Hey to everyone out there in Grip-land! This is my first official 'Jenna' post but I feel like I know you already. *sly grin* This week our topic is 'setting the scene', which is a part of creating a book or story that I really enjoy, so let's get right to it.
Sometimes, my plot or characters are all that matter. I've written a few stories where the location was never named. Usually in novels, the setting matters so I pick a spot from the wide variety of places I have traveled...home--> Walmart--> grocery store.
Okay, I have traveled a bit more than that, but not much. That's where the beauty of the internet kicks in. When I was a kid, I'd have had to drag my rear to the library to research the kind of stuff that can now be found online. Jude and I are in the middle of a Phaze Rocks series called Slippery When Wet-- all the heroes in these novellas have recently been released from Corcoran State Prison in California. I promise you, I've never been inside COR. But I have half a dozen sites bookmarked which gave us tons of great insider information.
In our Untamed Hearts shifter series, Jude and I created an undisclosed location, near a small village we made up, somewhere in the north. This works because shifters are other-worldly, and don't necessarily need to be located in California or Chicago (two of my location favorites!)
For our Kindred Spirits series, Jude secured this picture (with sexual favors, I think) and I fell in love with it. It made the cover of the series, with an eerie glow added by the cover artist, to fit our ghostly theme. In the reviews we've recieved on Ethan's Choice so far, people don't know if Whiskers' Seaside Inn is a real place or not, but they love the homey feel we've given it. Jude and I love to hear that, it's exactly what we were after.
Sometimes, when I don't want to focus on a lot of research, I'll make up a town. I do that often if I don't want readers to get bogged down in a location they're familiar with, and spend half the book thinking, "Hey, Main Street never intersects Whazzup Aveune!"I've been to Seattle and have used that as the backdrop for a couple books. I like Chicago for when I need a big city where lots of things could happen.
At the end of the month I have a story in TEB's Pleasure Bound anthology and I had to pick a vacation spot. I chose Hawaii, and borrowed a tourist guide book from someone who used to live there. That, with the internet, gave me lots of tidbits to toss into the story. The added benefit was me, walking around for a month, saying "Howzit, bra?" like Dog the Bounty Hunter.
Bottom line for me, location isn't the first thing I think about when planning a story, unless it's for a themed call. But I do like to use a variety of places, and thanks to the internet, I think I get away with it reasonably well. Aloha. *g*
