E. E. King The Hotel Quetzalocatl GOG V.2

E E King Hotel Quetzalcoatl
Blurb
Come visit Guanajauato, City of Vampires. An ancient city, beautiful as it is mysterious. Visit the city’s most famous attraction the Mummy Museum founded in 1870. 

Stay at the Hotel Quetzalocatl with its beautiful terraced gardens, healthy dining and yoga style living. You might even meet a god or two. 

A fascinating city to be sure, but two rules of caution: avoid accidents and falling boulders, and never, ever, ask for directions if you get lost. 

E. E. King The Hotel Quetzalocatl GOG V.2

The Grumpy Old Gods are back in this second installment of mythyical fun. Read E. E. King Hotel Quetzalocatl. When visiting avoid accidents, falling boulders and never ask for directions if you get lost.. Click To Tweet

About the photo, The photo is me in San Miguel – Day of the dead, Día de Muertos. A time of memory. A time where we can almost touch the dead. Families build altars and spend nights in the cemetery. At midnight on October thirty-first, the children rise from their graves and spent the day with their relations. When they returned to the earth on the twilight of the first, the adults rise to take their turn.

It’s not a time to mourn, but to celebrate. Altars and graves are piled high with food and drink. There’s a melancholy sweetness unlike anything in northern climes. 

I first experienced it the year my mother died. 

I made up my face, wore a party dress and ruined a pair of shiny, red shoes, totally unsuited to cobblestone and dirt pathways, wandering the cemetery. People invited me to join them and share their picnics. They took pictures of me, and them and this is one. We had all lost someone, yet there was no sorrow. It was as though, for two nights, they had returned to share our love and memories.
                                     
I go back each year, drinking in the music and love that hangs in the air so thick, it’s almost tangible. I check my shoes for marigold petals, the flowers of death, just to make sure I’m still alive because in the Magic towns of Mexico (Pueblos Mágicos) anything could happen. The dead are not very far away from us in that time and place. Old Gods and new ones waltz arm in arm, and everything seems possible. 

About E. E. King

E.E. King is a painter, performer, writer, and biologist – She’ll do anything that won’t pay the bills, especially if it involves animals.
Ray Bradbury called her stories, “marvelously inventive, wildly funny and deeply thought-provoking. I cannot recommend them highly enough.” 

King has won numerous various awards and fellowships for art, writing, and environmental research.

She’s been published widely, recently in Clarksworld and Cosmic Roots. Her books are; Dirk Quigby’s Guide to the Afterlife, (available in Spanish, English, and audio) Electric Detective, The Hollywood Portal, Pandora’s Card Game, The Truth of Fiction and Blood Prism. King was the founding Director of the Esperanza Community Housing’s Art & Science Program, worked as an artist-in-residence in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Sarajevo, and the J. Paul Getty Museum and Science Center’s Arts & Science Development Program.  

Her landmark mural, A Meeting of the Minds (121’ x 33’) can be seen on Mercado La Paloma in Los Angeles. King has also painted murals for Escuelas Para La Vida in Cuenca, Spain and in Tuscany, Italy.  

She’s worked with children in Bosnia, crocodiles in Mexico, frogs in Puerto Rico, egrets in Bali, mushrooms in Montana, archaeologists in Spain, butterflies in South Central Los Angeles, lectured on island evolution and marine biology on cruise ships in the South Pacific and the Caribbean, painted murals in Los Angeles and Spain.

Check out paintings, writings, and  musings  at www.elizabetheveking.com

INTERVIEW WITH E. E. KING

1. What was your inspiration for this story or favorite part about writing it?

The story was born when I was visiting Guanajuato with my niece Gillian.  We stayed in a hotel that consisted of four suites, each one took up an entire floor. 

We were the only occupants.   The walls were covered with odd animal heads that watched us out of glassy eyes.   A deer, a lion, a leopard – realistic, but obviously not real.  The deer antlers were ridiculous, obviously papier mâché and constructed by someone who’d never seen a deer. 

Nonetheless, the heads had a quality of life about them that made them peculiarly unsettling, like china dolls, with eyes too knowing, and porcelain teeth too sharp.  The owner, Arturo, lived at another location down the hill.   He had a rakish charm and an easy smile.   The weather was windy and rainy. 

Gillian, we asked when we would have better weather.

He said, “I won’t have any control over the weather for another 10,000 years.” His grin concealed mysteries.  

I checked the internet and discovered that Quetzalcoatl was due to return in 10,000 years.

Next time I saw Arturo I said, “You are Quetzalcoatl, aren’t you?”

“I love tourists like you,” he said, and the story was born.

2. How much research did you do and what type? Include the most interesting or most unusual.    

I researched Quetzalcoatl and many other gods and monsters of Mayan and Aztec faith. I was especially interested in odd sacrifices.   Most of the bridges in the countryside have children buried beneath as guardians.

3. What was an early experience where you learned that language had power?

My father was a writer- He’d tell me stories – some amused- some made me have nightmares – but all shaped me.

4. What’s your favorite under-appreciated novel?

A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh, or Island by Aldous Huxley, or Ape and Essence by Aldous Huxley.  

5. How many ‘in-progress’ works do you have?

Three or four novels and a file of stories.

6. What does success look like to you?

The road to success is currently under construction.  It looks different all the time.

7. Do you have a favorite place to write or writing ritual?

I write by my window, overlooking my bird feeders and garden.  That way instead of staring at a blank screen, I can stare at birds.

8. What do you do when you are not writing?

I paint, raise and rehab wild birds, have 4 cats, garden, am an avid diver and traveler and do landscaping. My big loves are the arts and biological sciences.

9. Any last words for our readers?

It’s good to know about gods, grumpy or otherwise because a look at past beliefs helps gain perspective on current ones.