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Best-selling novelist Cassandra King lets us a peek into her next book, Bridal Falls.

Thoreau went to a remote little house on Walden Pond to commune with nature, find out what it had to offer him, and live more deliberately. Yeats dreamed of a pastoral life in a clay-and-wattle cabin on the isle of Innisfree, where he would tend beehives and nine rows of beans. Or maybe it was nine poles of beans, the difference being that the latter would yield a good mess of beans while the former could feed the neighborhood. Not that anyone on the Lake Isle of Innisfree would wonder about such a thing, of course, the productivity of beans and bees being quite beside the point. The point was the necessity i or even the obligationi to escape from the demands of modern life and seek a simpler, more focused way of living.

Sounds good to me.

A while back, the deadline of my latest novel loomed large even though I was still overwhelmed by the hectic schedule of the last one. Under pressure, I tend to wring my hands and spin my wheels, both literally and metaphorically. My editor called to see how the new book was coming, and I almost screeched, "You're kidding, right?" An e-mail appeared from a book club reminding me of a meeting the next night, and I looked at my calendar in horror and dismay. It was going to be quite a feat i speaking to two book clubs on the same night, especially with one on Hilton Head and the other in Spartanburg.

I had to do something. If I had any hope of finishing my book, I would have to look to my literary idols Thoreau and Yeats for help. Walden Pond and Innisfree were real places, but they also represented a state of mind. That's what I needed a real place to escape, but one where life was both idyllic and simpler. I have enough of the Romantic in me to know such a place awaited if I could just find it: a secluded place where peace, if Yeats could be believed, would come dropping slow.

Fate led me to Highlands, a little village in western North Carolina. With an elevation over 4,000 feet, it's an incredible place of blue-tinged mountains, deep green valleys, spectacular waterfalls and gorges, and lakes of such beauty Thoreau would weep for sheer joy. In the midst of a dense forest outside of town, I found a small, rustic cabin to rent while I finished the book. I left my home on Fripp Island and headed for the hills.

Before I get too carried away with the romance of the idea (as I'm prone to do), let me hasten to say that Highlands is hardly the boondocks. Even so, I would be alone the first few weeks of my stay, so I sought a balance between the solitude of the woods and a modicum of common sense. My second morning there, a large brown bear appeared behind the cabin, moseying along minding his own business. Poor thing; when I squealed in delight, I scared him so badly he took off for the woods and hasn't been seen since. A few nights later, I heard the cry of a panther. Nobody quite believes it, even though I got up and followed his progress through the dark woods, his high-pitched scream like a woman in distress.

On hearing these stories, a friend in New York asked if I was out of my mind, staying in such a place. She was about to call my husband and demand that he order me to return home. Even when I admitted that Highlands was a tad more upscale than I'd led her to believe, she wouldn't listen. Her parting words were, "You can't fool me! I've seen Deliverance."

I survived my adventure without seeing another bear, tracking the cry of a panther, or hearing the ominous music of dueling banjos. I like to think Thoreau and Yeats might be proud, should we meet one day. Maybe it lacks the serenity of Walden, or the dropping peace of Innisfree, but Highlands retains a flavor of bygone days when the pace of life was slower, simpler. Because of that, I decided to set my upcoming book there, and I returned this past summer for research. Highlands, like Walden and Innisfree, is real, but it's also a place of the imagination. I can't speak for all writers, but I consider any place as imaginary as it is real. I'm as apt to put real people in imaginary settings as I am to put imaginary people in real places.

The idea for my new novel, Bridal Falls, which is set in Highlands, came from the search for my Walden. One thing Romantics like myself have difficulty dealing with is the encroachment of modern civilization on our places of escape. Like it or not, it is something from which we cannot run. In Bridal Falls, I wanted to dramatize this dilemma. My cast of characters is a small, close-knit community of families whose descendants built summer homes around the secluded cove of an unspoiled mountain lake. There are six of the old cabins, and each summer the same families return. But one day, change comes to Lake Narcissus. One of the old cabins is sold and torn down. It is replaced by a modern dwelling that highly offends the neighbors, and they refer to it as a starship that got off course and landed in their midst.

The following is a work-in-progress excerpt from Bridal Falls. The story is told in first-person narrative by Helen Honeycutt, a woman who now owns the cabin that her grandfather built. In this scene, she contemplates the offensive new house and its unknown owners, the Blackshears. She decides to take action by taking them an invitation to a gathering at her house.

EXCERPT FROM CHAPTER ONE OF BRIDAL FALLS:

The dirt road leading around the cove to the Blackshear house was a bit of a rough climb, the way it disappeared in and out of the rhododendron and laurel thickets. The laurel was in bloom now, the bushes heavy with pink-and-white clusters of flowers that opened up like little umbrellas. Some of the larger ones were so perfectly symmetrical that it was hard to resist carrying them back to the house by the armful. On my leisurely walks I usually brought home treasures: striated stones the size of coins, or bigger rocks flecked with real gold; pine cones small as berries; wildflowers like the bouquets of fairies. This evening my stride was more purposeful. Changing my clothes, then writing out an invitation for the Blackshears, I'd gotten off later than intended, and darkness fell quickly in these dense forests. All of us had been caught at least once then forced to feel our way home, praying we didn't encounter a varmit of some kind.

Beyond our driveway, the road went through a clearing for several hundred yards. It came up behind Annie Ruth and Linc's house, passed the Thompson cabin, curved by the Clements' stone cottage, then disappeared again, this time into a dark cave of rhododendrons. That was my favorite part of the journey. The shocking green color of the entrance made it look like a fantasy cave in Emerald City. When the rhododendrons were in bloom, the beauty of the sun-shot, shadowy tunnel could take your breath away.

There was a turn in the leafy tunnel, then I stepped out into the bluish glow of twilight. Several more yards, and I was behind the Blackshear house, where the pathway came to a dead end. Up close, the house was even more spectacular, especially with the copper-colored waters of the lake reflected in the glass walls. Funny, from my side of the lake I could see the house mirrored on the waters; from here, it was reversed: the lake was painted on the house. From where I stood, slightly above it and looking down, the starship had managed to land precisely on the water's edge after the force of entry cleared everything out of its way.

The landscaping of the terraced yard was in progress, but the grounds still had that raw look of new construction. Japanese maples and tulips, weeping cherries and willows, as well as several other trees I couldn't readily identify, stood as though lined up for a race, with their roots encased in burlap sacks. It looked like someone should step up and yell ready, set, go! and off they'd hop, holding onto their sacks like kids in a relay. It infuriated me that the new owners would so callously remove the indigenous plants and trees that had flourished in this spot for as long as anyone could remember and replace them with such showy intruders. I could tell the new trees were ashamed of themselves, too, by the way their limbs hung listlessly. It wasn't their fault, and I imagined they wished they were back where they came from. Well, so did I, but as Miss Creasy used to say, wanting ain't getting. Exotic, strange, not native to these parts; none of that mattered now. We were stuck with them and they with us.

I hesitated before climbing down a mossy, sloping embankment which would take me right beside the Blackshear house. Once I'd cleared the embankment, I would be in the freshly seeded side yard, with the house on my left. From there, a walkway built of stone with laurel rails, like something at a luxury spa or lodge, led around the house and directly to the front entrance. Taking a deep breath, I took the plunge, and marched right up to it. The aliens had landed. Now the earth people must find out what they were up to.

Standing outside the front entry, I peeked through the glass panels on either side of tall garnet-red doors before lifting the ring of a brass knocker and banging it i hard. It wasn't dark enough for lights to be turned on, so I couldn't tell if anyone was inside or not. After a short wait, I again raised the brass ring of the knocker, but one of the red doors swung open before I could bang it again. I hadn't heard footsteps, so I was startled and no doubt looked like a fool standing there open-mouthed.

It was the little-bitty Asian woman, and she was in a white uniform, just as Willa had described her. "Yah?" she said, eyebrows raised. Compact, dark-skinned, and older than I expected, she regarded me with uncurious eyes.

I held out my hand but she ignored it, so I let it fall awkwardly by my side. "Hello! I'm Helen Honeycutt, a neighbor." I nodded vaguely in the direction of my house across the cove, since calling myself a neighbor was pretty much of a stretch. "Welcome to Lake Narcissus!" My smile was big and fakey; my voice so chirpy it made me cringe. I was channeling my mother.

The woman's face was inscrutable, and she held the door partly closed as a barricade between us. Had she stepped out on the stone landing, she would've barely come to my chin, and I'm not tall. "Are the Blackshears in?" I asked, uncomfortable with her lack of response at my greeting.

She shook her head. "No. No Blackshears here," she replied tersely.

"Oh! No i: Blackshears here?" I echoed. I wasn't sure what that meant. No Blackshears at home, or no Blackshears lived here? Perhaps the rumor mill had the name wrong, and maybe Blackshear was the builder. At one point we had heard that, since a developer named Blackshear had built some spec houses in the Cashiers area. Noel said that couldn't be the same one, though, because developers often used another name to keep the neighbors from protesting their encroachment. And besides, he'd added, that guy had died a while ago.

I had no idea how to proceed, so I thrust the invitation at her, rather foolishly. Since the envelope was addressed to the Blackshears, if they weren't the occupants of the house, no point in her taking it. But she did. To my further surprise, she nodded i or rather, bowed from the waist down in the Oriental fashion i then closed the door in my face.

I stood there feeling like a fool. Since I heard no retreating footsteps i my glance over the woman's shoulder revealed slate flooring which should have made a distinct soundi I figured she was lurking behind the door until I left. I dared not peer through the glass panels again, even though the urge was almost irresistible. Instead, I turned and retraced my steps along the fancy walkway leading from the entranceway, then began the climb back to the tunneled pathway. There I had yet another fanciful thought. Evidently today was my day for them. Maybe if I'd looked inside, the little woman in the white uniform would have disappeared altogether, like the invisible servants of Beauty and the Beast.

Bridal Falls will be released by Hyperion Books in 2009.