When I was nine years old, I read a story in The Detroit News that terrified me. Richard and Shirley Robison and their four kids had been shot to death in their northern Michigan cottage. A few years later, my parents bought a cottage not far from the Robisons died. I would lie awake at night, waiting for a stranger to show up and kill us all. The Robison murders were the inspiration–if inspiration is the word–for this book. A certain diabolical character named Jubilee came from somewhere else inside me. More on that another time.