In the hunt for my old Harry Potter books for my 10-year-old daughter, I discovered a lost treasure.

Long before I had kids, I had books.

Lots of them.

They went more places with me than my first husband. And then two thousand diapers, two kids, 4 houses, and a divorce later, I was digging through my past stuffed in large Home Depot bins for the J.K. Rowling series and discovered something I had long forgotten.

Poe’s Tales of Mystery and Terror.

A book from my childhood whose pages have become so yellowed that they are actually naturally cool, and so aged that the years had caused them to separate from its spine.

I loved my books.

I slept more peacefully surrounded by them. The feel of holding them was much more satisfying than any iPhone or Kindle.

And I spent a fortune on them.

Some people are addicted to shoe shopping or alcohol. The Book of the Month Club was my crack. I saw the UPS man so often, he knew my birthday. I would leave work early just so I could get there first to hide the latest shipment from my husband.

I had it bad.

As I dug through the stacks of fiction, nonfiction, and text books, the feeling of love I used to have resurfaced. In the dark cellar room, I was once again surrounded by my books.

And I remembered why I loved them so.

I realized at that moment that I was in the right place at this time. I was revisiting my passion. My kids were growing older, as was I, and my first love remained the same.

As I returned to the warmth of my living room, I sat and paged through the book of Poe’s short stories. I found it quite ironic that I discovered it while preparing my manuscript, The Poe Toaster, for publication. However, in my world, books have always been a huge part of who I was.

And I don’t believe in coincidences.

–Sandra Pici