8/22/2019
I was very lucky this year to have not
just Kill River, but also Kill River 2 selected for the
Bloody Beach Read-Along. It's been a lot of fun seeing everyone's
posts and getting to talk with a lot of cool new people who are just
discovering my books for the first time. Last year I took a bunch of
pictures at my local water park WaterWorld to share and show the real
life spots that inspired Kill River 2, and
I decided that it was time to get off my ass and post these. Also, a new blog post is way past overdue.
Oh
and SPOILER ALERT!!! There will be spoilers in this, so turn back
now if you haven't read the book yet. Okay, so here goes.
One
thing I loved about KR2 was that I got to go even deeper into the 80s
with the scene at the school dance and the scenes at the mall. For the Westview
Mall in the book I pictured the old Westminster Mall in Westminster,
Colorado where I grew up. Sadly, the Westminster Mall was torn down
about five years ago, but I managed to find this picture of the
centerpiece hot air balloons that are briefly mentioned. Also in the
background on the left you can see the Orange Julius where I pictured
Cyndi filling out a job application.
Unlike
the water park in the first book—which is kind of a hybrid
inspiration of both WaterWorld and Schlitterbahn, the park in KR2 is
all WaterWorld. I really wanted to just have fun weaving a typical
day at the water park into my story, and since I always have a great
time there, writing this story kind of felt like escaping to the
water park every day. One of the first new things Cyndi sees is the
wave pool from up on the hill, and this is the same view I see every
time I walk into Water World.
I
post lots of pictures of the wave pool area, and you get the idea,
but I thought I'd show a little of the beach. This is the spot where
poor Eddie dies. A few years ago they built these pergola things
right where that scene takes place, but it used to be wide open.
They do stack the chairs up along the edge of the wave pool at the
end of every day, but for my story I had them all stacked here so
they kind of resembled a hedge maze.
Also
here's a closer shot of the deep end of the wave pool and the little
walkway that plays a huge part in Brady's death and the big fight
scene near the end between Cyndi, Johnny, and the killer. For the story, I pictured it as solid straight wall instead of the zig-zag shape it really is. I've never
had the privilege of walking across this walkway unfortunately, and I
have no idea how the wave machinery works in real life. The control
panel and the grates at the bottom of the back wall of the wave
pool were totally made up for the story. There's also a smaller wave
pool up near the main entrance, and there used to be a fake shark hanging
near the back wall in that pool, but that area is for little kids now
and I haven't seen the shark in a long time.
The
Rocky River is a ride that's loosely based on a real life ride called
Tortuga Run. Here you can see it winding around down to the bottom.
The Tortuga Run is much slower and friendlier than the Rocky River
ride in the book, but it's one of those classic rides at WaterWorld
that I love. I decided to add it in as Cyndi keeps noticing strange
similarities between her experiences from KR1 and this new park.
This
is the picnic table area where the lifeguards have their party.
Please ignore the chunky dude (me) in the foreground. I had to add myself
in a few of these pictures so that people wouldn't think I was some
creeper trying to take pictures of them. I originally planned on
having a big crazy lifeguard massacre scene in this spot, but it just
didn't really make much sense so I ended up not going in that
direction. The scene where Cyndi comes back to the park and finds
this area empty also takes place here. That scene was inspired by a
nightmare that I had as a kid: my elementary school playground was a
giant pool and I ran home to grab something to show my friends. When
I returned at sunset, everyone had vanished.
Possibly
my favorite part of KR2 is the part where Cyndi returns to the park
and finds everyone gone. Then she hauls ass out into the parking lot
only to turn around and watch the killer wave at her as he shuts the
gates. In this picture I'm standing in the exact spot where I
imagined him to be, and am creepily waving just like he does.
I
loved writing the character of Jennifer. She was a total bitch and
setting her up for a fight with Cyndi and a crazy death was so much
fun. Here you can see the parking lot where she flattens Johnny's
tires, then senses the killer watching her from the pine trees up on
the hill. And also here is where the bronze Kaptain Smiley statue would be, in real life
there's this statue of kids riding on an alligator, presumably just
before he does a death roll and eats them.
And
while we're on the topic of Jennifer, this is the Screaming Mimi, the
inspiration for the Screamin' Demon. Way back when I was still
living in the apartment and editing KR1, I came up with the idea for
Jennifer's terrible death at the bottom of this crazy ride. I'm not
the biggest fan of the Screaming Mimi. Whenever I ride it, the
plastic sled thingys always hit the water at a weird angle and I end
up getting hit in the head by them.
Another fun part was Cyndi riding the Duelin' River after Jennifer's death and having the killer jump off the Ragin' River's bridge overhead. Here is the bridge that I imagined having the killer jump off. I imagined that scene while waiting in line for those Ragin' River slides.
And
finally, we reach the ride that inspired The Falls. Now it's called
Pirates Plunge and the three slides are red and black, but years ago
it was called the Bermuda Triangle and the slides were
garden-hose-green and translucent. This is one of my
favorite rides and I loved setting the final killer fight scene up in
this high shack looking out over the parking lot and the other rides.
So
that's about all I have for now. I'm hoping to go out to Indian Tree Golf Course and film a video showing the real life locations that inspired my newest book Golf Curse. Hopefully, I can get that done sometime within the next month before all the leaves start falling. I'm hard at work writing Kill
River 3 as of right now and I'm
hoping that next summer it'll finally be finished and released. And not
long after that I'll have a new batch of pictures to share with you.
Thanks for checking out my Kill River
books and for taking an interest in seeing what inspired some of the
different scenes in Part 2.
Cameron
