​No matter where you’re from, you’ve probably heard of the Bird Cage Theater. Opened in Tombstone, Arizona, in December 1881, the theater is as much a part of Old West lore as Billy the Kid, the California Gold Rush, and the OK Corral (located three blocks away). 

Having grown up in Tucson, The Bird Cage was the most famous haunted theater I knew of — and one that, twenty years ago, I visited overnight as part of a parapsychology program sponsored by Pima Community College.

Although very different from my fictional location of the Osiris Theater in my upcoming book, The Osiris Circle: The Trap Room Ghost, The Bird Cage tour undoubtedly colored some of my writing, so I thought I’d share more about the place along with some historic image and photos I took at the time.

Although closely associated with the more checkered parts of Tombstone's past, The Bird Cage was originally established to provide a family-friendly theater for the growing population of southern Arizona. Early acts included comedy duos, an opera singer, and a woman who billed herself as having an “iron jaw" and would pick up heavy objects with her teeth. How she made that into a stage show boggles the mind, but it's a fascinating talent nonetheless. 

When the original owners sold the establishment a few years after it opened, the entertainment became much more “adult” — and certainly more lucrative. While the stage shows continued to be very diverse, a gambling den was established in the basement, and the balcony was separated by curtains into fourteen semi-private “bird cages,” where patrons could watch the stage show but were more likely to avail themselves of the resident sex workers (known at the time as “soiled doves”). It’s likely that few families came to The Bird Cage after this, and the clientele shifted mostly to cattlemen and workers from the numerous silver mines around the area.

​But then the mining industry bottomed out, and The Bird Cage (then called the Elite Theater) closed in 1892, leaving most of its fixtures and belongings in situ. For the next forty years, the building served as the City of Tombstone's storage facility, but most of its original contents remained untouched. It was finally purchased in the 1930s and turned into a museum and tourist attraction — and it remains so to this day. 

In 2005, my group arrived at the theater at sundown. Although I had been to Tombstone many times before, I had never paid the fee to tour The Bird Cage and initially found it very unimpressive. Like many frontier-era buildings, it will win no architectural awards. It is essentially a box with a flat roof and three identical arched doorways looking out onto Allen Street. However, its brick-and-adobe construction — which was unusual and expensive in the 1800s — helped it survive for over a century, even through several large-scale fires in 1881 and 1882 that destroyed many of the structures around it. Famously, the exterior’s most notorious feature is the 100-plus bullet holes that riddle it. 

The sun was down when our group entered, but even during the day, the theater is poorly lit. Most of the lamps, chandeliers, and stage footlights are said to be original to the 19th century, and although now powered by electricity rather than oil or gas, the low-wattage bulbs necessitated us carrying flashlights at all times. I could see immediately why so many think the place is haunted. The dim atmosphere certainly lent itself to shadows that seemed to move on their own or to glimpses of vapory figures caught from the corner of your eye. Yet these “apparitions” quickly vanished when I turned on my flashlight. 

Dozens of apparitions are said to call The Bird Cage home. Some are to be expected — the stagehand to tragically died performing his duties, the card players, the prostitute who was murdered by a client. Other phenomenon were said to be more vague. Disembodied voices. Music that seemed to emanate from empty space. The smell of cigar smoke. Our group's leader hoped to document some of this, and we had brought a variety of cameras and other recording equipment with us. 

But we started with a tour. 

The main floor of The Bird Cage is tiny by modern theater standards, measuring about 15 feet (4.5 m) square. It was not hard to imagine the place packed wall-to-wall with cattlemen, gamblers and miners. Nor was it hard to imagine the smell — a thought as terrifying as anything else about the place. 

Looking down on the stage and the main floor are the notorious “bird cages.” We were allowed to peek inside but not enter these rooms, and I remember that the most striking thing about them, other than their small size, barely big enough for two, was the fact that they still retained much of the original wallpaper and velvet curtains. 

When I started writing The Trap Room Ghost, I wondered if a theater's interior furnishings could survive when abandoned but otherwise untouched for over three decades. Memories of just how well The Bird Cage had held up after twelve decades helped me solve this conundrum.

During the next few hours of investigating, I spent a lot of time in the basement gambling rooms, which were cold, damp, and smelled faintly of wet wood and earth. According to our hosts, this was one of the most haunted areas of the building, as fatal, drunken brawls would frequently erupt over a disputed poker hand. A basement (trap room) also features prominently in my book, so memories of The Bird Cage’s subterranean vibe helped me shape my characters' reactions to being underground in an old theater. 

​While I did not see anything in the theater that I could ascribe to the paranormal, the Bird Cage's age, its moldering furniture and fixtures, its tight hallways and blind turns, and, most of all, its reputation certainly contributed to its spooky vibe. I can't say the place is haunted. I can, however, guarantee at least a few cold shivers up your spine should you choose to visit.

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​My educational background is in fine arts, and as part of that, I really grew to love architecture. I love ancient architecture in particular, and one of the highlights of my life was wandering the ruins of Greece in 2012… and Egypt, Italy, Turkey, and the Near East are all still on my bucket list.

From the first day that The Osiris Circle popped into my head, I wanted a turn-of-the-20th-century theater to be the backdrop for all the action in The Osiris Circle — a place that was grand, beautiful, and mysterious all at the same time.

Fortunately, I had plenty of source material to pull from. The late 1800s and early 1900s were an era when civic and public buildings were often modeled on monuments from ancient Greece or Rome in what was known as Neoclassical architecture, complete with massive columns, grand porticos, and ornamental edifices. Some of the greatest and best-known buildings in the western hemisphere, from the British Museum to the U.S. Supreme Court Building, are built in this style. But so were countless smaller private and municipal buildings, including theaters, museums, and performance centers. 

A subset of Neoclassical architecture, known as Egyptian Revival, was less popular but became more in vogue after the discovery of King Tutankhamen’s tomb in 1922 — and era when "Egyptomania" was sweeping the United States and Europe. It was this style of architecture that I wanted for my fictional theater, so I was immediately — and perhaps obviously — drawn to the various "Egyptian Theaters" that blossomed across the United States during the 1920s and 30s. Sadly, most of these buildings have been demolished, but two notable survivors are in Boise, Idaho and DeKalb, Illinois. 

Opened in the late 1920s, both theaters are masterpieces of Egyptian Revival architecture both inside and out. The architects of these places were not trying to recreate ancient Egyptian structures, but rather were using the civilization's aesthetic adapted to twentieth century needs. In many cases, Egyptian design elements were fused with other popular styles such as Art Deco. I'd also say that, where theaters were concerned, some Hollywood extravagance was thrown in. For many in the 20's and 30's, going to the motion pictures was an inexpensive but also glamorous way to spend a night. Theaters were often referred to as "palaces" and for good reason... 

​Gaudy and mysterious, filled with gilded surfaces, rich fabrics and luxurious furniture, "Egyptian theaters" were portals to another age — exactly the vibe I wanted for my Osiris Theater. Although I drew a lot of inspiration from the Boise and DeKalb locations, I up-scaled the Osiris Theater to make it larger, more rambling, and reminiscent of something out of a gothic horror novel. (See my concept art for the interior of the theater above.) The Osiris is a multi-story relic, abandoned for over thirty years, but still full of curious imagery, spooky rooms and with a shadowy history. It sits on the outskirts of town, forgotten and slowly being reclaimed by nature like an old cemetery. And of course, it is the source of numerous rumors… and no one can remember what’s true and what’s just urban legend. 

I’ll be delighted to share more images of my fictional theater in the weeks ahead, but for now, I’ve included a slideshow to illustrate Egyptian Revival architecture in the slideshow below. Enjoy!

​The first draft of The Osiris Circle is complete!

The book was finished in about a year and a half — which is the fastest I've completed any manuscript. There were three major factors that contributed to the speed of completion.

The first was the intentional brevity of the manuscript. As an illustrated novel, about half the book will be artwork, so I accounted for this during the writing process in order to maintain a 200+ page count. 

Second, the book is intended for a younger audience than I usually write for — teens (ages 12 to 17) as opposed to young adults (generally 18 to 25 year olds). As such, the plot is less involved and although it does carry some serious themes, this had to handled appropriately for the less mature reader. 

Third, because large parts of the book have a distinctive graphic novel feel, parts of the manuscript had to read like a script with stage directions. This was ultimately quicker to write than prose.

Now, with the manuscript completed, I'll now spend another year on illustrations — many of which were only possible to create after finalizing the story and characters. 

Even though draft #1 is done, there will be more writing ahead. Revisions will ultimately be made as I get feedback from my editors and there's still a some research to be done. I'll write more about this in my next blog!

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While I am still a novice, one of the things I've quickly learned about writing a mystery is that it’s an exercise in reverse-engineering a plot. Put more simply, if you don’t know how the story’s going to end — quite literally whodunit and how — then you cannot effectively pepper your book with the clues needed to keep your readers engaged.

As a lifelong mystery reader, there have always been a few things that drove me (and probably other mystery readers) crazy. These include when authors do not provide important information throughout the text that would allow me to participate in the investigation, when they introduce previously unknown characters at the end of the book who provide convenient and unexpected revelations, or when they explain away poor continuity as a “plot twist.” If you’re reading a paranormal or supernatural mystery, the biggest cheat is often the dreaded Deus ex machina (Latin for “the hand of God”), a plot device first created by the ancient Greeks in which an unsolvable problem is suddenly resolved by an unexpected, improbable, or contrived event, character, or object. (When it comes to supernatural or paranormal books, the mechanism is often magical.)

Of course, a supernatural or paranormal book will contain, by definition, both spectacular and unexplainable events. But I really want The Osiris Circle books to be true mysteries, solved through the investigative work of the protagonists without any (or at least many) “magical” shortcuts. I want to provide enough clues throughout the text that readers feel like participants in the investigation. 

And toward that end, I had to finish the last chapter before I actually finished the book. 

If I’m being honest, this happened about halfway through my first draft because my writing tends to be very organic, and I hadn’t worked out all the details of the central mystery until that point. Once completed, I had to go back and fix some clues and other details to ensure they pointed in the right direction. Since the story will also be told through illustrations, I had to ensure my artwork also maintained this continuity. (For additional tips on this, see my article Avoiding Continuity Errors.)

​If you’re an author, I’ll leave it to you to figure out how you’re going to reverse-engineer your mystery and track your clues. Naturally, everyone will have their own process. But at least consider figuring out the resolution first. After all, you only want your characters and your readers stumbling around in the dark — not yourself!

Creating and detailing characters is one of the greatest joys of writing a novel. Each character becomes a unique being with a life of their own, and as a writer, I get to watch them grow and evolve. However, when it comes to creating characters for a graphic novel, the process becomes even more intricate. Unlike a traditional novel where readers can imagine characters in their minds, a graphic novel demands that they see them too. Visual consistency becomes key in ensuring characters remain identifiable, even when they undergo changes in a traditional narrative.

In a novel, characters can change clothes and appearances without losing their identity in the mind’s eye of the reader. However, in a graphic novel, maintaining clarity demands that characters retain a consistent visual appearance. This poses a unique challenge, especially for a hybrid work like my upcoming book, The Osiris Circle, which combines elements of both illustrated and traditional novels.

Developing characters visually is no small feat, particularly when you're still navigating your first draft and the characters themselves are evolving. So far, my main characters have gone through four iterations as I've tried to pin down "their look". As the plot and their traits have morphed organically, so too has their appearance. My journey of visual consistency has involved a detailed exploration of their faces, hair, ethnicity and body types.
Clothing and hairstyles add another layer of complexity. They need to be identifiable and relatable to current readers, yet they must also possess a timeless quality. I want readers to be able to pick up The Osiris Circle in ten years and still find the characters’ appearances to be believable and relatable to the modern day.

As a result, I’ve spent countless hours deliberating and experimenting with clothing colors and styles. These elements are not just superficial; they represent the personalities of the main characters. Color, in particular, is vital as it serves as the immediate and most effective way for a reader to distinguish between characters. If you see a man wearing a blue bodysuit with a red cape, probably you’re going to identify him as Superman even if he doesn’t have that big “S” on his chest, right?

While I’m not ready to share finalized character artwork just yet, as it is still in development, I am excited to eventually unveil more artwork in future blog posts. This careful crafting of visual iconography is a labor of love, and I believe it will enrich the reading experience of The Osiris Circle.

In the end, clothing and appearances are more than just aesthetic choices; they are integral to storytelling. They help shape the narrative and guide the reader through a visual journey. Sorting out my characters, one outfit, hairstyle or color at a time, is a thrilling part of creating a world that readers can both see and feel.

Stay tuned for more updates as the “look” of The Osiris Circle continues to unfold or follow my socials for alerts. 

Whenever it was lunch recess in elementary school, I and my best friend would head off to a remote corner of the playground, to a single mesquite tree, which according from Google Earth, still stands today (see the photo above). And every day we'd play around its base and among its limbs. All these years later, I can’t really tell you what imaginative worlds we were creating there — but most likely they were inspired by our favorite Saturday morning television adventures or recent movies. 

No one was troubled by what we were doing except one particularly imperious yard monitor. One day she marched up to us and announced that it “wasn’t normal” for third graders to be off by ourselves, creating pretend games, instead of playing dodge ball or basketball like most of the other kids. 

We were polite in rejecting her unenlightened opinion, because we really did not care what she thought. Despite our age, we were quite practiced in not caring what others thought but it always astounded me how many teachers, parents and peers often mistook creativity and imagination for something abnormal.

As I was completing the Quinton’s Curious Mind Series, I wanted my next writing project to celebrate these kinds of kids — kids who saw the world differently, created their own safe spaces and problem-solved creatively. I also wanted to dip my toe in the mystery game — being a huge fan of true crime, cold cases and classic whodunits. As a kid, I gobbled up the Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys and Three Investigators mysteries. Some of my favorite standalone titles featured clever kids solving mysteries tinged with the paranormal and supernatural. Harriet the Spy, The Egypt Game, Nate the Great and Encyclopedia Brown were all favorites. As I got older, I added the works of Agatha Christie, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Raymond Chandler and Patricia Highsmith. 

And yes, I’ll throw Scooby-Doo in there for good measure. 

Aside from trying my hand at a mystery, I also wanted to  infuse more illustration into my books and as I read more graphic novels, I became very interested in using art as part of the narrative process.

All of this eventually culminated in The Osiris Circle, a book series which will revolve around a group of young teens who solve cold case mysteries out of a historic theater located in a fictional town. 

I’ll provide more details about all this in the posts ahead so check back for further updates, or follow my socials for alerts.