Like most people, I didn’t know much about The Bermuda Triangle, except that strange fantastical things, especially hurricanes, pirates, and monsters, seemed to happen there all the time. So that’s the type of storylines I included in my early book versions. It wasn’t until my ‘aha’ moment in Lamanai, when I realized that truth is stranger than fiction, that I decided to use real-life stories about the Bermuda Triangle in my books.
The first thing I learned was that it touches the U.S. I’d always thought it was somewhere way out in the Caribbean. But most people generally agree that the Bermuda Triangle encompasses the area from Florida to Bermuda to Puerto Rico. The causes for its reputation range from the mundane (it’s a heavily traveled area with lots of hurricanes), to the natural (methane bubbles), to the mystical (it’s under the influence of the lost continent of Atlantis), to the out of this world (aliens). Despite its reputation, it didn’t get its infamous name until the 1960s. This is a list of some of the Bermuda Triangle incidents. In the last century, an estimated 20 planes and 50 ships have gone missing in this area, as well as 1000 people dying.
When I started rewriting the first book after my Lamanai trip, I decided I needed some strange, historical event to include. I also decided I’d add historical pirates to books 2 and 3. It didn’t take me long to learn about Flight 19. It was such a fascinating piece of history that I just had to work it into my story.
The picture below came from my book 2 (The Pair Dadeni) research trip. After visiting Jamaica (Kingston, Port Royal, and Blue Mountain), we flew to the Turks and Caicos Islands to catch a flight to Haiti (Cap Haïtien). I chose this photograph because it’s how I think of the Caribbean from the air. Except for the fact that it doesn’t have any mountains (and for anybody who didn’t realize the Caribbean has mountains, just climb up Blue Mountain Peak (7400 ft.) outside of Kingston, Jamaica), it has a small island, white sandy beaches, trees, and that beautiful Caribbean blue ocean.
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