When green leaves turn to red and gold. When night winds blow secrets down deserted streets and the scent of burning fills the air – even in the city – you know that it’s the Bradbury time of year.
Dia De Los Muertos, All Hallows Eve… the time that spirits wander and visit their favorite haunts.
October and November are the months that Ray’s genial ghost I’m sure will be visiting his favorite bookstore, The Mystery and Imagination on 238 N. Brand Blvd. in Glendale.
It will probably be yours too if you 
live in Los Angeles. Everyone’s seen a bookstore like the M & I, at least in their imaginings.
Narrow aisles so tightly packed with books, characters rub elbows with you. Fat patrons get wedged between the shelves and have to survive on a diet of short fiction until they can squeeze free. It’s organized, but so jam packed with ideas and fancies it makes one’s head spin.
All the best bookstores are haunted – haunted by characters that live on long after pages flutter shut. Haunted by the writers who have read there… and the Mystery and Imagination has had many.
The reading room is up a stairway so narrow and steep you may need to grab a tank of fiction just to breathe the rarefied atmosphere. The walls are colored by signatures of so many scribblers, greedy autograph hounds have been tempted to steal them, but they are protected by the best – Sherlock Holmes, Philip Marlow and Hercule Poirot. Besides, it’s difficult to fit walls into autograph files or scrapbooks.
Most bookstores have vanished now, so when you are lucky enough to find one, dusty with ideas, and smelling of secrets, I recommend wandering among the narrow aisles.
Listen to the voices whispering tales from between closed covers… And if there’s a book launch and part going on all the better,
I invite you to join me, at the launch and party for a new and massive Collection of Fiction –
http://www.jasunnistore.com/darke-phantastique-26-lettered-edition-only/
DARKE PHANTASTIQUE -with greats Greg Bear, William F. Nolan and many, many more. (I have three “fables in it)
LOS ANGELES, CA on NOVEMBER 6 (Thursday), 5pm at MYSTERY & IMAGINATION BOOKSTORE (link:http://www.mysteryandimagination.com ).
I promise you cake, wine, and laughter, supplied by the incredible writer, publisher, and editor Jason V Brock of JaSunni Productions, LLC
And if you keep your eyes and mind and heart open, you might just see Ray wandering among the shelves, embracing everyone with his warmth and laughter just as he did not so very long ago.