Memories

 I'm sure you've all heard the joke by now: Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most? Story. Of. My. Life.

See, today is December 8. It's my oldest niece's birthday (and my second-oldest niece's half-birthday...and I have two brother's with birthdays exactly six months apart--two years and six months, but that's not the point, which is that we like order and synchronicity in my clan). It also happens to have been the original release date for In the Dark. 

I'm posting the original cover here, not because I don don't like the new one, but because at the time the book was first released, this is EXACTLY how my niece-whose-birthday-is-today looked. I was a little freaked out the first time this image popped up in my email, to be honest.

But I bring all of this up to say that, I HAD A REASON for scheduling my post for today. Do I remember what that reason was?  No, I do not. Did it have anything to do with this book? Possibly? I dunno. 

It is kind of nice that I'm talking about family, however, since this book, this series, hell MOST of my series, are all to do with families. Which is what led me to come up with my most current author logo: 

All the Friends, All the Families, All the Feels.

But I kinda think that that's not at all what I'd originally planned on writing about today, either. 

So, I guess I need a new topic. And I guess I could do worse than to talk about memories. 

So, speaking of which, I remember when CATS first came out--the first, first time, a gazillion years ago--and that song (Memories--for those of you too young to know what I'm talking about) was playing all the time, everywhere...and even more so since we had the album on repeat. Gluttons for punishment, what can I say? Back then, I prided myself on my good memory, even though it wasn't a patch on my grandmother's. She came to America when she was thirteen years old, seventy years later, she could still remember what they'd served at every meal on the trip across the Atlantic. 

These days, memories are like surprises. They pop up out of nowhere, all shiny and new. It's a little like the scene in my favorite old Star Trek movie, The Voyage Home, where they travel back in time to 1986 San Francisco. They need money, so they have to pawn the only old object they have--a pair of antique glasses that McCocCy had given Kirk. Spock says: "Wasn't that a birthday present?" To which Kirk replies, "Yes. And it will be again. That's the beauty of it."

So I guess the beauty of this post is all the synchronicities. The movie was set in San Francisco in 1986. My niece was born in 1986. My vampires live in San Francisco. Maybe my new, new author logo should simply be:  All the Synchronicities?  

By the way. Another synchronistic memory that just popped up on my FB timeline the day I wrote this post, was this image from one of my old newsletters:

As it happens, of course, this was the very newsletter that announced the release of In the Dark--because OF COURSE it was. I quit publishing newsletters because I could never remember to get them out on time. Surprising? I think not. 

COINCIDENTALLY, I'm just in the process of putting out a new newsletter. If you'd like to subscribe, here's the link: https://www.pgforte.com/newsletter  Thanks for reading, and have a memorable day!

Also, happy birthday to Meredith. 

Looking for FREE holiday reads?  Check out my Free for the Holidays page--only available this month--on my website: https://www.pgforte.com/only-for-the-holidays

Looking at Home Through Someone Else's Eyes

There’s nothing like reading to discover new places, but there’s something special about visiting places you already know through a book. I remember reading Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast while spending a summer abroad in Paris, and seeing the city through his eyes while I was discovering it through my own was an experience I’ll always value. It’s a rare joy to look through the lens of a gifted writer into a place you love, and see it in a whole new way.

I was born and raised in Louisiana, but for over a decade now, I’ve lived in the San Francisco Bay Area. I feel lucky that both places serve as settings for more than their fair share of stories, especially stories of the supernatural variety. Reading fantasy or science fiction set in San Francisco or New Orleans is like going through a rabbit hole to an alternate dimension.

One of my favorite ways to look at San Francisco is through the literary lens of William Gibson. He might be most famous for writing Tokyo and London, but his “Bridge Trilogy” (Virtual Light, Idoru, and All Tomorrow’s Parties) takes place partially in San Francisco, and he does fascinating things with the Oakland Bay Bridge. It becomes a community all it’s own, filled in like a sideways skyscraper and populated with squatters and some near-future equivalent of food trucks. I never drive across it without remembering his gritty vision of its fate.

There are plenty of other takes on San Francisco and its surrounding towns. Christopher Moore delivers the whole Bay Area in intimate (and hilarious) detail. He even sets part of Bloodsucking Fiends and its sequels in the Safeway where I used to buy my groceries. Seanan McGuire (and her alter ego, Mira Grant) is another author who knows and writes the Bay Area beautifully. There’s a scene in her urban fantasy Rosemary and Rue that takes place in the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park, and everything from the ticket kiosk to the landscaping was exactly as I remembered it. (Except for the faeries.)

I'm glad I haven't run into any vampires in the produce aisle or mischievous Fae in the botanical gardens, but imagining them there sure is fun. What are some of your favorite stories set in places you’ve called home?

---

A.J. Larrieu is the author of Anchored and the upcoming Twisted Miracles, the first book in her urban fantasy series, The Shadowminds. She's a Southerner, a chocolate addict, and an incurable nerd. Find out more at www.ajlarrieu.com.