Life imitates art imitates life...

Back in the Paleozoic (OK, the '80s), I was a rock critic. And while I covered a pretty wide variety of what might be labeled pop music (from reggae to county, an experience that introduced me to zydeco and Cajun), my heart belonged to the garage-punk scene centered in clubs like CBGB's or Boston's own Rat.* That's the scene I wanted to evoke in my upcoming noir mystery, World Enough, in which a former rock critic gets an assignment to revisit her old stomping grounds and finds ... murder.

So imagine my surprise when, last month, I got an assignment from the Boston Globe Magazine to revisit the Rat and why it served as the epicenter for that particular scene. This was a case of life imitating art imitating life, and I relished the opportunity to revisit the club that was not only my home away from home but that introduced me to my family of choice and, ultimately, to the possibility of writing as a career was wonderful. Only this time (spoiler alert), no bodies have surfaced in this particular outing! I've inset links above (as well as here for the magazine story and here for the book), but here's a PDF of the magazine story and, below it, my World Enough cover.

*And, yes, the Channel and Jumpin' Jack Flash and Streets and Cantone's and Storyville and Jack's and Jonathon Swifts and Bunratty's and Chet's Last Call and ...