Xlibris author Alan Gibson came up with an idea to make his farm in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, US pay for itself. He believed that the Ridgefield Farm and Orchards would provide an excellent setting for a horror movie he wanted to produce. The plot struck him instantly.
“I came up with the idea very quickly of doing a horror movie set at the farm. The whole concept of this story is that it’s something that could happen, and I find those creepier and scarier than other things where there’s some mysterious being in the basement; this is real. By the time I landed in LA, I had the outline of a plot,” he said.
He then traveled and back and forth to Los Angeles to speak to a friend who agreed to fund his project. However, the friend was unable to sustain the funding. Alan’s hopes were not dashed. After a year, his friend renewed his commitment to the project, but unfortunately, the funding was cut for the second time. He didn’t give up.
Being a former copywriter, Alan has a natural flair for writing, so he embarked on writing his first novel. Writing a book, nevertheless, came to him as a surprise.
“I never pretended that I could write anything brilliant. I didn’t really want to do that. I wanted to write a really great piece of fiction with a fun plot. My dream was to be in an airport and see my books lined up on a rack somewhere, didn’t matter what the title was. That’s kind of always been a fantasy,” he said. “This was my first novel, and frankly, it was a lot harder than I thought it would be. Finishing is hard for me. I have so many ideas, and my life has gone in so many different directions; I just lose interest quickly. It’s one of my weaknesses but I also think it’s one of my strengths,” he added.
His book “The Dead of Winter” narrates a-holiday-gone-wrong of four friends who participate in the PumpkinFest season at the Farm and Orchard’s Bed and Breakfast one winter weekend. Little do they know that instead of taking part in the annual tradition of fruit picking, they are about to be a part of a horrifying family tradition—because they picked the wrong weekend.
Alan Gibson is also a professor of French and Spanish at Shepherd University in Shepherdstown, West Virginia.