Lars's Mom: As Cool as a (Military) Engineer??

I have been having a lot of fun writing "author insights" on Bublish.  I'm finding that re-reading my historical novel for middle graders about the American Revolution, The Riddle of Penncroft Farm, is bringing lots of buried memories to the surface. (I wrote this book in the 1980s.)

 For instance, in the first chapter, this is what I wrote:

But before I’d taken more than a few steps, an eerie sound stopped me in my tracks. A spooky stream of notes, wheezy and piercing, was coming from the house.
“What’s that?” I said in a hoarse whisper.
Without missing a beat, Mom answered matter-of-factly, “Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, unless I miss my guess.”

When I read this, I remembered what incident made me write it this way.  It was based, believe it or not, on a performance of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture in a college fieldhouse in the 1950s!

To find out what happened, check out my Bubble!