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I pass Elena Climent's wonderful mural, "At Home With Their Books," every day on my way to class at NYU. Climent did exhaustive research before she began painting the intimate work spaces of six New York writers (Washington Irving, Edith Wharton, Zora Neale Hurston, Frank O'Hara, Jane Jacobs, and Pedro Pietri). I love the way each room is made to look as if the writer might walk back into it at any moment - messy bedcovers in Wharton's room; the door to Neale Hurston's cottage left open; a manuscript page that has been blown off Irving's desk in a gust of wind.

The first time I saw the mural, I'm ashamed to admit that I felt a wave of envy that I don't have anything that could be called a "home" for the few books I've been able to ship between different parts of the world. Part of the problem is that I've moved around so much my whole life, between Australia, South Africa, the UK, and the States. And it doesn't help being a perennial student constantly searching for the holy grail of cheap accommodation!

Writing is not yet my day job, so I can't be fussy about memorializing where I write fiction - Blood Kin was written in bits and pieces on my roommate's computer in Cape Town whenever she wasn't using it - but what I have kept track of are the various rooms I've lived in: at my last count, 7 in the last 3 years. The only recurring dream I ever have is of moving into a strange new room again, and having to figure out which way to turn the bed to fit in a chest of drawers, or trying to stuff a suitcase in the space beneath a closet.

» Walter Mosley discusses the first book in his new mystery series, which follows Private Investigator Leonid McGill.

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