simply close the book and walk away.

There were too many unanswered questions.

And readers had questions too.

What happens next?

What happened to Connie?

What happened to Brenda?

What happened to Alex and Maggie?

So the story continued.

Then it continued again.

Cove Point Manor may have been my debut novel, but I wanted to write more, and carrying the characters into another story felt completely natural.

After Brenda's Revenge, however, life intervened.

I took an extended break from writing — an eight-year hiatus, in fact.

But apparently the Bloodlines characters weren't particularly impressed with my decision to retire them. Eventually they started making themselves heard again.

“Hey, it's us. Remember us? When are you going to write about us again?”

Eventually, I gave in.

And when I returned to the Bloodlines world, Alex and Maggie had changed.

So had the other characters. They had grown through everything they had experienced, and they weren't interested in simply going back to where I had left them.

They also brought some new people with them.

And from what I've managed to discover so far...they have a lot to tell the world!

The Bloodlines story continues

The Bloodlines Saga began with a question about family history.

It grew from a conversation about a mansion, a lost fortune and two people who might want to steal it.

Then Alex, Maggie, Brenda, Connie, Rebecca, Annie and the others took over.

What began as a single novel became three books — and eventually something much larger: an evolving fictional world populated by characters whose stories continue beyond the pages of the books in which they first appeared.

And perhaps that's the most unexpected part of becoming an author.

I didn't set out to create the Bloodlines Saga.

I simply started writing one story.

The characters took care of the rest.