{"id":3301,"date":"2013-03-06T12:00:36","date_gmt":"2013-03-06T17:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/booklifenow.com\/?p=3301"},"modified":"2013-03-06T01:37:14","modified_gmt":"2013-03-06T06:37:14","slug":"the-strange-in-your-past","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/booklifenow.com\/2013\/03\/the-strange-in-your-past\/","title":{"rendered":"The Strange in Your Past"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of my earliest memories is of rolly pollies (Armadillidiidae<\/a>, pill bugs, etc.), the small bugs that roll up into balls when handled. I played with them often as a young kid, but there\u2019s a particular event that stands out\u2014my baby sister, laying in a crib on her back and wearing only a diaper, and me maybe three years old, putting a small handful of rolly pollies on her chest. There was no malice intended, at least none that I can recall now, but rather a desire to share these amazing things.<\/p>\n

Some of my most accessed memories for writing are like this\u2014not the extreme highs or lows (though I draw from those as well), but the weird, the strange in my past. These visceral experiences are often my most inspirational.<\/p>\n

When I was twenty-three, I helped my step-father and older brother with a house renovation. The house was old, and probably had not been occupied for a few years. As I was the youngest, and possibly the most wiry at the time, I got the privilege of doing work in the attic. It was a small ranch-style, and the attic was one low space I crawled through, rafter by rafter. It was dirty, hot work, and I\u2019m sure I hated it at the time. But I don\u2019t remember it that way\u2014instead, what always comes to mind is the dozens of mouse bones I found in there. Most were skulls only, but many were full skeletons. Each were bone-white, either extremely old or possibly baked away during the heat of summers past.<\/p>\n

I collected many of the skeletons, and decorated the dashboard of my car with several of the skulls. Morbid, sure, but a great memory to tap into as a writer of fantasy, horror, and the weird.<\/p>\n

In my younger years I was a bit of a pyro. I have many distinct memories of burning things\u2014frozen hotdogs blackened to a crisp on the outside and still cold in the middle, stormtrooper figures melted into creative disfigurements, or setting a small fire at the edge of the school yard during recess (where I hid the burnt matches in the sandbox, and a few girls dug them up to turn me in). The strongest memory, though, was a small fire out in a field behind my house, nestled in this hollow of trees and wild growth. What we were burning was scavenged wood, underbrush, and leaves, and it grew to a pretty good size. We kept it under control, though, and when we left we made sure it was out. However, because of all the leaves we had burned, a great amount of smoke had built up, and it covered the entire field like a low-hanging fog, just a couple of feet off the ground. I can remember the surreal, serene feeling, the otherworldly nature of it all, even as sirens started growing in the distance.<\/p>\n

Once, for work, I visited a cadaver lab at the Mayo Clinic. I was treated to a number of anatomical lessons regarding the heart from a surgeon who removed a few for this very purpose, straight out of a body, and right before my eyes. This happened the day before Thanksgiving (there\u2019s a lot of parallels between what I saw there and what is typically on a table for Thanksgiving, but I\u2019ll spare you).<\/p>\n

These kinds of memories are formative. All memories are, really\u2014from the excitement of travel to the mundane of the day to day\u2014but the weird events occupy a special place in my heart. They\u2019re personal experiences with odd little twists, and they\u2019re just right to spark new ideas, or fill in a well-honed detail.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of my earliest memories is of rolly pollies (Armadillidiidae, pill bugs, etc.), the small bugs that roll up into balls when handled. I played with them often as a young kid, but there\u2019s a particular event that stands out\u2014my baby sister, laying in a crib on her back and wearing only a diaper, and me maybe three years old, putting a small handful of rolly pollies on her chest. There was no malice intended, at least none that I can recall now, but rather a desire to share these amazing things. Some of my most accessed memories for writing are like this\u2014not the extreme highs or lows (though I draw from those as well), but the weird, the strange in my past. These visceral experiences are often my most inspirational. When I was twenty-three, I helped my step-father and older brother with a house renovation. The house was old, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[92],"tags":[234,233,235],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/booklifenow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3301"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/booklifenow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/booklifenow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/booklifenow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/booklifenow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3301"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/booklifenow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3301\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3304,"href":"https:\/\/booklifenow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3301\/revisions\/3304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/booklifenow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/booklifenow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/booklifenow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}