Goodreads asked Idabel Allen:

Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

Idabel Allen Ideas for stories never come to me whole. They come over a period of time, a thought here and a thought there. For my novel, Strange Agonies In Some Lonesome Wilderness, I had read a news story about an African American minister who setup church in an abandoned building in Memphis. From this building he played old gospel albums that drew in lost souls for him to minister. This story stuck in my head at a time I thought I might try my hand at writing something scary and suspenseful along the lines of Peter Straub’s Ghost Story. I became fixated on this minister as my protagonist and started seeing him as a sort of fallen minister - a good man, who in a moment of desperation does a little evil. But there’s no such thing as a little evil. Once introduced, it spreads into every aspect of life. This was the starting point of the story, when I knew I had something to work with. The story took on a life of its own while still maintaining the theme of a good man who does a little evil.

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