jon_chaisson | [Writing] The Pictorial Joncwriter Review (Reply)

emmalyon and I have been visiting various Boston landmarks the last few days during vacation, so I decided I'd take some pictures of things and places that have influenced my writing over the years, or were at least important to my writing. Enjoy!

A view of Harvard Square from across the street (standing in front of the Harvard Coop). A handful of major scenes take place in Love Like Blood here. It's a typical hangout for students as well as stoners and street kids, so you'll get all sorts of weirdness going on at any time of day, so I figured this would be a perfect spot for the Enclave to hang out when they're not going to shows.

The facade of 'The Garage', a small shopping center on JFK Street, just down the street from Harvard Square, crafted out of a former parking garage. The 'Toothface' banners are for Newbury Comics, the main anchor store. Also in the Garage is Crazy Dough's, a pizza joint in the mezzanine, which used to go under a different name when I hung out there. That's where I created the first few words of the Anjshe language for the Bridgetown trilogy, nomming on a few pepperoni slices after a day of shopping at used record stores. This is the same pizza joint where Gabriel and Vic have a not-so-revealing talk in Love Like Blood.

The eastern facade of the Boston Public Library, which faces Copley Square. In Love Like Blood, Cassandra and Duncan whiz by Gabriel and land about twenty feet up this wall in the midst of a violent fight.

The southern side of Copley Square, lined by the Fairmont Copley Hotel, and the "new" John Hancock Tower (the "old" JH is the smaller one next to it with the weather beacon that lights up at night telling what kind of weather Boston is having). In the same scene as the above, Gabriel notices that there are dozens of vampires lining the roof of that building...as well as all the other buildings in the square.

I wanted to get a picture of that bench that's off to the right, but I didn't want to impose on the two women sitting there. This bench is in the opening scene of Two Thousand, during one of their frequent afternoon hangouts. They talk intellectually about nothing in particular--the usual type of collegiate conversation--and this is also where they put each other on the spot, asking what they'd truly like to do with their lives.

Looking westward down Beacon Street from the corner of Dartmouth. This is half a block away from where I lived in my shoebox apartment after college (as well as where I lived with Lissa for a year, one building over). This street features in both Two Thousand and Love Like Blood, as it's a good street for walking down and mulling things over late at night, while keeping to the shadows.

A boat landing in the Charles River Lagoon, a small strip of water lining the Esplanade, specifically right across from where Dartmouth Street starts. This shot is an album cover for both Madman's Honey and Bell Jar. One member of each band would become members of The Crucibles, the Best Band in Boston according to Gabriel in Love Like Blood. Of note is the fact that the two musicians, Vic and Paolo, are standing to the right of those stairs, leaning up against the wall and looking stage right (westward). This is also where Gabriel meets up with Goth Boy and Duncan for quite the revealing scene later on in the book.

I spent the summer of 1991 here at 102 Beacon Street on this top floor dorm room (it was owned by Fisher College at the time, not sure if it still is). I had access to this back deck and had a great view of the Hatch Shell. I would sit out there at night, watching the Red Line T cross Longfellow Bridge up the way. This was the room where I did a lot of soul searching (I'd temporarily broken up with Tracey and nearly all my friends had left for the summer), but on the plus side I got a lot of reading done, not to mention a lot of music writing. I wrote, tightened up and recorded demos for a few Flying Bohemian tunes up here.

If anywhere, the true birth of The Eden Cycle (pre-trilogy and pre-True Faith) was right here, at Charles Street Laundromat. I was still living at my shoebox apartment on Beacon and that autumn I had been toying with writing a science fiction version of my IWN, and I created what I then called the Crimson-Null Foundation right there in the laundromat while waiting for my clothes to finish washing. Almost twenty years later and I have four Eden Cycle-related novels under my belt, thanks to that one afternoon there.

This is kind of an odd picture, considering that the glass building in the foreground wasn't there back in the mid-90s. This is a small strip mall on Cambridge Street that used to have a Stop & Shop, a Loews Theater, and a few other things. That CVS Pharmacy in the background is right about where the Brigham's Ice Cream was, and where I worked for about six months in 1994. I read and studied Ray Bradbury's Zen in the Art of Writing, and wrote a lot of disjointed and unrelated things, just to keep my creative juices flowing. I also came up with some ideas for my new Eden Cycle idea here. This was also where I served comedian Steven Wright a frappe on one of our deadest nights.

6(?) South Russell Street, just off Cambridge Street, just across the street from the above picture. The only reason I took this picture is that my then-girlfriend Diana lived there in the summer of 1994. The third and fourth windows on the third floor was her room. I point this out because this is where the beginning of the first draft of True Faith was written. She and I did a lot of writing and world building up there during that summer. Even though our relationship didn't end well and I gave up continuing the story, that was the point where I truly thought of myself as a real writer, and not just a wannabe.

The CVS Pharmacy in Charles Square. Buzzy's Roast Beef was directly across the square from here. In Two Thousand, one character points to a homeless man sitting out in front of this store, and states quite starkly to his friend: "See that guy? That's you in five years if you don't get your shit together." This was actually from a real conversation I'd had with Jon Alex in 1992.

I wish I'd have taken more pictures (I would have liked to have gotten pictures of Charlesgate, my apartment in Allston, and a few others), but we didn't have the time. I may grab those pictures from the internet later on and post them in a follow-up, however.

We'll be heading out west to my parents' house tomorrow, so I will most likely be taking more reference pictures as the week progresses.