Goodreads asked Meredith R. Stoddard:

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

Meredith R. Stoddard It's really a melding of a couple of my areas of interest. I studied Folklore in college and love Appalachian and Scottish culture. I come from a long line of Carolina Scots, so it seems natural to me that much of the folklore in North Carolina has a definite Scots-Irish flavor.
Also, I read Holy Blood, Holy Grail when I was in high school (long before The DaVinci Code was published) and was fascinated by that whole idea that there was a secret society guarding some earth shattering secret and hoarding some special knowledge from the rest of us.
Those two things were my jumping off point. My research, and the story blossomed out from there.

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