Im Currently reading "The Lonely Dead"And i have to say, its amazing! I do have a question...How did you come up with the idea for this book?

April Henry I usually post the inspiration on my website, aprilhenry.com. Here's what it says:

Inspiration
Whenever I’m not traveling, I run a four-mile route in my neighborhood three or four times a week. I’ve been running this same route for years. One day I started thinking about what it would be like if I could see the dead right where they were buried. I imagined running past the ghosts of the dogs and cats and parakeets that their owners had buried in the yards over the years. With each run, I took the thought a little further.

What would happen, for example, if a person with such a gift were to go to a cemetery? I grew up next to an old cemetery, so I pictured myself walking among the leaning headstones. The dead, I figured, would be lonely and eager to talk. But en masse, they would also be overwhelming.

On another run, I wondered what would happen if someone with the gift saw the spirit of a dead person in an unexpected place. Killers have been known to bury bodies in a number of locations, including their own yards. What if one day that person saw a girl? A girl who did not know at first that she was dead?

The person with the gift, I decided, was a girl named Adele. The dead girl was named Tori, and she had once been Adele’s best friend.

I had to decide what the rules were in this world I was creating, and whether they echoed common tropes. Could spirits go through walls? Was it true that you were stuck for eternity wearing whatever you died in? And if there were ghosts, what did that mean about heaven or hell?

I’m not sure that I believe in ghosts, but I do believe things are more than they appear, that there is a kind of magic working in the world that we don’t understand.

My ninth-great-grandfather, William Meeker, was charged with witchcraft in 1656, but luckily for me (and him), he was acquitted.

My mother, his direct descendant, occasionally knew things she could not or should not have been able to know. This is sometimes called second sight. I assume she had this ability when she was young, because she used to talk about how her mother (my grandmother) wanted my mom to be a medium. My mom shied away from that, but she occasionally shared things she knew or had known years before they happened, like the first name of my brother’s future wife. When I bought a used car, my mom told me what color it was. Doubting her ability, I told her to find the same color in a magazine, rip out a swatch, and mail it to me. She did, and it matched perfectly. There are still a few things she said would happen to me (she died in 2013) that I’m curious to see whether they’ll come true.

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