Captain Phluffes asked Robert Beatty:

Is the Angel's Glade a real place? Like, if you were to walk in the mountains, would you have a chance of seeing it?

Robert Beatty The stone angel in the Serafina stories was inspired by stone angel statues that are seen in various in cemeteries throughout the South. I think of a stone angel as a classic element of Southern Gothic fiction. Also, the stone angel in the story is a homage, a signal of respect, to one of Asheville’s most famous historical authors, Thomas Wolfe. He wrote a book called Look Homeward, Angel. The story is nothing like the Serafina Series, but I admire him as an author. His stone angel is in a cemetery in Hendersonville, NC, just South of Asheville. The cemetery depicted in the Serafina series is an imaginative combination of several cemeteries that I’ve explored, including Riverside Cemetery (Asheville, NC), Bonaventure Cemetery (Savannah, GA), and a private centenary on Biltmore’s property. The idea of a mysterious glade comes from my childhood memories of exploring a deep, swampy forest by myself and then coming upon a mysterious glade (an opening in the forest) that was covered in red ferns. It was one of the magical places of my childhood.

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