Moments of Stillness: A Guest Post by Lena Valencia
Has a trip ever changed your perspective on life? Lena Valencia dives into the genesis of her debut collection, Mystery Lights, in an exclusive essay and explains the real-life inspiration behind her stories. This guest post will make you want to pick out your favorite journal to take on your next adventure.
Paperback $17.95
Mystery Lights
Mystery Lights
In Stock Online
Paperback $17.95
A collection of short stories with a cutting edge, Mystery Lights will surprise (and shock) readers. Explore big fears and bigger curiosities in the vein of Carmen Maria Machado and Ottessa Moshfegh.
A collection of short stories with a cutting edge, Mystery Lights will surprise (and shock) readers. Explore big fears and bigger curiosities in the vein of Carmen Maria Machado and Ottessa Moshfegh.
I can trace the genesis of many of the stories in Mystery Lights back to trips I’ve taken. I wrote “Clean Hunters”—about a ghost-hunting couple—after spending a night in an allegedly haunted inn (I didn’t know it was haunted until after I’d checked in). “Vermilion,” about a mother reckoning with her daughter’s disappearance, was inspired by a hiking trip to the strange and beautiful desert of southeastern Utah. The idea for “Reaper Ranch,” a story set in a (possibly) haunted retirement home, originated after a visit to my grandmother’s independent living facility in Tucson, where I lay awake on a futon one night listening to the eerie sound of her oxygenator’s robotic breathing. Walking alone while on a writing retreat in rural New Mexico, I was followed by a pack of barking, leash-less dogs and escaped thanks to a kind couple who gave me a ride back to where I was staying. That experience, and the fear that came with it, was the seed for “Dogs.”
Travel heightens my attention to my surroundings, forces me to look closer, to perk up and observe in a different way than I do when I’m in familiar territory. It’s for this reason that I always bring a notebook on my journeys. While I don’t keep a journal at home, I try my best to document my trips. Sometimes the details I record make their way into my fiction. Travel also involves a lot of sitting and pondering, gazing out windows of airplanes, trains, and cars. These moments of stillness—verging on boredom—are when my imagination is most fertile.
The deserts of the Southwest feature prominently in many of the stories of Mystery Lights. The title story was inspired by a road trip through West Texas, where I found the desert landscape to be so rich, so inspiring, that found I wanted to write more about it, particularly through the eyes of women protagonists. I’ve always been a writer whose creativity blossoms under constraint, and once I narrowed my scope in this way, the collection began to take shape.
Publishing a debut book has been an adventure in its own right. Though the stories in Mystery Lights are not autobiographical, it still feels, in a sense, like my notebooks are open for the world to read and judge. It’s an incredibly vulnerable experience, but—when readers connect to the stories—an incredibly rewarding one, as well. I hope that Mystery Lights speaks to you, and perhaps inspires you to bring a notebook along on your next trip. You never know what ideas will surface with a change of setting.