Location, location, location is the real estate maven's cry. Location matters. It can make the value and thus price of property soar or it can bring it down to bargain basement levels. Add a new super highway or a shopping mall - location shifted in value from ordinary to extreme.
What writers sometimes forget in their haste to create a story, to weave a tale, is that location matters to writers and readers alike. Nothing can jolt my interest out of a good read faster than an author making a major mistake about location. I read a book a year or so ago that would have been a good novel but the author lost me when they described the location in an area of southern Arkansas that I know reasonably well as being in the Ozark, which is isn't. If you're in the mountains in lower Arkansas, then it's the Ouachitas, not the Ozarks and the forest that the author described as filled with pine trees and other evergreens sounded more like Colorado than the natural state. Even worse, their story dipped far enough south to actually be set in what's known as the Ark-La-Tex, a flat region encompassing parts of Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas. It's oil country and you're far more likely to see nodding donkeys (oil pump stations) in the fields than mountains. The author is a well-known, best selling author which to me makes the error even worse.
That example and another years ago when a co-worker wanted to wallop Stephen King silly for giving her hometown of Pratt, Kansas a town square when the business districts lines the highway that passes thorugh town instead inspired me to get my locations right.
So in my novels, those out in the hands of the reading public and those coming soon, I focus on location, location, location. In my contemporary romance, a second chance at love story, Love Never Fails,(Rebel Ink Press) the setting is the small town where I live, Neosho, Missouri. As both the eBook version and the paperback fly into the hands of local readers, I'm glad that I did my homework well because - fingers crossed - so far I've had no complaints that I got the setting wrong in any way.
In my Love Covenant series of paranormal romances (Love Tattoo, Love Scars, Love Knots) with sexy Irish vampire Will Brennan and his Texas gal singer Cara, all of the settings, from Memphis to Rusk, Texas and many other spots when they hit the road in book three are places I've been and know at least a little.
Kinfolk, my contemporary romance from Champagne Books that debuted in July is set in the northwest corner of Arkansas just below the southwest corner of Missouri where I live. It's an area I know quite well and the places where they eat and shop, well, they're places I've done the same things.
In my upcoming October release from Rebel Ink Press, Witness Protection Program, I return to an Arkansas setting in an area of the state that I know reasonably well and the heroine's hometown of Bossier City, Louisiana is a place I can almost (and would love to) call home.
Some of my other upcoming novels also have familiar settings. Guy's Angel, coming next year from Rebel Ink Press is set in my hometown of St. Joseph, Missouri in 1925. I grew up on my grandparents' stories of that time and place. Their tales were my ABC's and my Mother Goose long before I set foot in a classroom so I made a familiar place work in a time I heard a lot about, augmented with some historical research and help from several cousins. Other upcoming novels are set in Arkansas, in Neosho, in northwest Oklahoma, and even Tulsa, Oklahoma. My current WIP is back in Neosho. Even my historical novella, The Marriage Cure, out from Astraea Press is set in the pioneer era of the county where I live and in a valley just below where I spent the first twelve years of married life.
I take my locations seriously and I hope that it shows!
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1 comments:
With Google Earth and Google maps there is no reason to get the location and scenery so wrong. Once read a story where there were mountains in Houston TX - Duh, no there aren't. Drives me crazy when people make such huge mistakes with real cities. If you don't know the area well enough to write about it then make up a city.
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