Paige Shelton | Trains

I love the sound of a distant train. Up close and personal they’re not as ethereal and mysterious as they are with their far-off whistles and horns, though they’re still beautiful machines.

I begin IF ONIONS COULD SPRING LEEKS with the sound of a train, but that was only the plan after in real life I happened upon an old Missouri ghost town.

A later scene in the book with Betts and Jake is pretty similar to what happened to my husband, Charlie, and me as we road down a highway next to the old Route 66 out of Rolla, Missouri. Well, the paranormal stuff didn’t happen to us, but the initial moments of discovery did. Actually, there might have been a touch of paranormal involved, or my imagination was just on overdrive.

As Charlie steered us down the road I’ve travelled a hundred times, my attention was off to the side where back in the bordering woods I suddenly saw an old train next to an old building that surely must have been a train station. I gasped and told Charlie he had to find a way to get over there. It took some maneuvering because we had to backtrack and then make our way under an overpass, but we eventually got there. He parked the car in a patch of low weeds beside the station. Carefully, because nothing seemed solid in the brick, two-story, square building, we explored.

At one time renovations must have been in the works. It seemed as if a small construction crew might have gotten started inside but they’d also become stalled. The power tools in the first floor lobby looked like they hadn’t been turned on for a while and were covered in a layer of thick dust and grime.

We could only imagine how grand the building must have been in its heyday, where the ticket counter or booth had been, and what mysterious things had been on the second floor where we didn’t dare try to search. Had the wide front porch held benches or was it just a thoroughfare? Was the basement that was now a small lake teaming with tiny fish once a useful space?

No joke, you could almost hear the ghosts of the past. Unquestionably, you could feel them. I’d just begun thinking about ideas for IF ONIONS COULD SPRING LEEKS, and there was simply no way to ignore the fate and destiny that seemed to be at work. Bits and pieces of the final story came to me at that moment. I just had to figure out how to arrange them and what they might mean.

We were loading back into the car when Charlie looked down the remnants of train tracks that extended across a bridge over the Gasconade River. He said, “You said you saw a train?”

I thought hard back to the moment we’d passed by the small ghost town. The tracks wouldn’t have been visible and I wouldn’t have known the building was an old station. I would have thought it was just something decrepit and interesting if the train hadn’t made me think “station.”

I looked at the remains of the tracks again, covered over with weeds. I stretched my neck and peered at the bridge. There was no train in sight.

“I thought I did,” I said.

“Uh-huh. Well, that’s another weird one,” he said, perhaps used to these sorts of moments since I’d started writing ghost stories.

I doubt I’ll ever get used to them, but I’ll always be grateful that the ghosts help me with ideas. Though, I must admit, it was good to get out of there and back to the all too present-day freeway.

Thanks for stopping by dear readers, and I hope to see you in Broken Rope and at the bookstores.

About Paige Shelton

Paige Shelton was born in Nevada, Missouri, but wasn’t there long.

After a childhood full of many moves, and high school and college in Des Moines, Iowa, she landed in Salt Lake City, Utah. There she met and married her husband, had a son, and worked at a variety of advertising-like jobs. She can’t remember a time when she didn’t want to be a writer and loves every moment she spends with her characters and their mysterious ways.

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About IF ONIONS COULD SPRING LEEKS

The New York Times bestselling author of If Catfish Had Nine Lives returns to Broken Rope, Missouri, where ghosts of the Old West seek assistance from country cooks and amateur sleuths Betts Winston and her grandmother.

With summer tourists flocking to Broken Rope, locals volunteer to keep chaos to a minimum. Old West skits are running smoothly, actors are behaving, and stagecoach rides are more popular than ever, but when a spectral visitor appears by ghost train, it’s a job only Betts and Gram can handle.

Gram soon starts having nightmares about their ghostly visitor’s demise. And if a ghost and the hot summer weather weren’t making things sticky enough, one of the town’s volunteers—a man notorious for having more than his fair share of ex-wives—is murdered. When Jerome, Bett’s otherworldly friend, makes an unsettling appearance, this simmering double mystery becomes a recipe for disaster.

Includes delicious recipes!