A Haunted Pool?

Yup, that’s what I’m writing about.

I actually wrote it as a screenplay and got the copyright for it in 2020. I submitted to competitions and readers, and other opportunities for the past few years.

As all good writers do, I continued revising and editing and submitting. But after last year, 2024, I decided to adapt my screenplay into a novel, and here’s why…

Why I’m Adapting the la Piscina inn into a Novel…

My final, revised version was completed and sent out in 2022. It included several major changes that had evolved over time. Most notably, it included the inclusion of a mother with MS. There was also a haunting image of the Abuini ( a Timucua shaman)… tears of blood run down the creases of his high cheekbones in a painting my main character, Carly, is drawn to.

A few years later, in 2024, I watched a newly released film. The similarities were impossible to ignore. They weren’t just in concept but also in strangely specific details. The story featured a spring-fed pool. It included a character with MS. A pool technician’s tone and dialogue closely resembled lines I had written. Additionally, several visual and mythic elements overlapped in unexpected ways, like the tears of blood, and quite a few others.

Even the structure, especially the climactic resolution, echoed key moments from my script. I won’t reveal the ending here, but the experience was disorienting and deeply personal. Heartbreaking really. I mean, it was my baby. I brought it into the world during COVID. I nurtured it through hours of exhaustion after cleaning pools all day. And it grew as I resumed my career as a full-time teacher.

With all those similarities, how could I even think about submitting again? They’d say it was a knockoff.

So rather than retreat, I chose to reclaim the story in my own voice. I expanded it into a novel. My beloved characters could rise to the surface again. My mythology could come alive again. And my emotional truth could emerge in the way that I had originally meant it to.

How the Concept Came to Me

The idea for La Piscina Inn came to me during the early days of the pandemic, while I was working as a pool technician in Florida.

I had just completed my Master’s in English with a concentration in screenwriting and was trying to find a teaching position again. So I started subbing to find my ideal school. When COVID hit, I lost my job and found myself cleaning pools to get by.

One of the houses on my route sat empty. Its owners were stranded up north with a raw, concrete, and uncompleted lanai. Week after week, I skimmed and brushed its still, silent water and felt as though I was being watched. I began to imagine a story. It wasn’t just a haunted pool, but one that held mystery and meaning. I knew right away that I wanted a female protagonist who worked as a pool tech, but she would be so much more… often underestimated as I was.

At that point, I wanted something mysterious, maybe at some points thrilling. I thought about the movie, What Lies Beneath, and an old, old movie from the ’70s, Burnt Offerings.

The reason that came to mind is that my childhood boogieman was the direct result of that movie, especially during a pool scene where he showed up. He was a hearse driver in the movie, but I, as a five-year-old child, dubbed him “The Putt-Putt Man.”

Then it came to me… St. Augustine, a place I had lived briefly as a child and have never forgotten, and have visited often. When we resided there, we lived a block away from The Fountain of Youth park. We often snuck in through the chain-link fence in the back where the Timucua burial mounds were. We’d pass through the ancient graveyard to the grotto where the fountain was, and drank, believing we wouldn’t ever die. We were pretty young kids; magic was still a thing.

St. Augustine is the oldest city in the U.S., steeped in history and perfect for the kind of layered, ancestral mystery I wanted to tell.

I took my twins on a research trip, walked the ghost tours, studied the history of the extinct Timucua people, drank the water at the fountain, and let the old streets and whispers of the past shape the soul of the story.

I set the inn directly across from The Fountain of Youth, an allusion to my youth.

Over time, the tale deepened. Carly, my protagonist, became not just a girl chasing a dream but the bearer of a hidden legacy… a healer whose lineage traced back to a dying Timucua mother, an Abuini, a Spanish monk, and the waters of a sacred spring. She, like the pool, carries the potential to restore what’s been lost, but only through sacrifice.

La Piscina Inn is my tribute to resilience, to feminine power, and to the things buried just beneath the surface, waiting for someone brave enough to dive in.

How Writers’ Minds Think Alike

It’s amazing, really, that two screenwriters could have so much in common. I mean, on the surface, the story is different. And the idea for a haunted pool is one thing. Although there haven’t been any movies that I know of about a haunted pool. There have definitely been pool stories before.

Yet, to have characters with the same disease, entire plot details, a spring-fed pool, and visual, mythical, and conversational details so strangely similar is remarkable.

Like I said, I guess we writers think alike.

What About You?

Have you ever experienced something like this? And I’m not saying a similar unique concept that someone has had. Rather, have you noticed the writer used so many specific plot, character, and story elements that were almost identical to yours?

I’d love to hear your story!

Happy Writing!

~ M.C. Convery