April 20, 2020
Talk about the setting of your book. Is it entirely imaginary or is it based on a real-life place?
As I say in my bio, I grew up among the rolling hills of Western Pennsylvania. I know that people refer to them as mountains, but after spending years in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains, what you find on the East Coast are just big hills to me.
But I love the landscape. Growing up, I spent many hours exploring the woods and meadows, and dreaming up stories. I knew where the huckleberries grew and when they were ripe for picking. I knew where large patches of endangered ground pine hid in the shadow of the nearby hardwood forest. I stared down a whitetail buck from across the patch of grass where an old farmhouse used to stand. I watched pheasants flash by when I flushed them from their nests in the meadows and listed to wild turkeys call their mates. I tracked a field mouse searching for seed among the dry winter grass. From my third-floor room on hot summer nights, I fell asleep to the song of the whippoorwill.
Naturally, when I started writing, I drew upon what I knew best for my settings. Both my Free Wolves series and my Harmony Duprie stories lean heavily on that area. But I fictionalize the details.
For my wolves, I work on the theory that they don’t want people to know exactly where they are. Between the two main packs in the stories, their territories cover parts of two states and may occasionally bleed over into a third. (New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio) I try to not be accurate when creating their pack lands to honor their need for secrecy.
When I write my mystery stories, I deliberately don’t reveal which state Harmony lives in. It gives me the ability to play with laws and police duties, which can vary from state to state. What the sheriff’s department in a Pennsylvania county does differs from their counterparts in Ohio. And laws dealing with things like gun ownership and speed limits may not be the same. By not saying exactly where Oak Grove is, I can use whichever legal system makes the most sense for the plot.
That doesn’t mean I make everything up. I spent several hours studying road maps for one chase scene that took place north of Pittsburgh. I wanted the road numbers, intersections, and exists to reflect reality. I often search out average drive times between cities to create an accurate timeline.
It’s been a lot of fun ‘building’ Oak Grove, naming its streets and populating it with a variety of people. Some of those eccentric characters may or may not be based on people I’ve known in real life. And some may be tributes to people I’ve loved. It’s been a challenge to give the town the happiness it deserves, and still include the challenges that small towns all over America face.
Anyway, I hope the love I have for that part of the country comes through in my books. But before I take off to see what the other authors are sharing, I’m going to say it again.
Be safe, everyone.
April 20, 2020
Talk about the setting of your book. Is it entirely imaginary or is it based on a real-life place?
Rules:
1. Link your blog to this hop.
2. Notify your following that you are participating in this blog hop.
3. Promise to visit/leave a comment on all participants’ blogs.
4. Tweet/or share each person’s blog post. Use #OpenBook when tweeting.
5. Put a banner on your blog that you are participating.
The landscape where you grew up sounds absolutely delightful. It must give you lots of inspiration for your books.
It was a great place to grow up. Out in the country, with more cows as neighbors than people. it meant that there was always someplace I could go to get away from people and listen to nature and my own thoughts.
I remember you’ve said in the past that you came from a large family, so the mountains and nature must have been a kind of sanctuary for you.
What a place to have a childhood. Much like the Devon coast and moors that I spent my formative years in. Places like that help make memories that can be so useful later.
Yes. It’s so much easier to create a background setting when all the details have been created for you.
Building a city in environs you understand is a compliment. I feel your pain on the names and intersections of state roads…Off Broadway, just past the Burger King in Long Beach is easier!
I’ve been to a city in Florida where most the east-west streets are avenues, the north-south ones are streets, and a lot of them are numbered, – in order, of course
I grew up in a government sectioned state. Major avenues every mile. Even off in the boonies the roads are section lines, to the mile. They might wander off into some farmer’s pasture or other. Unlike Texas where my father said they tied a rope to a drunk cowboy and put a road wherever he walked. Lived in PA for about 7 months. Beautiful, but the longest 7 months of this Southern boy’s life! Sleet in May?
Shoot. come to Wyoming. We had 6 inches of snow last week, and a blizzard last May!
My dad used to take us up to Dodge City, Ks when I was little, my mom wanted to see snow around Christmas. It was guarantee that it would follow us home, hang around a day and melt by Christmas!
That was Oklahoma. Still is, last time I was there.
Your post is very thought provoking for me, Patricia. I know that writers write what they know but I never thought about it like this before. I always write about people, towns and cities, I never try to write much about nature or animals other than briefly. I grew up a city girl so I never think about such things. I do like to read about them though.
Nature brings out the poetic side of me. I like to see if I can carry some of that over to my prose.
Sounds like you grew up in a beautiful place. You described it so well. And I’m impressed by your research of routes for car chases and making sure that travel times are realistic.
In the book I’m currently writing, I played with the the “how long does it take’ factor and pushed the edges of how fast can my main character get from one place to another without breaking scientific laws!
I love PA. I am working on a wolf shifter series set between upstate NY and NYC.
Oh, dear. It sounds like your wolves and mine might cross paths. I wonder if they will play nice together!