When writing fiction, why is it set where it is? Some authors create places. I prefer placing mine in real towns and landscapes. Sometimes where that is will be influenced by the problems the characters will be facing. Because I know them best, Oregon, Arizona and Montana end up in most of my books.
In my books, of course, there's a love story but with complications. When I know the problem, the reason I am interested in writing the story, next comes its setting. I need to know where my characters live, their homes.
To give where these people live, I found some images from my own photos and others I'd purchased. Naturally, their homes are only part of the environment as they move around. Sometimes I only know where they'll roam once I start writing. That's the fun of writing, the discoveries I make along with them.
Desert Inferno
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In terms of nature, the Arizona desert is diverse, often not what the inexperienced expect. It is full of beauty and danger. Those who are careless find themselves easily hurt or dead. I tried to put that into this book-- both sides. Much of the story takes place out where life can be lost with one bad decision.
Bannister’s Way
Raven Lawrence, as a professor in a small liberal arts university, has a home she has renovated on the Tualatin River. She has turned it into a place she can work on her commissions for sculptures and a sanctuary for herself when she comes home frayed after a day with students who often don't appreciate art as she does.
As a child, my uncle temporarily rented a house on that river for a summer where I got
to visit to be with my cousins. It left strong memories, as well as descriptive material for her home. I'd love to live on a river-- above the hundred year flood zone, of course.
Moon Dust
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Susan, as an interior decorator, is able to fulfill her inner self with how she decorates that apartment with modern art and furnishings. Dane, on the other hand, has rarely considered what he wants but only what's the right thing to do. He has a secret that has colored his whole life and led to his wife wanting to leave him. Homes played a big role in this book.
Second Chance
Eight years
after Moon Dust, the story picks up with one of the youths Dane had helped and Susan’s best friend.
Judd’s passion is wildlife
rehabilitation and has begun a facility for that purpose, which he funds by
driving truck. It's a hardscrabble life for him as he holds the buildings together by hard work, wanting the second chance for wildlife that he had himself. Because of an experience we had with a wildlife rehab center, I used it for Judd's work-- plus wrote us into the book as a couple bringing an injured owl to such a center.
Evening Star
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Randy, a cop, is renovating an older home in Sellwood, one of Portland’s neighborhoods where it’s up and coming or deteriorating—depending on who bought the house. The book roams downstate to the ranch where Randy’s family lives as well as to Nevada.
Hidden Pearl
Her Dark
Angel
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I used multiple places in Portland for various scenes. Writing a book like that lets me take my memories back to places like Portland's Rose Garden.
From Here to
There
Montana
Christmas
Not so much a
love story as a continuation of From Here to There with a wife
determined to help her husband see Christmas can be a good thing as well as to bring his estranged family to their ranch for a time of healing and love.
It's a novella, set in the ranch world and the beauty of Montana. My main purpose with it, besides the family aspects, was how with a ranch, the work doesn't stop for holidays. The home is one the hero built for the heroine with all the feel of the West-- including its art.
determined to help her husband see Christmas can be a good thing as well as to bring his estranged family to their ranch for a time of healing and love.
It's a novella, set in the ranch world and the beauty of Montana. My main purpose with it, besides the family aspects, was how with a ranch, the work doesn't stop for holidays. The home is one the hero built for the heroine with all the feel of the West-- including its art.
Luck of the
Draw
When I wrote
this book in the 1970s, the world of rodeo was different than it is today. Our
country is different as that was the aftermath of the Vietnam War. I thought about updating it, as I had the others, but there was
no way. It had to stay 1973, which makes it a historical contemporary.
His transient life seemed best depicted by a motel, and I found this photo on Stencil with about as period a look as I could get. I also wanted the book to have the feel of Pendleton, the city, where I have been more than a few times-- a nice town with a high desert feel, surrounded by wheat fields and cattle ranching country.
His transient life seemed best depicted by a motel, and I found this photo on Stencil with about as period a look as I could get. I also wanted the book to have the feel of Pendleton, the city, where I have been more than a few times-- a nice town with a high desert feel, surrounded by wheat fields and cattle ranching country.
4 comments:
I forgot how many books I have read of yours and these little summarries of the places bring them back. Hope it intersts some to read them.
Or, like with how you do with your painting discussions, encourages someone else to find their own setting for a book :)
Do you tack these photos on a board when you write so that you can look at them? I think it would be very useful to have such images when writing.
I do that now but back when most of these were written, no internet and only my imagination. I had though been the places they all had their homes, been in many of them due to many years of living in those areas or spending vacations. Today's writers have so many more tools. I began when a card catalogue in a library was where research happened lol
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