The Bookworm Beat: There?s an old saying in writing circles, write about what you know. Bermudian John Cox has taken this advice to heart and written about something very close to his heart ? his Devonshire house ?Orange Valley? and its sister property, ?The Grove?.

His new book, ?A Tale of Two Houses? is a revealing and often funny look at what it is like to grow up in a 200-year-old house.

?I have never wished to live somewhere modern,? Mr. Cox told . ?Sometimes, I wished that we lived on the water. In the summer, especially, it would be nice, or it would be nice to have a swimming pool, but I love the old house.

?I love the character of the old house, and the atmosphere. It rings with atmosphere. Some days it is a very happy atmosphere, and other days it is very heavy.?

However, he admitted that there is a downside to living in a beautiful old house ? maintenance.

?Living in a house this old is definitely a burden,? he said. ?My mother moved out in 2004. She said to me, ?I have to move out and get into my condo before I die of old house?. When you are living in an old house, there is always something going wrong. We just had the house done for termites.

?That was a big thing. There is a lot of wood in it, doors, flooring and window frames. They are all constantly needing work. The roof is fairly old and also constantly needs work.?

Whatever the difficulties, he said taking care of a house lived in by generations of his family is entirely worthwhile.

?The benefits outweigh the obstacles, because you just feel so privileged to be at a place that has so much atmosphere, that your family have been living in for two centuries,? he said. ?I think I am just another person who is living here, and the house is going to outlive me.?

As a child, Mr. Cox felt the presence of his ancestors very strongly. He wrote of some of his ?other-worldly? experiences in the book.

?I had to move out of the upstairs west bedroom when I was a kid,? he said. ?I use to be awakened by footsteps in the room. It was really creepy. The whole room vibrated with footsteps.

?Another brother was in the next bed and he never seemed to be affected by it. Then sometimes a hand would touch my neck. I moved out of the room and didn?t have any problems with that. My youngest brother moved in there when my older brother and I went to boarding school.

?He came down one morning and told my parents, ?I hear footsteps in my room at night. It is really bothering me?. He also saw eerie lights going by the door. I had promised not to tell my brothers or sister. Then he started having exactly the same experience that I had had.?

He said, as an adult he has never had these experiences again. ?It did scare me then,? he said. ?Now I would almost welcome it, just to confirm the experiences I had when I was younger.?

A Tale of Two Houses is Mr. Cox?s fifth book. He has co-written two books about Haunted Bermuda. Chronicling ghosts stories is a hobby of his. He has also written several books about his family and a book called ?Life in Old Bermuda? which is one of his most popular.

His books are self-published. Friends of his in Toronto, Canada have helped him to design and print them.

Much of ?A Tale of Two Houses? talks about what it is like to have your house open to public tours. Mr. Cox has fielded questions like, ?Are you Lord Cox??, and has had women try to set themselves and their daughters up with himself and his family.

?I still do tours of my house,? he said. ?I always do it through the Bermuda National Trust, so they benefit. I don?t do it for myself.

?Usually, we open it for visiting groups to Bermuda, who want to do more than play golf and go to the beach, who want to learn about Bermuda history and its decorative arts, and how a Bermuda family lives in an old Bermuda house. Even though the Bermuda National Trust benefits I feel like I am doing it for Bermuda the most.?

He is always thrilled to receive letters from visitors thanking him for the tour.

?I have received countless letters,? he said. ?I have kept many, because they are very touching. They say things like ?seeing your home was really a highlight of our visit to Bermuda?.?

At first he only intended to write about growing up in the house, but gradually the idea of writing about the tours came into it.

?The whole theme of a book can shift as you are going along,? he said, ?and that is what happened here.?

Other things written about in the book include the Cox family?s experiences in Hurricane Emily several years ago, which left part of ?Orange Valley? damaged.

?The house wasn?t that damaged by Hurricane Fabian,? he said. ?It was more battered by Emily. It is in a protected location except if the winds are from the Northwest.

?The second half of Emily was directly out of the Northwest. It funnels between the hills above us, and it becomes like a tunnel. The wind just comes through that tunnel viscously. The second half of Emily really knocked us out.

?The second half of Fabian was really more west and we are very protected from the west. That?s why I dwelled on Emily more than Fabian.?

He hasn?t really decided what he will write about next, but he knows there definitely will be another book. ?When you are creative you have to be creative,? he said. ?When you write you have to write, so another book will come. No ideas have really come to my mind yet.

?When you have a cold, everybody tells you this is what you need to do to get rid of your cold. It is the same way when writing a book. Everyone is telling me what I need to do for the next book. When I do a book I have to feel it. It is not a mental thing. It is a soul thing.?

You have to feel that this is right for me, because you put your heart and soul into it if you are really close to it. That is the only way I can do it.

?This was more difficult to write than the other ones, because it is close to my heart. Virginia Woolf said ?nothing every really happens until it is described?.?

Mr. Cox added: ?You describe things, all those memories come back to you and you relive them. You forget them otherwise. You have to consciously relive the past. That is your life.?

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