When the Literary Orphans editor accepted my story "The Pines," the editor said it was "very unique." The piece was unusual for me, because my initial impulse was about form, not story or character.  I thought about writing a story told both from the present and and past tense to express how difficult it can be to break free from a traumatic event.  The past is still present, and you can get trapped in the past, especially if you are blaming yourself.  You're caught in a loop.

I don't write a lot of pieces with experimental forms, but I have published a few before, such as "My Route" and "Dear Squirrel," which both appeared in Corium. Another example is "The Moon in Daytime," which appeared in Wilderness House Literary Review. "The Pines" is my second story to appear in Literary Orphans.  The first, "Just So You Know," also had a slightly unusual form, as it was spoken directly to another character.  ​

Recently I went up to San Francisco to look at some locations where I’m setting scenes in the novel I’m writing.  I had been to most of the places before, though not recently.  Others I had never visited.  While I was writing the first draft, I used Google Images, Google Street View, pictures in Yelp, my own photos, and web searches to give me an idea of the locations.  However, pictures can only show, at best, what a place looks like. They cannot tell what a place smells like, sounds like, feels like.  Using memories and imagination, I populated the scenes with sights, smells, sounds, and temperatures to fit the scenes.
 
However, I was unwilling to rely only on images and imagination, so recently I went up to San Francisco on a whirlwind tour of locations for the book.  Though sometimes my imagination hit a detail spot on (yes, it was very windy at Alta Plaza Park), mostly I was struck by all the things I saw that were more interesting and unique than I imagined.  For example, the woman in Golden Gate Park wearing a ball cap with brown feathers on the sides, like a redneck Wagnerian helmet. The graffiti heart atop the staircase at Fort Mason. The man carrying a cymbal under his arm at the Ferry Building. The whales surfacing off Point Lobos. 

The bride and groom taking wedding pictures in front of City Hall:

The pink ballet slipper tossed over the wall at the Sutro Baths overlook:

​The woman sweeping the rocks in the Academy of Science’s penguin exhibit.  

The homemade Batmobile parked at Land’s End.  

I’m not sure which (or any) of these unexpected sights will make it into the book. But this trip reminded me of how strange and wonderful the world is—much more so than we imagine. We just have to look.