Lapland, or Film Noir

I really enjoyed Lapland. Like Barbara, it reminded me a lot of Sin City and my TCF 112 class I took last semester where we studied this genre of film. Being from Florida, I want to ask Peter Straub why he chose to put Lapland in Florida? Is there any significance to this? Also, I was wondering about the lapses of the narrator's memory. While writing the story, did you actually have an entire memory thought out and then cover some parts up or did you just make up random phrases after each stretch of dots?