We headed a few miles out of town for the Turpentine Creek Wildlife Refuge. It’s a big cat refuge where exotic animals that have been abused or have become too much for their owners to handle can live out the rest of their lives. These animals aren’t suited for return to the wild and most have some health issue that prevents them from going to zoos. The refuge strives to put every animal they acquire in its own habitat, but while animals heal or are awaiting the opening of a new habitat area, they are caged.

We toured the habitat area and watched the keepers feed the animals. We were impressed with their work, the facility and the need.

First, take a look at our digs. These cabins are made to look like tents set up for safari, but are much more comfortable. At night, we could hear the cats “singing” and snarling. Very cool!

This is the inside of the one I shared with Myla Jackson and Shayla Kersten. The cabins ringed a deck that had a firepit and a jacuzzi. Yeah, we were roughing it.

These are a few pics I took of the animals in the habitats. They looked comfie, healthy, and the fences were sturdy—thank God—because you don’t realize how big those creatures are until you stand near them!

These are a pair of siblings that share a habitat. They greated each other affectionately, then proceeded to snarl and swat each other with their big paws.

If you look closely, you’ll see that the tiger on the right is missing its hind leg.

These are pics of the animals living in the cages near the visitor center. They are either healing or awaiting a habitat. The refuge relies on donations. I think the stupid pet owners who raised them should have to pay “cat-imony” on a monthly basis.

Ever seen a Liger? Me neither. A cross between a tiger and a lion wouldn’t occur in nature, but again, stupid pet owners…

Feeding time was fun to watch. Wish they’d let idiots like me pay for the privelege to risk our arms throwing raw meat into the cage.

They had plaques up for deceased animals. I found one pretty kitty who had my name.

Before I get to the ghosts, I wanted to share a screen shot I swiped off of Amazon last night. This was the sales ranking for A Four-Gone Conclusion. Thanks so much for making this happen!

Onto the ghosts…

By now, if you’ve been following my blog, you know I’m a bit of a whack-job. I admit it. I own it! One of my sincerely held beliefs is that ghosts exist, and I have a fascination with finding proof.

One place that has cemented my belief is the Crescent in Eureka Springs. This past weekend, I made a second trip there. This time with friends, and although I didn’t have quite the scary experience I had back during the summer (you can read about it here: Haunting at the Crescent Inn Hotel), there was still plenty of creep factor to enjoy!

A ghost hunter’s first and foremost piece of equipment (beside an open mind), is a camera. And as always, it wasn’t until I got home and blew up the photos I had that I saw just how much “proof” I had. In particular, I had tons of ghostly orbs. Some skeptics say it’s dust, but I can promise you, I don’t get these little glowing circles anywhere but inside creepy, haunted places. Take a look!

You saw one round, glowy circle, right? And what’s up with the wide-angle view of the picture? I promise, I did not change a single setting on my camera, but that’s how all the pictures came out. See this next orb? Keep watching.

Same shot, same orb, only it’s getting closer.

And I wish you could see this in the original photo. It’s almost impossible to make out the outline with the graininess of the image when I uploaded it here, but that brighter spot on the carpet, right in front of me, is the orb. Someone was checking me out.

After that, things went nuts. In this pic, you will see maybe four orbs, but in the original, I can count six.

How many can you see here?

And here? It’s harder to make out because it’s lighter, but look again!

If you’ve followed the Ghosthunters on TV, you might remember an episode they shot at the Crescent. In the old morgue area in the basement, they caught the full shadow of a ghost on their infra-red standing beside this locker. In my previous Crescent posting, I explain more of the history of the place and why it’s completely appropriate to find ghosts here. Last time, I got nada so far as ghostly images or orbs. This time? We shut off the lights here to get more shadows to see the orbs.

Same view—with the lights on. Persistent little suckers, aren’t they? You can almost feel them buzzing, “See me! See me!”

Last one, there are a couple in this shot, but I liked that one of them was right on top of me.

There is more to the Crescent than ghosts. If you ever make it to northern Arkansas, the view is fabulous. This is right at sunrise. (Yeah, I really was up that early. )

And a few moments later, same spot.

There’s so much color! Hope you enjoyed the pics!

Anyway, one of the highlights of my trip to Iowa was a chance to get some new ink with my daughter. We made appointments months ago. The artist at the Iron Heart cleared his schedule for us. My brother entertained the 6-year-old while we spent the afternoon getting stuck with needles. Fun, fun! Here’s the tattoo parlor in Des Moines that we went to.

My daughter has a thing for garden gnomes and decided to have both of her daughters made into gnomes. The lighting is bad, so is the swelling. The colors today are beautiful. I’ll have to have new pics done so you can see them better.


Here’s mine. I wanted something simple and “Story” was the word that meant the most to me. Josh made it beautiful. And since I have a thing for fairy art, this turned out perfectly. The colors don’t really show up well here either. It’s gorgeous. The fairy looks like a Dominatrix. Perfect!

Brother and SIL took us to a township called Amana. The shops are very retro. Tons of artisans—glassware, fudge, etc. Needless to say, I spent a lot!

On the way back from Iowa, we passed acres and acres of vineyards, and a sign—Wiederkehr Wine Cellars. Of course, we had to stop. While we strolled through their shop selecting t-shirts and bottles of wine, a funny thing happened that reminded me we were back in Arkansas. A woman came through the doors. She was dressed in shorts, big hair, and a t-shirt that rode up her round belly. In a very loud voice she yelled to one of the employees, “Y’all got any strawberry wiiiine?”

The clerk pasted on a bright smile. “Ma’am, we have our own grape vineyards.”

Maybe that was too ambiguous.

“Y’all got any other flavors? Got any peach wiiiine?

The clerk’s smile tightened. “Sorry, ma’am. We sell only grape wine.”

My daughter and I snickered. Yup. We were back home all right. Here’s a picture of the vineyards the woman couldn’t have missed seeing on the drive.

We stayed for a very nice German-style meal in the vineyard’s restaurant.

Then back on the road. By this time, our luggage and everything we’d bought took up all of the tiny trunk area and most of the back seat. Little one didn’t complain a bit about being squished.

When we left Eureka Springs, Arkansas, heading for home the last day of our trip, we were barely out of town when we saw a sign for “Quigley’s Castle”—not something we’d heard of before, so naturally we had to stop! We followed a gravel road, all the while humming the theme to Deliverance.

We pulled into a small gravel lot and saw this sign. After about five minutes a very grumpy woman showed up at the gate. Again, I watch too many horror movies. I immediately saw her as a gatekeeper to a Hell Mouth, and wondered if we should worry about the fact no one knew where we were. However, I was too curious at this point and followed her anyway while she led us inside a secret garden and to a shaded area in front of the “castle”.

There we heard the story about the house, which she told in a monotone without a single expression. After she finished her little story, she told us to make our own way through the house and the gardens, and then she disappeared. I just knew she hurried off to sharpen her ax!

Her grandmother was Italian and moved with her American husband to the Ozarks. I forget when but assume it was early-ish in the last century. They lived in a crude wooden building with five children and the wife nagged the husband to build her a stone house. When he didn’t act quickly enough for her taste, she and the five children pulled apart their wooden home one day when he went to work and moved into the chicken coop. Hubby got the message and broke ground on a new home for his wife.

It’s built of concrete. The wife collected wagon loads of all sorts of rocks from a nearby creek, which included quartz. As he made the concrete bricks, she imbedded the side of the brick facing outward with pretty stones and crystals. Note all the greenery in the front windows? The entryway of the house is a two-story indoor garden.

This is a view of the indoor garden from the first floor.

And from the landing on the second floor.

This is a glance down the steps. The frames on both sides contain arrowheads she found in the river.

The rooms inside the house aren’t large or lavish, but she decorated everything with stones. In her bedroom, one wall was covered in this picture that’s a decoupage of what looks like art work from magazines and books, personal photos, and real moths she captured and set in resin.

Here’s a closeup.

Outside the house is a garden that wraps around the house with outdoor furniture and garden art made from more concrete, shells and rocks. She was a little more than obsessive, I think.

Here’s the outdoor patio.

There were seven bottle trees scattered throughout the garden.

Just to show you what she did, here’s a closeup of a little decorative arch she made for one flower bed.

That’s Quigley’s Castle. An American oddity, and one we would have missed if we hadn’t been willing to take a chance and follow a little sign down a rocky path.

Wierd things happened even before we arrived. The Crescent lies in the Ozark Mountains and sits on the crest of a hill. We had the address plugged into the Garmin. The GPS worked fine the whole trip, up until the point when it took us up a goat trail of a narrow, gravel road. Halfway up the rutted trail, we met a Hummer. There really was only room for the Hummer, so he had to climb a hill while we squeezed by with our wheels on the edge of the trail. It was a nail-biter staring down the long drop into the ravine.

This is the Crescent Inn Hotel. Built in the 1800′s, it’s had many lives—as a resort hotel for the rich, as a school for girls, a cancer treatment-torture facility, and again as a hotel.

This is our room and the very first picture where creepy things happened. I have a very good little Cannon camera that takes crisp, clear pictures. I took hundreds of pictures on this trip and this is the first one that’s blurred this way. But here, you can make out a shadow. Do you see the outline of a head and shoulder? As it turns out, our room has a ghost that plays outside the door. A child died from a fall and is “seen” playing and “heard” to say “It’s not fair!” when he sees people dressed comfortably because he hated his own fussy clothing.


The next snap, same lighting, and nothing.

Here’s the front desk when you first enter the hotel. Slightly theatrical, but it does set the tone.

Still in our room and third snap. See the moon-like circle? It’s an orb. To non-believers (snicker if you like!), it’s dust or a reflection. The rest of us know it’s a spirit. I’ve only gotten “dust” like this in my pictures of cemeteries.

I found shadows and orbs everywhere in this hotel and wished I had a thermal imaging camera. See the shadow AND the orb?

See the orb here? It’s not the round sign at the end of the hallway, but the one on the right. I swear it’s not a spot on the carpet!

See the orb just below the stairwell? This is the stairwell where that little boy died from a fall.

We took the haunted tour and this is our intrepid group.

I think ghosts and shadows like to lurk in pairs.

It’s appropriate seeing an orb here. This door was used by the fellow who poisoned the cancer patients with his cures. He wheeled the bodies through this door at night while the rest of the patients slept.

The creepiest part of the tour was the trek to the bowels of the hotel, past the spa rooms to the morgue.

This the room where the doctor examined his victims.

This locker was featured in the Ghosthunters episode. A figure was seen in the thermal imaging camera and the number “2″ glowed.

We were invited to step into the cooler where the bodies were stored. Seven of us crammed inside. It was hot as Hell! I snapped pics overhead, but found no orbs. What ghost would want to hang out there anyway? This pic was the scariest of the lot.

After our tour, the three of us had the best sleep of the entire trip. If a ghost came scratching, wailing, knocking—he was doomed to disappointment.

I took pics before I got out of bed that morning. Besides my feet, see anything strange?

How about now?

The creepiest thing that happened, by far, occurred in the formal dining room when we ate dinner. The six-year-old scowled and turned to her mother who was seated closest. “Mom, stop kicking my flip-flops.” She went under the table to retrieve them and her mother showed her that her feet couldn’t reach that far. The little one sat down again then made another face. “Stop it! My flip-flops!” The hairs on the back of my neck lifted. The Red-Headed Hellion and I exchanged wide-eyed glances. Little twerp when under the table again, then started talking to herself. When she came back up, she had a really wide grin on her face. “You want to eat my heart!”

Well, that’s not something she’d ever said before. And that was before we learned about the little boy. The tour guide said he was likely jealous of her flip-flops. AND it was before we learned that the doctor experimented on the bodies in the morgue and removed the hearts and livers from his victims.

That’s not the end of the wierd things associated with the Crescent Inn. When I got home, I downloaded all my pics. Four times! Each time, only the pictures from the Crescent were missing from the batch. Say what you like, but I think a ghost hitched a ride in one of those pictures. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!

I still have pics to share, as well as some spooky happenings to relate. Wait until you see what my camera caught! But let’s not get ahead of ourselves, which I did when I posted about Powell Gardens and Joplin, Mo.

What makes a good journey?

Great travel companions who are as eager to explore as you are.

Coffee. Lots of it. We didn’t even make it out of our own home town without stopping for breakfast and getting two to-go cups to take with us!


A willingness to take chances. Like we did when we got hungry, just across the Missouri border and found this little diner. It didn’t look like much from the outside. In a past life it was a gas station. But inside? Pure 50′s-60′s fun!

We chose to sit under the Marilyn Monroe wall. The food wasn’t bad either!

A willingness to stop along the way and smell the flowers. These are wildflowers growing alongside the road.

Curiosity in following a sign pointing toward an outlaw’s home place. The house itself isn’t very impressive. Neither are the exhibits. And in fact, most of the house is newer, having been upgraded by Jesse’s mom after his death. We were disappointed that so much of it wasn’t as it really was when Jesse James lived there.

Around back there’s a section of the house that’s authentic. We couldn’t take pictures inside, so I can’t share pics of the furnishings or family pictures.

They say that old section is haunted and that Jesse’s younger brother was killed there by Pinkerton men when they tossed a bomb inside. So I took a picture of the window to see what I might catch.

Now, some of y’all will say it’s the trees or a trick of the light. But I see a face. I’m a writer. I’m allowed to let my imagination go.

Remember! The Book Dragon Contest continues! Find details listed here!

Another of our stops (this one planned because the Red-Headed Hellion knows I love dinosaurs) was Powell Garden in Missouri. It’s a lovely outdoor botannical garden which I might have stopped for anyway, but this summer they’re featuring the “Jurassic Exhibit”.

Plenty of pretty flowers and trees. Love them. Took pics of them.

We walked the couple-mile trail to find the dinosaurs lurking in the bushes. Rawr!


Chomp-chomp!

Grrrr!

Ya know, once upon a time I belonged to a monthly mail-order orchid club. I adore orchids. However, I found that the new orchid arrived just in time to replace the one I’d killed.

My daughter’s not the only one with hambone gene. The six-year old’s workin’ it.

For those of you who remember my desperate tweets about how to get a melted chocolate bar off a Coach bag…that’s the bag with my two travel companions.

She’ll never be an actress. I asked her, “What would you do if you saw one of those for real?”

It was fun walking the route through the forested area and trying to pick out the dinosaurs they had hidden.

Anyone know what the name of this one is?

So, another installment of my road trip’s done, but y’all want me to get to the good stuff, right? Like who won the two contests? Alright already. drumroll…

The winner of the cabbage rose fairy journal is…Stacy Wilson!

Ladies! Congrats and send me an email to coordinate delivery of your gifts. And I know I still owe a prize pack or two to a couple other winners. I’ll get those out this week! ~DD

The first day out, we drove north from Arkansas and were barely into Missouri when the sign off the Interstate read “Joplin”. We’d watched the newscasts of the aftermath of the powerful tornado that hit there and wondered just how bad it really was.

It was worse than we’d imagined.

Pigs flew. Don’t know why this struck me as wrong, but the only sign of damage at this restaurant was to…well…the sign!

Home Depot had their act together. Their entire store had been flattened, but they’d already had the wreckage pushed to one side of their huge lot and erected this large tent to provide building supplies for the area.


I guess Walmart’s taking their time with the insurance adjusters.

I hope no one was inside this car when the tornado hit.

This neighborhood was obliterated.

I stood in one spot and turned 360-degrees. This is what the entire area looked like.

Why did one house’s shell remain when so many others were laid to waste?

I don’t know how more people weren’t killed.

This looks like the aftermath of a huge explosion, minus the scorching.

The sign read: “God Knows. God Cares. And he has already worked it out.”

We weren’t there long. I felt like a rubbernecker at an accident. Ashamed by my fascination. We moved along and found a hotel for the evening. I’ll be back with more pics of happier sights.

Of course, I had to meet the man on my Moonstruck cover, Jimmy Thomas. This was his display at the booksigning on Saturday. You can see Moonstruck on the upper right corner!

I shot this after one of the panel discussions I participated in. In the picture are my BFF Kimberly Kaye Terry and the fabulous L.A. Banks!

More KKT and me! Doesn’t she look amazing?!

L.A. at the booksigning!

Just to prove it’s not all female authors at RT! I bought Jeremy’s book, Hungry for Love—what can I say? I can’t get enough of zombies!

The promo princesses themselves, Megan Hart and Lauren Dane!

I sat next to the very sweet and funny, HelenKay Dimon at the booksigning!

Richelle Mead is signing Frostbite for me!

Another very sweet lady—Taige Crenshaw!

You never know who you’re gonna meet at conference. Here’s my beta-buddy, Virginia E taking a pic of me while I’m taking a pic of her!

Virginia without the camera.

Kimmie with the rockin’ Vivia Anna!

The two year-old wasn’t scared of the werewolf crashing through the wall.

My favorite!

Needed more blood and guts, I think.

Jack Sparrow didn’t look grimy enough.

This one creeped me out. I kept expecting them all to turn toward me with their vacant stares…

Here’s my baby and me.

You’d think a wax museum would do casts of shrunken heads. But I did find a Hillbilly calendar to give away to one “lucky” reader. It’s full of helpful holidays and appointments, like “Pay Pa’s Bale”, Ma shoe the mule”, and “Shoot snakes at swimmin hole”. I’ll be sure to toss in some Delilah goodies too! Comment to win this great prize!