Since Jan. 2005, a new chapter in this supernatural fiction series has been published each Sunday, and has attracted attention from around the country. Many of you email me each week with questions about the series and here a few answers to some of the more common questions that I get:

1. Who's Eli McMorn?

McMorn is the fictional night-shift reporter for The Claiborne Herald, a daily newspaper (also fictional) in Claiborne, Ala. McMorn, age 29, joined The Herald in 2000, rose through the ranks and is now The Herald's general assignment reporter on the paper's nightshift. Most of his duties require him to cover the city's fertile crime beat and anything else that comes along in the wee hours of the morning.

2. Where is Claiborne? Isn't Claiborne a real-life ghost town?

Today, Claiborne is a ghost town, but in the early 1800s, it was one of the most important cities in Alabama, largely because of its location along the Alabama River.

Many famous figures from Alabama history called Claiborne home. James Dellet, the first speaker of Alabama's state legislature, lived in Claiborne, as did William Barret Travis, the commander at the ill-fated Alamo. At one point in Claiborne's history, the city missed becoming the state capital of by one vote. Today, little remains of the booming riverboat town that was once located at Claiborne.

The Claiborne in "The Strange Tales of Eli McMorn and Claiborne's Nights" is very different than the real-life Claiborne. In the series, Claiborne did become the state capital, and although the capital eventually moved to Montgomery, the vote changed the course of Claiborne's history forever.

Now, instead of a city that dried up along with the flow of riverboat traffic from Montgomery to Mobile in the early 1900s, a thriving city, nestled near the intersections of I-84 and I-65, rests between Monroeville and Grove Hill. (In this series, I-65 passes closer to the route of the Alabama River as the river makes its way south toward Mobile from Montgomery. Also, the real-life U.S. Highway 84 is Interstate 84 in the series.)

About 20,000 people live in the fictional Claiborne, which is loosely based on the real life cities of New Orleans, Baltimore, Md. and Savannah, Ga.

In the fictional series, Monroe County and Monroeville are basically as they are today. Monroeville is still the county seat. It's still the Literary Capital of Alabama, etc., etc.

With that said, it should be noted that the characters, names, incidents and dialouge in the series are products of the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real. None of the characters in the series are based on real individuals, especially Eli McMorn.

3. Is The Claiborne Herald a real newspaper?

Well, sort of. The Herald was a newspaper that was originally published in Monroe County, starting in 1829. The Herald was one of at least 12 other newspapers to have been published in Monroe County, but it eventually went out of business. Today, The Monroe Journal is Monroe County's only full-service newspaper. The Journal was first published in 1866 at Claiborne, but eventually moved to Monroeville.

In "The Strange Tales of Eli McMorn and Claiborne's Nights," The Herald has been continuously published since 1829, making it one of Alabama's oldest daily papers. The paper's coverage area includes most of southwest Alabama, but focuses largely on city and county news.

Another goal that I hope to meet through MonroeCountyToday.com is to provide a detailed links site, where anyone can find anything they would want to know about Monroe County, Alabama. You'll find the popular Monroe County-related sites, listed on the left hand side of this page. Other links can be found here: Monroe County Links

Other highlights of the site include the following:

• My weekly paranormal fiction series, "The Strange Tales of Eli McMorn and Claiborne's Nights." To read the lastest installment on this on-going series or to read other stories in the series, click on the image below.

  

• My weekly editorial and sports columns: In the Crowd and From Field Level.

• My own on-going Recommended Reading List. The list is an on-going project, and MonroeCountyToday.com does accept nominations from the general public. Feel free to submit your own nominations.

• An in-progress local prep football area, which will list the results of all prep football games played in Monroe County since 1966. This area will also feature a ton of other information about our local teams. Check back often for updates.

Site dedicated to the memory of
Hunter S. Thompson
1938-2005