"Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate and martini in one hand, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WOO HOO what a ride!"
When I was 22 I changed my life forever by selling everything I owned and moving 2,500 miles away to a city I'd never been to, where I knew no one. Coming from a sheltered life, I spent the next 8 years doing my own wild and crazy thing. I roamed the good and bad streets of Los Angeles, doing things that in retrospect were probably downright idiotic. Like nearly everyone else who makes the trip, I went to Hollywood to reinvent myself.Knowing nothing about this city (or any big city) I made the brilliant decision to get a cheap apartment. I found one, in the heart of a crime ridden section of Hollywood I later found out was called a war zone by the LAPD. There were stabbings and shootings and assaults every weekend. Most of my time in L.A was spent crawling around in the underbelly of the city, trying to find new and interesting ways to kill myself, including a month or so living out of a car. I visited Skid Row, spent time on the streets of Hollywood, befriended a bartender who was killed after she went home with a customer. And you wonder why I write crime novels?
L.A. Heat grew out of those sometimes dark, always fascinating days. During the 80's I saw the advent of a terrible disease that no one understood that became known as AIDS. I knew a lot of people who died in those days. For a brief period of time I was even a Valley girl, living within spitting distance of the famous Sherman Oaks Galleria. Do I miss it? Every day. I'm hoping to go back there next year for the next Left Coast Crime.
The lights of Hollywood, courtesy of Nitsa
Then I went one better and moved to Hawaii in 1986 where my daughter was born. She's never quite forgiven me for moving back to Canada. I managed to get away one more time, this time to Bermuda for 2 years. What can I say, I keep leaving and Canada just keeps sucking me back in. But the time I spent in L.A, the land of dreams and lies, where illusion battled daily with reality, and reality rarely wins made an indelible impression on me and to this day almost all my writing is set there. I think the fact that my writing is fairly dark can also be laid at the doorstep of the city of Angels. I still immerse myself in reading anything I can find about the place, to the point that some people in my family think I'm a tad obsessive about it. But then the subject matter of my books also raises some eyebrows among them. I mean, I know lots of women write gay books, but it's all new to my family. I can lay the blame for L.A. Heat and Chris and David right at the doorstep of Los Angeles. If I'd stayed in London, Ontario I never would have come up with those two. You decide whether that's good or bad.
| Bermuda House on the beach | 
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Los Angeles Skyline |
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