This past Sunday, the Hero MD and I took a drive west through the countryside outside of Toronto for the day. In the past few years I have found the city occasionally oppressive, and being indoors reminds me too much of lockdown. We drove through the outskirts of Milton, Ontario were we used to live. The autumn foliage glowed in the late-afternoon sun. We took the country roads along the escarpment region, which was the setting for my third novel, October. I was reminded of the exurban legends I'd heard in the 80s from local teenagers about a coven of witches that met up there—stories which I filed away for later use in the novel. It's absolutely beautiful countryside, and I admit to feeling the pang of loss I always feel when I'm back "home" there. It was a pretty halcyon time, those years in Milton. It was still a small town then instead of the commuter bedroom community it is now. Some of the friendships I made in those years still remain. While probably the most difficult stories I've ever written, October is really a love letter to the town and the surrounding countryside. Writers have the great privilege of being able to immortalize time and place and people in a way that sometimes even cameras miss This photo, "Autumn Sunrise," by John Ryan is the exact vista Mikey in the novel would have had during his hours of biking the escarpment country outside the fictional town of Auburn, and what he would have remembered as the site of the coven gathering upon which he stumbled, setting the entire tragedy of the novel into motion. I didn't refer to this photo while I was writing the book—I found it later—but it brings it all back now.
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