Five Fun Facts about Pandora Reborn
A selection of trivia related to my debut novel.
Many readers are seeing Pandora Reborn for the first time today. My debut novel, first published in 2018, is the BookBub Featured Deal for the horror genre. It’s an exciting milestone for me as an author.
If you haven’t read Pandora Reborn yet, this is the perfect time to pick up a copy. The eBook is available for only 99 cents today through Friday at the following booksellers:
Since Pandora Reborn is back in the spotlight today, I wanted to share a few fun facts about my debut novel with the readers of this newsletter.
My hometown is the inspiration for Deer Falls
I was raised in Kamas, a rural farm town nestled against the Uinta Mountains in Eastern Utah. For those of you who are unfamiliar with that area, Kamas is about a 15-20 minute drive east of Park City. Multiple settings within Pandora Reborn draw their inspiration from my hometown. Deer Falls High, for example, is modeled after South Summit High School in its architecture. The Ranches - another key setting - bears a few similarities to Marion, an unincorporated community north of Kamas.
Dean was born the same year as my mother.
My novel takes place in 2017. Dean is 73 years old during the modern-day events of the story and 18 years old during flashback sequences. His age within the story matches the age my Mom would have been at that point in time. I made that narrative choice in my first novel as a silent tribute to her because of her positive influence in shaping my journey to becoming an author. Before her death from cancer in 2003, Mom was the first audience for my stories and encouraged me to pursue my dreams.
Christina is partially modeled after my nieces
Ron befriends Christina, a cute girl who is a social outcast, early in the narrative and she plays a critical role in how the plot unfolds. At the time I wrote the story, two of my nieces (both teenagers at the time) served as models for how I visualized her physical appearance. This leads to a related cool fact. Both nieces are Latina, which naturally means Christina herself is also Latina.
Local and ancient folklore inspired the witch in the buried chest
I gained inspiration for my central plot device - an evil witch trapped inside a chest is unwittingly released - from a mix of ancient and local folklore. My story title and a sealed chest containing an evil entity both allude to Pandora’s Box. A local legend of the fabled lost Rhoads gold mine in the Uinta Mountains offered another source of inspiration. Various people vanished over the years while searching for the hidden mine, allegedly a source of gold that Thomas Rhoads mined to be used to finance the construction of the Salt Lake Temple. The mystery surrounding the mine and the disappearances sparked a notion of a malevolent supernatural entity being at the center of it all and informed the eventual origins of Pandora Reborn’s main antagonist.
Deer Falls is a magnet for supernatural creatures
Casey references wild stories about past supernatural events in Deer Falls when Ron meets him for the first time in detention. These stories hint at an extensive town lore I plan to explore further in future novels, novellas, and short stories. Ron may not like admitting it, but Casey’s claims are right on the money. Deer Falls is a magnet drawing monsters, demons, witches, vampires, and numerous other supernatural creatures to the area. Local, state, and federal authorities are quite aware of this fact and suppress widespread knowledge of supernatural creatures and events for economic and political reasons.
If you want to know anything else about Pandora Reborn, feel free to leave a question or comment below. Also, if you’ve read and enjoyed my novel, please leave a review wherever you purchased it. Let other readers know about this riveting and terrifying horror story.
