I was born in a small town where tall white columns crowned with ornate capitals cast long shadows that seemed to stretch to the horizon, dissolving into the silhouettes of dark factory chimneys billowing plumes of smoke: white, gray, almost black, rust-red. At night, the smoke glowed with fire, like the mouth of an awakening volcano. By day, fine flakes of black ash drifted gently onto plaster flowers, fruit, and cornucopias heavy with clusters of grapes. Beneath enormous old trees, in lush green grass, among the fragile blossoms of sourgrass, tiny beads of mercury shimmered here and there in a thick layer of weightless gray dust, catching the bright summer sunlight.
Outside my bedroom window, an old abandoned park slept in silence. Only now and then would the night sky above its spreading trees flare with the glow of the fiery horizon, and a deep roar would shatter its sleep, tearing through the heavens like the voice of a great organ composed of the pipes of a thousand archangels.
That world remained frozen for decades, slowly decaying and falling apart, preserving its madness, its drama, and its dirty secrets. A world filled with ash-stained characters forever asking to step into my stories. All I had to do was reach out and set the words down on the page.
That is where my books come from: the place where I lost my childhood.