Spider Mountain Isn't Really a Mountain at All

My first audio book was just released, a novel for 9-12 year-olds. Mystery of Spider Mountain is a semi-autobiographical novel based on my childhood, growing up in the Hollywood Hills where, if you climbed high enough, you could see the Pacific Ocean.

Spider Mountain was home to all sorts of crawling creatures, including trapdoor spiders which my brothers and I watched spin hinged doors to hide their homes in the ground. There were also a few tarantulas that had escaped Central American banana boats that docked at southern California ports 

But Spider Mountain isn't a mountain at all, although it appeared so from the vantage points of my four younger  brothers and me. We lived at the foot of the large hill and wondered who lived in the mysterious house at our mountain's summit. It was surrounded by huge evergreen trees and we could hear dogs barking at night, imagining them the size and temperament of wolves or maybe a St.  Bernard. Some nights we'd sit around making up stories about the strange house's inhabitants. Perhaps they were aliens or bank robbers hiding from the police. Kids had vivid imaginations in the days before television and electronic devises.

One day, while our parents were at work, we climbed the hill to spy on the people who lived there. A narrow, winding road wound its way to the top but it was choked with weeds and debris, so how could anyone drive to the summit? A tall eucalyptus tree stood  halfway up the hill complete with a long looped rope that we kids used to swing on. We called it "Dead Man's Tree" because the rope resembled a hangman's noose.

All these things and more are incorporated into Mystery of Spider Mountain, the first novel in my Hamilton Kid's mystery series as well as how lost children can survive in the wilderness.

The three and a half hour recording is available in print and ebook editions, but I'm most excited about the audio book version, which was skillfully narrated by Chelsea Ward. Chelsea will also narrate book two in the series, Ghost of Crimson Dawn as well as A Village Shattered..

The book is available at Audible.com, Amazon.com (soon on iTunes) in time for Christmas. 

Writing a Children's Mystery Novel

by Jean Henry Mead

I considered writing an autobiographical children’s book for years before I finally sat down and wrote it. Solstice Publishing released it this week as Mystery of Spider Mountain and I’m well into the second book of the Hamilton Kids' mystery series.

Fiction is rooted in fact and my three protagonists spent their formative years at the foot of a large hill in southern California, as I did with four younger brothers. Because the hill was inhabited by trap door spiders and an occasional tarantula that had arrived on a banana boat from Central America, I called it Spider Mountain.

My brothers and I were close in age and and explored our "mountain" together. The apron was filled with tall, blue lupines which bloomed nearly year round, and halfway up the hill was Dead Man’s Tree. We called it that because a thick knotted rope hung from a limb that we swung on. At the end was a large loop. That prompted stories about horsethieves which we imagined had been hanged there.

A dirt road encircled the hill at three levels but was so chocked with rocks and clumps of weeds that even a bicycle would have had difficult passage. So we wondered how the people who lived at the summit were able to reach their home, and imagined everything from rock climbers to space ships and helicopters, although we’d never heard one in the area.

When I was twelve and old enough to babysit brothers who were nearly my own size, we climbed our mountain to spy on the mysterious house. What we found was a chain link fence restraining four large vicious-appearing dogs with mouths large enough to swallow a child. Or so we thought. It didn’t take us long to scramble back down the hill to our own house. And, of course, we never told our parents.

When I began to write, I wondered again who those people were and how they arrived at their hilltop home. The house itself was a mystery but I had to decide what kind of crime(s) the residents of the house had committed. And how the Hamilton kids would be able to bring them to justice. I then thought of the Ouija board we used to play with. That’s when the spirit Bagnomi materialized and talked to the kids via the board.

My four brothers had to be reduced to two to make the story manageable. Even so, they were as unmanageable as my own brothers had been, so their widowed grandmother came to live with them—as ours had done. However, our grandmother didn’t have bright red curly hair like Ronald McDonald, and wasn’t interested in finding a husband. Even children’s books need humor and the Hamilton Kids’ grandmother provides that and more, along with an adopted Australian Sheppard with a penchant for chewing furniture.

Writing for children has opened a new vista which I hope my young readers will enjoy as much as I enjoyed the writing. I'm well into the second novel in the series, The Ghost of Crimson Dawn, which takes place here in Wyoming, where the Hamilton Kids visit their Uncle Harry at his mountaintop ranch. There's a bit of autobiographical plotting in that book as well.