Now, nearly 20 years after the publication of 'Sure of You,' comes 'Michael Tolliver Lives,' a new novel that Maupin is careful to point out is not technically the seventh book in the series. Tourists can even purchase a 'Tales' map to the series' many locales, which include a rickety set of stairs used in the miniseries, located on Macondray Lane in the Russian Hill section of the city. The books tracked the tenants through the disco-infused, halcyon 1970s into the late 1980s, when the scourge of AIDS became a central theme.įor decades, 'Tales' fans have trekked to the city by the bay in search of the fictional address. Unlike Mitchell, who ceased publishing after 'GWTW's' global success, Maupin's 1978 literary debut, 'Tales of the City,' inspired five sequels and three miniseries starring Olympia Dukakis and Laura Linney.īoth the books and the TV series center on the lives and loves of the straight, gay and transsexual inhabitants of San Francisco's 28 Barbary Lane, a set of living spaces overseen by pot-smoking landlady and earth mother Anna Madrigal.

'To create a fictional place so powerful in the readers' imagination that they try and physically seek it out is a real gift.'

'To me, that was the power of 'Gone With the Wind' and Margaret Mitchell,' explains Maupin. On his first trip to Atlanta as a kid growing up in North Carolina, Armistead Maupin vividly recalls surveying the red clay and wondering just where Tara might be located.

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