Curses: Real, or Not??
Today, I have the great pleasure of sharing in a blog tour for Caught Between Two Curses a new book by my fellow writer, Margo Dill. Margo is sharing some thoughts about the reality (or not) of curses.
In 2003, it looked like the Chicago Cubs might actually make it to the World Series and have a chance to break the Curse of the Billy Goat—put on them by William Sianis, when he was forced to remove his goat from Wrigley Field in 1945. He said the Cubs would win no more. (Of course, they hadn’t won a World Series since 1908, but baseball legends are much more fun than just bad teams.) Then at a 2003 playoff game, Cubs vs Marlins, Steve Bartman, a Cubs fan, interfered with a foul ball, and the Cubs wound up losing the game and the series. The Marlins went to the World Series, and Bartman’s name because a dirty word in Chicago.
But what made Bartman react the way he did? Was it the Curse of the Billy Goat? Were the Cubs getting too close to success? That’s what I decided, and that’s one of the things that led me to write a young adult novel, titled Caught Between Two Curses. My main character, 17-year-old Julie Nigelson, is cursed, and the curse on her family, which is purely fiction and created in my brain, is strangely connected to the Curse of the Billy Goat. I only have Mr. Bartman to thank for the idea for my novel.
I had to create my own curse. And I decided to do a little research on curses, as I wrote my novel. It turns out that besides baseball teams, cars, tombs, Broadway musicals, countries, and more are cursed. You can Google famous curses, and you’ll find sites listing the 10 most famous, and the Billy Goat Curse is usually somewhere up there toward the top. If you look up the meaning of the word curse, it includes in the definition supernatural powers and bringing harm or punishment to someone.
Creating the curse for my book was interesting, but I had to do a lot of brainstorming. I had to make it serious enough that Julie would feel compelled to try to break it, and I had to give the curse a time limit, so that she had to do it quickly. I thought death was a reason that someone might react quickly, and so the curse on Julie’s family centers on death.
But my book is fiction. So, are curses real? Is this the real reason the Cubs aren’t winning or James Dean died in his cursed car? Who’s to say for sure? A lot of curses continue because people give them energy—belief is a powerful thing for both positive and negative life events.
In fiction, though, curses are fun to write and fun to explore, and in Caught Between Two Curses, readers from 14 and up, can decide whether they believe the curses are real or not. My novel is more than a baseball book. I’m exploring destiny, curses, fate, loyalty, love, and more. To check it out for yourself, visit Amazon.com where it’s available as a print or e-book OR Indiebound.org and Barnes and Noble, where it’s a print copy.
What do you think about curses?
AUTHOR'S BIO:
Margo L. Dill is a children’s author, freelance editor, and workshop leader, living in St. Louis, MO. She is also the author of the historical fiction, middle-grade novel, Finding My Place: One Girl’s Strength at Vicksburg (White Mane Kids, 2012) and the forthcoming picture books, Maggie Mae, Detective Extraordinaire and the Case of the Missing Cookies and Lucy and the Red Ribbon Week Adventure. Caught Between Two Curses is her first young adult novel. She promises that she is a Cardinals’ fan at heart, but the Billy Goat curse on the Chicago Cubs is too irresistible for a plot line. Find out more: http://margodill.com/blog/
In 2003, it looked like the Chicago Cubs might actually make it to the World Series and have a chance to break the Curse of the Billy Goat—put on them by William Sianis, when he was forced to remove his goat from Wrigley Field in 1945. He said the Cubs would win no more. (Of course, they hadn’t won a World Series since 1908, but baseball legends are much more fun than just bad teams.) Then at a 2003 playoff game, Cubs vs Marlins, Steve Bartman, a Cubs fan, interfered with a foul ball, and the Cubs wound up losing the game and the series. The Marlins went to the World Series, and Bartman’s name because a dirty word in Chicago.
But what made Bartman react the way he did? Was it the Curse of the Billy Goat? Were the Cubs getting too close to success? That’s what I decided, and that’s one of the things that led me to write a young adult novel, titled Caught Between Two Curses. My main character, 17-year-old Julie Nigelson, is cursed, and the curse on her family, which is purely fiction and created in my brain, is strangely connected to the Curse of the Billy Goat. I only have Mr. Bartman to thank for the idea for my novel.
I had to create my own curse. And I decided to do a little research on curses, as I wrote my novel. It turns out that besides baseball teams, cars, tombs, Broadway musicals, countries, and more are cursed. You can Google famous curses, and you’ll find sites listing the 10 most famous, and the Billy Goat Curse is usually somewhere up there toward the top. If you look up the meaning of the word curse, it includes in the definition supernatural powers and bringing harm or punishment to someone.
Creating the curse for my book was interesting, but I had to do a lot of brainstorming. I had to make it serious enough that Julie would feel compelled to try to break it, and I had to give the curse a time limit, so that she had to do it quickly. I thought death was a reason that someone might react quickly, and so the curse on Julie’s family centers on death.
But my book is fiction. So, are curses real? Is this the real reason the Cubs aren’t winning or James Dean died in his cursed car? Who’s to say for sure? A lot of curses continue because people give them energy—belief is a powerful thing for both positive and negative life events.
In fiction, though, curses are fun to write and fun to explore, and in Caught Between Two Curses, readers from 14 and up, can decide whether they believe the curses are real or not. My novel is more than a baseball book. I’m exploring destiny, curses, fate, loyalty, love, and more. To check it out for yourself, visit Amazon.com where it’s available as a print or e-book OR Indiebound.org and Barnes and Noble, where it’s a print copy.
What do you think about curses?
AUTHOR'S BIO:
Margo L. Dill is a children’s author, freelance editor, and workshop leader, living in St. Louis, MO. She is also the author of the historical fiction, middle-grade novel, Finding My Place: One Girl’s Strength at Vicksburg (White Mane Kids, 2012) and the forthcoming picture books, Maggie Mae, Detective Extraordinaire and the Case of the Missing Cookies and Lucy and the Red Ribbon Week Adventure. Caught Between Two Curses is her first young adult novel. She promises that she is a Cardinals’ fan at heart, but the Billy Goat curse on the Chicago Cubs is too irresistible for a plot line. Find out more: http://margodill.com/blog/
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