Before I Knew Her Name, She Gave Me Fantasy

I worked at a coffee shop on the outskirts of the French Quarter, close to the Garden District. Espresso machine running most of the day, chalkboard menu, the smell of chicory and burnt milk by close. I was seventeen, maybe eighteen. A long time ago now.

One customer came in on a schedule. Same order, always a book in her bag. I barely read at all back then, but we talked anyway. She’d bring me paperbacks with cracked spines and dog-eared corners, ones she thought I’d love, and we’d talk about them after I finished. No pressure, no assignment, just a stack of books and a standing invitation to talk about them once I got through one. She’s the one who put fantasy in my hands for the first time.

The Photo in the Article

I moved away eventually, and we lost touch, because I never really knew her outside that counter. Years later, I saw her photo in an article. It was Anne Rice.

The woman who talked to me about books over a coffee bar, the one who started the spark that turned into the book dragon living in me now, was Anne Rice. She got me into the genre. The writers I found after her, the ones I devoured for years after that first stack of paperbacks, are what kept me there.

Standing at the Grave

A few years ago, I went back to New Orleans. I went to her grave. Simple stone, her name, the dates. I had no idea what I was going to say, so I just said thank you. Thank you for the conversations over coffee. Thank you for never making it about her own books, just pointing a young girl in a coffee shop toward a genre that would end up changing her life.

I stood there a while, feeling strange for thanking someone for something they never knew they’d done.

Where the Debt Landed

The Vieux Sang Trilogy is my tribute to her. Vampires in the French Quarter, the same city where it started for me. It also has everything I love about this genre now: politics, curses, and a bond neither character asked for.

I try to do for other people what she did for me. I loan out books to friends and strangers who’ve never touched romantasy, the same way she used to bring them to me. It’s a small thing. It was small when she did it for me too. Sometimes small things turn into more.

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