By CE Hunt
At the end of The Sommières Sun, my protagonist, Steve Miles, proposes to his girlfriend. As I typed those final words, I wondered was this the end? Was this how the story ended? I wasn’t sure. I knew I wanted to wait a while because frankly, you get sick of a story after many “spirited” conversations with editors and editing it twenty times.
A few readers asked, “Is that it?” Is there more to the story?” “Did they actually get married?” I pondered that for awhile. Then one evening walking around New Orleans, that magnificent city, spoke to me. She said, “Wait, I have something to add to this story, don’t I?”
My answer was, “Of course,” as I was walking in front of The Hotel Monteleone, and it was there that I decided an important scene would take place in the Carousel Bar. A few minutes later, I was sitting in B Mac’s fleshing out a few notes. The thought of featuring my beloved New Orleans prominently in the conclusion the story was an easy conclusion, thus Twilight in the Quarter was born.
One of the things that I thought about as I walked up St. Louis Street was that New Orleans is a place where a great time can break out at anytime if one is open to it, even on a Monday night or 11:00 on a Saturday morning. It’s a place where almost anything can happen, good or bad, natural or supernatural, but if you have the right attitude, most of the time it will be a good time.
Much of Twilight in the Quarter was written in situ. I was often sitting in the hotel, restaurant, train or bar where a scene happened. That actually goes for many other scenes in the book, even outside New Orleans. For this book, I was not able to return to France, but I lived there for five years and have visited other times and was able to recall some pretty vivid recollections.
I rode the Sunset Limited train to Alpine, Texas and hung out in Marfa, Texas a while and wrote many scenes there. The Marfa Spirit Company, The Sentinel Marfa Coffee shop and venues in and around The Hotel Paisano hosted many writing sessions. Marfa Spirit’s very enjoyable Ranch Waters and Marfa Mules fueled a couple of of my favorite chapters. New Orleans came easy, it was my home.
Writing is so much easier that way. The quirky stuff just happens, and you record it like a journalist almost, with just a little embellishment. My characters were often inspired by real people of combinations of people though most of the story is fiction. A handful of scenes actually happened pretty close to what I witnessed or experienced.
Nothing inspires me like experiencing the scene of a novel.
I loved writing while taking a couple of trips on The Sunset Limited from New Orleans to Marfa (Alpine), especially at night. It is just you, the roomette and endless scenes racing by your window.
Oh, and the bars of New Orleans provided me with an embarrassment of riches over the years I worked on the novel. They are way too many to name and only a few are pictured below.
If it were possible, I should have credited the people of New Orleans as co-authors for much of the story came from relating to folks and the many venues of the city, including Mardi Gras parades, waiting for concerts to start and just checking out at Rousse’s grocery store. However, I did dedicate the book to them.
Only in New Orleans would this be in the lobby of a condo. It in a sense captures the spirit of the city– beautiful, tacky and seductive — in short — wonderful.
I hope you’ll read Twilight in the Quarter. And I hope you find it a fitting end to the trilogy. You find out a lot about my protagonist and maybe while reading it, a little about yourself, for there’s a little Steve Miles in all of us..
CE Hunt 