She's dead...wrapped in plastic

Long before there were vampires in Washington, there was a dead girl, found wrapped in plastic, whose dark secrets unfolded like a night lily.

For research purposes, I have dug this old gem out of my book shelf. Yes, I own and once devoured The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer. Even now, I open to any page and know exactly why.

Do you remember Twin Peaks? I was thirteen years old the year it came out and they had me at “She’s dead.” I can’t believe I was that young. I first typed fifteen, and then I researched the series. Nope. 1990. This explains a lot. Exposure to such dark underpinnings, mystery, and melodrama tainted my imagination for sure. The sordid and bizarre tales of small town life undoubtedly informed my understanding of the small town I lived in and most definitely influenced my future as a writer.

Laura Palmer and company were to me what Diana was to Anne of Green Gables. (Irony intended)Though my life was definitely not filled with abuse and addiction like Laura Palmer’s, I related to her character, or rather those characters that told us her story as they lived in a place of deep forests and black nights where secrets and lies abounded.

I knew well that whispering of the trees that foretold of omens and possibilities. I knew what it was to walk the woods at night and to keep secrets. I believed in magic and the veil between two worlds. I saw omens and signs in nature. I knew good people gone bad and bad people who were really good, and most mesmerizing of all I coveted the idea that one could walk that line.

According to Wikipedia “Twin Peaks explores the gulf between the veneer of small-town respectability and the seedier layers of life lurking beneath it.” And this, dear readers, is what I too am setting out to do. Long ago, Laura Palmer and her friends focused the world I saw in my small town into a heightened and somewhat fantastical focus. Everything seemed laced with import. We were young, we were the center of our own universe, every possibility of success and failure was in front of us. Sexual, psychotropic and identity exploration, as well as ironic lessons learned from adults living in the real world, spiraled around us in an enchanted universe. And, that view, that spectral dark sparkle that coated everything in those days has a story in it. A fictional story that will try to capture how the world looks through that lens, walking a forest path just on the line between light and dark, fire and water, good and evil.