So … I’m listening to this book …

I really love Laurel K Hamilton. She writes about all sorts of interesting things, vampires, witches, magic, lycanthropes, polyamorous relationships, fairies and goblins and on and on. I tend to listen to the books on audio on my longish commute (about an hour each way). I’ve picked up her books all out of order, but she writes so well, I can enjoy each story individually without being too concerned about the long term story line.




The one I’m currently listening too is called Obsidian Butterfly. It’s got the main character (Anita Blake) in New Mexico hunting some preternatural being. I’m happily listening along when Edward (sociopathic monster hunter) introduces his two backups on this job. Bernardo and Olaf. OMG I almost drove off the road. I actually had to stop listening to book for a bit to calm down. It’s the most creepy of coincidences … and I seldom believe in those.



I grew up in Burlington, Ontario in the 80’s & 90’s and the names Bernardo and Olah were infamous. Two horrific killings in my upper-middle class neighbourhood. It stole some of our innocence … and forced many of us to know that there were monsters out there, not just the ones under my bed.

To further the coincidence, when I went google surfing to ensure that the book (published in 2000) and the crimes (committed early 1990’s) were not timed too closely together, I found a blog post about it … Ter's Blog and you know what? That’s a friend of mine. I looked at the images on the top of the bog and went “crap, that’s Emma” … “oh and there’s Natasha and Joanna”. It affected a lot of us, and it weirds me out a bit when this giant world, a super highway of internet, global reach through technology, and I see blog posts, 2 decades later of some of us still battling our demons.



Perhaps LKH heard the stories, heard the terror and thought they’d make names for two bad guys. Thanks for freaking me the phuck out!