RIP LJ Smith
I just saw the news and I’m floored.
The Night World series meant more to me than I can ever properly express. Those books were my escape hatch during one of the darkest, loneliest stretches of my life. I lost my grandmother (my main caregiver) suddenly as a teenager, and for years after that, everything felt bleak and unbearable, but re reading the series helped me through.
I used to write fanfiction (in my notebooks) for these books before I even knew what fanfiction was. I have a rose tattoo behind my ear both for the roses that grew in my grandmother’s garden and for the rose as a symbol of the Night World. I remember first reading the series in her garden the summer before she died, not knowing it would be the last summer we’d have. I got the tattoo on one of the milestone anniversaries of her death because I remember us scouring the local bookshops for the entire series and me reading it while we sunbathed and drank diet coke.
