After Dark

A trip down memory lane

It wasn't until today that I realised what true nostalgia felt like. I often associate my memories with scents and words that I read.

Your smell is the strongest sense and therefore it makes sense to associate memories with this. Not too long ago, I smelt the fragrance of a perfume that was identical, if not, a pretty good replica of a scent that was popularly worn when I was in school.

It awoke a small sense of nostalgia but I don't remember my school days very fondly so it didn't seem to mean much to me. But there are other things that stir the feeling.

For example; one of, if not, my favourite book of all time is a book called Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea by April G. Tucholke. The book follows a young adult and her unwilling involvement with the supernatural.

I took to this book almost immediately and this was one of the books that determined my own genre when it came to writing.

"In which a young female resolves to write novels which are deemed to be realistic if it weren't for the supernatural twist that throws the entirety of the fictitious storyline out of context."

And BtDatDBS was my gateway into it.

Recently, my sibling brought me the sequel to the first book; I must've read the first book over a dozen times. I never got bored of it, even when I grew up and I didn't read as much as I did, the story stuck with me.

I hadn't read it in years, until today. Until I obtained the sequel and I wanted to read the first book to refresh my memory before starting the second book, which I was itching to read from the moment I got it.

And it was everything I remembered it to be.

The nostalgia it brought back was unbelievable. I hadn't even realised how much I'd missed reading and it kind of hit a reset button. For the first time in a long time, I curled up with a book, completely immersed in it, my phone nowhere to be seen.

The comforting feeling of reading a book years after and finding calm in the familiar characters and plots you spent your childhood reading and being brought up on brings you a sense of inexplicable joy and happiness.

Straight after reading it, I felt the need to write something, documenting this. It had influenced me enough for me to push through my writer's block for long enough to draft it up. And I don't know; maybe the block's been fully lifted, only time will tell.

And you damn well know I'm so excited to get started on the sequel, Between the Spark and the Burn. In fact, you know I'm already a few pages in but I'm going to restrict myself; taking it slow and once again, find comfort in the all too familiar characters.