Something disturbs me about an extra long flight of stairs, especially going down. Why would that be? Maybe because I’m a klutz and fear falling. Certainly the former is true! On a recent trip to New York, I snapped a couple of extra-creepy flights.
Looking down a Manhattan subway escalator.
Perhaps long staircases disturb me because I fear my subconscious. The mystical psychologist Carl Jung talked about stairs that descend to the subconscious, as I was fascinated to recently learn. Well, okay, re-learn, because I was surprised to read it in (my own damn) novel, Was It A Rat I Saw, which I wrote a couple decades ago. But I digress. Anyway, I don’t fear my subconscious, I’m fascinated by all the things it seems to know that I don’t – and there’s no question that I get my best ideas from it!
Entrance to Le Poisson Rouge, a club in Greenwich Village.
I’m joking around. I know why some staircases bother me. It’s the sense that their steps are capable of taking me somewhere else, an unintended journey to an unexpected destination. Some building entrances feel that way to me, too. I’m finally exposing their truth in my fantasy series, FRAMES, where nothing in the universe is as it seems. The red staircase above will be a location – or maybe a character – in the second book in the FRAMES series, which I have just started writing.
New York doesn’t have a lock on eerie stairs. Here’s one that hails from Echo Park in Los Angeles:
P.S. I’ve finally finished the first FRAMES novel, Nica of Los Angeles. Watch for posts about that soon.
(This post responds to the WP Weekly Photo Challenge, Extra Extra.)
Required Writing 
Reblogged this on Reviews & Recommendations and commented:
Excellent photos & essay about staircases. Loved it.
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Love this. I’ve collected photos of staircases for YEARS! I have facebook friends send ones to me. What a great essay. It threw some ideas into my ‘percolater’, Thank you. Now to find a book of yours to read & review for http://facebook.com/InJoyfulBookReviews, goodreads or Amazon.
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Thanks! Do you have your photos posted anywhere? BTW, I am currently offering my latest book for free in exchange for review. You heard it here first (sometime later this week I will officially post the notice to this blog).
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YAY! Yes I realize the new book isn’t the primary focus here but still.
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Thanks for the YAY!
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I won’t lie and say that I’m actually doing a happy dance, because it’s not quite 7 am and my coffee just finished brewing. But I’m so excited about your books that inside, I’m jumping up and down and shimmying like nobody’s business.
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Thanks! (and yes, a happy dance before 7am does sound implausible).
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