I met some very interesting authors last year. Some I’d never heard of though well known, others I knew of, having had only a cursory relation. I suppose the reason some of these writers were unknown to me, must certainly have been because we traveled in different circles. Notwithstanding, the more modern writers who always kept me on the edge of my bookish erudite shifted for some reason, and last year my literary self took off in a new direction. I met the literati who seemed to latch on and take me down the darkest of dark alleys mesmerizing me with the Victorian era of their England. A familiar ambiance drew me, but the memories of a life once lived, kept me. While there are, most definitely, others, these three authors stand out because I love a good back-story!

Michael Cox (1948-2009) The Meaning of Night [it wasn’t until he knew he was going blind and dying that he was galvanized into completing a book he had been writing for thirty years] “Over the years I would return to the book, draft sections, plan, research, redraft, discard but the novel as a whole remained a disorganized set of ideas and possibilities. I simply could not charge the thing up, until……” These words, by Michael Cox, was my introduction to him as a writer. There was an immediate kinship, and I knew I just had to read the book to which he was referring. Against my better judgment, I became extraordinarily swallowed-up and addicted to the narrator, the murderer, transgressing the boundaries into a Gothic Victorian where Cox simply broke all the rules;

Charles Dickens (1812-1870) The Mystery of Edwin Drood [something happened to Dickens during a train crash. Some say he lost his sanity. Thereafter, he never completed another book, leaving as his epitaph, one unfinished manuscript] Of course I’ve always known Charles Dickens, who breathing, has not? Great major works such as Great Expectations and Oliver Twist, both read and loved, but it wasn’t until I learned about the ‘crash‘, that I fully immersed myself in Charles Dickens’ life and the intriguing prequel that consumed Dickens to his death; and

Dan Simmons (1948- ) Drood [while Simmons is still too normal to join the ranks of the outlandish, Simmons is one of a handful of writers who spans a genus of writing in every genre including historical fiction and noir crime fiction, and can not be typecast in any one] Following the dusty trail that led me to the Staplehurst Train crash, I found myself striding alongside Wilkie Collins who posits the apparition of a shockingly pale visage belonging to a man named Drood who appeared to Charles Dickens among the debris of the Staplehurst tragedy. Dan Simmons’ historical novel follows Collins and Dickens as they sift through the supernatural elements of a mysterious Edwin Drood attempting to discover his secrets.

Since I’d already met some of the Young Adult writers prior to 2010, John Flanagan; Brandon Mull; Alan Bradley; Chris Priestley… , and even though I devoured what I could get my hands on during 2010, I’ve not included them as new acquaintances. They have become, after all, old friends. And so, my dear reader there you have it, three new friends and my year of living literately.

~