There’s something seductive about a vacation. Maybe it’s the idea of leaving your everyday self behind along with your work and your worries. Maybe it’s the opportunity to relax, to recharge, to reconnect with the ones you love.
Writers choose locations for their books as carefully as any family planning a holiday. It has to be someplace you’ll want to return to again and again. Close enough to be familiar; different enough to provide an escape.
Christie Ridgway (The Love Shack), whose books are set in Crescent Cove, California, says, “I love books that take me someplace special! A great escape setting can be rural, urban, mountain, ocean, or anywhere in between, but what makes it “great” and an “escape” is that the author convinces me this story couldn’t take place anywhere else.”
When Kristan Higgins (The Best Man) chose the Finger Lakes region of New York as the setting for her new Blue Heron series, she “wanted to make sure to pick a place that could hold reader (and author) interest for a few books. I wanted a fun industry to ground the stories…you know, if it had been a concrete slab company, that would’ve been slightly less picturesque than a small, family-owned vineyard. And I had to feel at home there, too, in order to convey those feelings of community, get a glimpse of what some issues might be like.”
For me, it has to be the beach – the crash of the waves, the heat of the sun, the caress of the cool ocean breezes. Who hasn’t dreamed of making out on a blanket on the sand or strolling hand in hand along the water’s edge?
When my husband’s father was jungle training in Panama, his family lived in Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. After we were married, with children of our own, my husband persuaded me to give the beaches of his childhood a try.
And I fell in love. Three years later, we moved to North Carolina. And when I was looking for a setting for my new contemporary romance series, I chose the fictional Dare Island in North Carolina’s Outer Banks.
Carolina Girl is a reunion story, about first times – first crush, first sex, first big, big mistake – and second chances. It’s about Harvard-educated, New York PR executive Meg Fletcher, who thinks she has everything she’s ever wanted until she loses it all. She comes home to Dare Island to help out at her parents’ bed-and-breakfast and runs smack into sexy builder, Sam Grady, her big brother’s best friend in high school, who wants…Meg. I hope you’ll enjoy their story!
Do you have a favorite setting? A favorite series? A favorite vacation spot that you think would make a wonderful setting for a story? Virgin River or Chesapeake Bay? Lucky Harbor or Shelter Bay? Share!
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Virginia, I love your first book and I can’t wait to read this one. I have driven through N.Carolina, but never got to visit the Outer Banks.. It’s on my Bucket List..
Thanks, Kathleen! I love being able to call my beach trips “research”!