North Carolina author Donna Campbell Smith’s new novel, My Neighbors from the Woods, is a departure from all of her previous books. Some folks might say it’s a fantasy or paranormal story. That’s because they don’t believe.
The story is about a woman the writer calls Maggie. Maggie lives alone in a small house in the middle of twenty-five acres that butts right up to a national forest. She enjoys her solitude, though she is not a recluse. She socializes with friends and attends the local Presbyterian church at least once a month. She knows most everyone in her area. At least she thought she did, until she met her new neighbors. Maggie isn’t her real name, but for the story’s sake that is what we’ll call her. She can’t say where she lives, other than somewhere in the South — for her own protection as well as theirs. Her hope is that her neighbors will continue to live in the woods long after she is gone from this world. The story is told in her own words. You may think it is the ravings of a madwoman, but she assures you she is as sane as any one of you reading it.
Smith says her work of fiction is based on stories she first heard from her father. He was a fan of talk radio.
“He listened to ‘talk radio’ at night and he’d relate the stories he heard. That had to have been in the 1960s or maybe the late 50s. I also remember him talking about a wild man that lived back in the mountains or hills near where he grew up in New York.
“During the stay-at-home months of 2020 I began writing My Neighbors from the Woods. The story is loosely based on one I read decades ago when I first started reading bigfoot stories on the Internet. It was about a woman who lived somewhere in the mountains and claimed to have developed a friendship with a family of bigfoot. I could not find that particular story when I began to work on my book. But it seems there are many similar stories making the rounds online and on YouTube channels. My “research” involved listening to many such channels and following social media bigfoot pages.”
My Neighbors from the Woods was released on May 1, 2021 and is available on Amazon.com.
You can also meet the author and buy signed copies of the book at several events in the coming months.
- Saturday, July 17, 2021, starting at 11am — at Franklin County Arts Council’s Gallery on the Hill, 99 S Bickett Blvd, Louisburg, NC
- Saturday, September 18, 2021 — WNC Bigfoot Festival in Marion, NC
Visit the author’s website at donnacampbellsmith.net.
