Writerly Ramble: South Dakota

I was having trouble figuring out what to write that was set in South Dakota. --I mean, I write fables and fairy tales and fantasies, even if I throw in aliens, multiverses, or string theory from time to time.

What are the myths behind South Dakota? --Children of the Corn captures parts of Iowa/Kansas perfectly, but doesn't quite capture what I think about South Dakota.

So I thinking about ghost stories the other day, and I went !!! Ghost Stories !!!. --And then I thought, what about ghost hunters? Who would be my ghost hunters?

Some of my Knippling uncles, of course. I'm not sure which ones; they're all pretty interesting, so I'll probably take pieces and parts and mix them up.

Hmm de hmmm....

I decided one of them had to be called Aloysius, another one called Theodore, and I'm trying to talk myself out of calling the third one Simon. Eoin, maybe. And they have great big dogs and drive around in pickup trucks...

I threw together a bunch of story ideas. One of them is about what happens when the Army Corps of Engineers lets the water level in one of the dams fall too low -- a mysterious golden city appears, and the people who go inside to check it out all disappear. And I'm trying to figure out something to mess around with for rabies, but I'm already doing something with prairie dogs*, so it has to be something else. Ooh! And there has to be a church cookbook in there somewhere, too. But I'll stop now, because I don't want to talk my best ideas to death...

Man, I'll be glad to be done with the current book.

How do you know when your manuscript is finished?
When you can't stand not working on something else.

*And that parade in Gann Valley that was longer than the entire town.