"Dark Side of the Museum" is now live

Dark Side of the Museum is live now.

When asked where I get my story and novel ideas and I have to admit I have no clear idea. Not so with Dark Side of the Museum. I remember when I told my father that I was majoring in art history he replied, “What are you going to do with that?” Towards the end of my adult career I was hired as the media relations officer by the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art here in Kansas City. Unfortunately, my father had died decades before so I couldn’t call him and tell my art history major paid off.

The Nelson-Atkins was a fantastic place to work with amazing people for colleagues. I really enjoyed it. One day I was looking at a large piece of furniture from the workshop of a Salem furniture maker National Gould. I stared at one of the finials on top of the piece and wondered if it was possible that something could be hidden there.

I had come to the museum from the University of Kansas Medical Center where I had been Director of University Relations. This mean that what was going on around me really was often a matter of life or death.

The professionals I found myself with at the museum worked with the same intensity in what they were doing as I had encountered at the medical center. I came very much to admire the curators with whom I got to work. Their knowledge, articulation and judgment really impressed. But I have quite a bit of fun with the curators in Dark Side, none of whom are based on any real person.

When I wrote my one comedy SPILL I found a writing voice that I quite liked and I wanted to visit that voice again. I don’t know if Dark Side is a comedy or not, there certainly are some laughs in it, at least there were for me. Dark Side is an outrageous exaggerated work in which I get to have fun with a bit of paranormal and time travel.

I am grateful for the many great experiences working at the museum provided for me and the extraordinary environment in which I found myself. Here’s a sampling:

 You get to meet some of the nicest people and work in the most interesting and beautiful of environments. One shot down there is from the roof of the museum when Jacques de Melo came from New York for a photo shoot.