Never Put Off Until Tomorrow...

by Shannon Baker

I had a colonoscopy this week.

The only remarkable thing about it was how totally unremarkable it was. Sure, I got a little hungry. And I had a kind of queasy hour or so before I got into the flow, but in the grand scheme of things, it was much less painful than sitting through August in Osage County.

And yet, if you swept all the annoyance at being harassed by my health care providers, the dread of having to do it, the effort of putting it off, the bone-deep belief that the test would reveal nothing but the cutest colon, and the nagging of caring friends, you’d see a pile of negativeness far larger and lumpier than the mild inconvenience of the actual procedure.

Which brings me to marketing. As it would.

Much like my conviction that the colonoscopy would be torture, I’ve convinced myself that marketing is the Devil. It takes time. That’s time I could be writing. It’s mysterious and often times ineffective. Yet, everyone agrees you have to do something.

No one knows what magic cocktail of direct mail, personal appearances, blog tours, paid advertising, and giveaways will net that intoxicating high of sales. Unless, of course, you crack the BookBub code and then you can retire on royalties.

I’ve handled marketing in about the same dysfunctional manner as going in for the colonoscopy. I’ve denied the need to do it. I’ve avoided it at all costs. I’ve skirted around it and touched on it half-heartedly, sort of like going in for yearly checkups but not making the total commitment.

I made lists of books stores to contact or reviewers to query. And put off calling because *whine* cold calling is scary. So instead of doing, I procrastinated and worried, then I climbed on the I Suck Train for not doing what I should have done.

Well, kids, this is where I get off. A few months ago a friend, Master Marketer Julie Kazimer, convinced me I need to do it. Much like the impending retirement of my patron (husband) nudged me into getting the colonoscopy while it was still covered by insurance, I realized the time has come for me to jump into the marketing fray.

So I did. I started making lists and then forcing myself to make the calls and write the emails and follow up.  Here’s what I discovered:

Just as the unremarkableness of the colonoscopy, setting up book signings and arranging a blog tour is not that big of a deal. Sure, it takes some time. But it’s not like someone is bludgeoning me with a fence post.  There is surprisingly little physical pain involved in phone calls and emails.

 

Book signing that didn’t hurt. With William Kent Krueger and Sean Dolittle

I’ve even forced myself to teach a few workshops and do some public speaking. And there was absolutely no prescription pain medication involved. Although I might or might not have self-medicated after the fact, in a purely congratulatory fashion.

As Granddad used to say, (sure, someone else made it famous but Granddad did say it a lot so I’m going with possession being 9/10ths and all that)  “Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today.”  

It might sell a book or two and it keeps you off that Crazy Train.

Trusting the Process

by Shannon Baker

There are as many ways to write as there are writers. More, in fact, because what works for one writer for one book might not work for the next book. For now, I’ve discovered a method that seems to work for me.

I charge through the first draft without pausing to look back. I set a challenging daily word count and begin at page one and write through until the last chapter. I start off with a fairly clear idea of the plot. I try to use the four part method and have reversals and twists at the appropriate spots. But even with all the planning, the whole boat inevitably sails off the edge of the world. It takes longer to set up scenes than I anticipated or I get a better idea along the way. Sometimes, my initial plot only has a place marker that says something like, she must be betrayed by him and end up at the ranch.

I used to get bent when I didn’t know all the details at the outset. Or if I had a better idea, I’d feel as if I needed to fix the previous pages before I moved on. But I’m teaching myself to trust the process and to forge ahead without any more editing than making notes about what needs to be included or changed. I know that those changes might change again and again before the end of the book so working on them now only slows the process.

What this means is that I can gallop very quickly through a first draft. But when it’s done, I’ve got a terrible mess. It’s the kind of disaster that pops me wide awake at 2 A.M. wondering how it will ever come together. But I soothe myself with the knowledge that it usually does gel at some point and nothing is done that can’t be undone.

Yesterday I finished my draft and today I’m staring at a pile of pages that I know are mostly crap. To be honest, I can’t remember some of the scenes or the clues I placed. I’m terrified to read the drivel I slapped down. Many of those words were grudgingly written with one eye to the word count, bargaining with myself that as soon as I finished the daily goal I could ride my bike or have a cookie. I am not above bribery. Also, I’m not entirely adult.

Hopefully I’ll find something salvageable in the dross. I know the pacing is off because I didn’t hit my stride until about half way through. So I will need to move chunks of exposition from the beginning, punching up the pace, adding clues.

But this first draft is the frame. What I’ll begin with on this second go is adding the rooms and giving it the structure. From there, I’ll put up the drywall by making sure it flows in a cohesive whole. Finally, there will be painting and bringing in the furniture and artwork that will finish it off.

I’ve got a long way to go before this puppy is housebroken. (How many metaphors can I come up with for one manuscript?) But I’ve got one stage down and am feeling hopeful.

What is your process and have you learned to trust it?

Emphatically Embracing

 by Shannon Baker

Oh, that Gwyneth Paltrow. Bless  her heart. She’s been credited with some interesting quotes. Things like:

"Well, you know, beauty fades! I just turned 29, so I probably don't have that many good years left in me. So there will be a down side eventually."

And this:

"I'd rather smoke crack than eat cheese from a tin.”

And:

"I would rather die than let my kid eat Cup-a-Soup."

One of my favorites:

"I am who I am. I can't pretend to be somebody who makes $25,000 a year."

If I wanted to be fair (and really, what fun is fair?) I’d have to say that if someone followed me around they’d catch some pretty self-absorbed and silly quotes. I think at aged 29, I probably thought my best years were behind me, too. And though I don’t eat squeezy cheese, it was always a staple in the finals week care packages I sent to my daughter. According to Gwyneth, that probably means I ought to kill myself and smoke crack.

However, she did come up with a phrase that resonates with me.

Consciously uncoupling.

Granted, she used this phrase to describe the end of her marriage and I didn’t so much consciously uncouple as I divorced my first husband. I have no intention of uncoupling from my guy now, consciously or subliminally. But there are a few things I’d do well to uncouple from.

I need to uncouple from Facebook. Maybe not entirely, but it would be good to back off from seeing which celebrities have twins or finding out what element I am. (Air, by the way.) I live in relative isolation so, as a writer, it’s good to hang out on FB from time to time to study contemporary culture and to catch up with friends. But I need to uncouple from spending too much time there at the detriment of getting my own words down.

I need to uncouple from comparing myself to others. For those of us who know what the term “flower child” means, you might remember the Desiderata being a very popular poem. I would do well to keep this gem in my head:

If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter;
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.

I’m not a NY Times Bestseller and I’m not the person who will write her novel as soon as she has the time. It does me no good to stress or gloat about where I am in comparison to others. Maybe this is what Gwyneth meant when she said she couldn’t pretend to be someone who makes $25K a year.

I need to uncouple from my negativity. Again, from the Desiderata (I like these quotes better than Gwyneth’s words of wisdom.)

Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.

Instead of wasting my time worrying about the next book or the next series and what will happen if I never score another book contract or sell another copy, I need to feel good about what I’ve done. And get excited about what I’m writing now.

Even though consciously uncoupling is meant to be a positive thing, it’s couched in negative verbiage. So, with due respect to Gwyneth, I’m going to turn it around. Instead of consciously uncoupling, I’m going to Emphatically Embrace.

I’ll embrace focused writing time, embrace my own journey, embrace the feeling of accomplishment and working toward the next goal.

How about you? What do you Emphatically Embrace?

In Which Nora and Shannon Return Home

by Shannon Baker

One question writers often get is: How much of you is in your main character?

With me and Nora, I can answer, not much. Nora is an avid environmentalist. While I’m concerned about the environment and I recycle, watch my water usage, take care to save energy and drive a fuel efficient car, I’m hardly an activist. Inspiration for Nora came while I lived in Flagstaff and worked at an environmental non-profit, The Grand Canyon Trust.

One way Nora and I are very much alike is in our love for Boulder, Colorado. My first experience with Boulder was in 1971, when my family moved there. I was in sixth grade and fell in love with the Flatirons. Downtown Boulder was the hippy epicenter and though I was too young to participate in that scene, something about Boulder resonated with my soul. We only lived there a year and we moved on.

When I got to restart my life, I chose Boulder in 2003. This time around, I spent as much time as possible hiking and biking in the mountains and the foothills before life took me away. I landed in Flagstaff, AZ. Not a bad place and the inspiration for the Nora Abbott Mystery Series. At the end of Tainted Mountain, the first in the series, Nora feels like she needs a place to start over. And where else would she choose but my favorite place, Boulder.

I was thrilled to steep myself in setting, picture the quirky inhabitants, bask in the shadow of the Flatirons, revel in the majesty of the Rockies. And then, wonder of wonders, I got a call from a former colleague recruiting me to join a startup. Me, Nora, Flagstaff, Boulder. Art imitating life imitating art.

For a few months I didn’t have to imagine Nora’s surroundings. I biked the same roads, hiked the same trails, drank beer in the same outdoor cafes. Wait, I don’t have a scene where Nora drinks beer on the Pearl Street Mall. I probably should have.

Alas, my stay in Boulder ended too soon. As one friend put it, I’m an itinerate writer. But Nora’s Boulder story is just beginning. She’s due to hit the shelves March 8^th. If you’ve ever wanted to hang out in the People’s Republic of Boulder for a bit, get your heart rate amped by murder and weapons of mass destruction, and find out how a non-profit really works, consider picking up Broken Trust.

As for me, I’m currently writing from the windswept prairie of southwestern Nebraska. I don’t envision Nora winding up here anytime soon. 

Location, Location, Location

by Shannon Baker

The writer’s dream is to quit the day job and write full time. In my case, my day job quit me. Sometimes risks pay off big time and sometimes… In the windshield/bug battle, this time, I was the bug.

Last June, I moved from Flagstaff to Boulder to join a medical device start-up. It didn’t exactly start up so in April, I found myself out of a job. Although I spent the summer doing all the great things I love to do in Boulder, riding my bike, hiking, spending time on Boulder Creek and enjoying all the wonderful high altitude sun. I spent a lot of time looking for jobs, applying, interviewing and then washing and repeating.

                                                Backpack trip in the Rockies this summer.

It’s hard to admit this in public because it makes me sound like a big, fat loser. I’d like to think I’m smart enough and that I don’t smell bad or have an unusually annoying personality. (A little annoying is natural. It is.) The truth is, I’m a woman of a certain age. I read the statistics and have listened to enough NPR to know finding that senior level job is tough.

So, instead of being the person sitting in the FEMA trailer five years after the hurricane saying, “Why won’t someone help me?” Or the tearful woman on NPR saying she’s run through all her savings, I’m taking drastic measures.

We penciled it out, plotted our course and have gone past the point of no return. If we sell out in Boulder and move to Nebraska, the difference in our income versus expenses will make it possible for me to not go after a day job. The guy with the steady job retires in 623 days (less by the time this blog is published) and we’ve got a house in Tucson waiting. In the meantime, I’ve got a plan to supplement our income that involves a pen name and epubbing, and I have a new mystery series I’m super excited about.

                                                         Long, lonely road in Nebraska

I’m not sure I believe in the universe having a plan for individuals but here’s what happened: I listed our house on Monday. On Wednesday we signed a contract with the buyers for cash to close in 3 weeks. On Friday I drove to Nebraska to look at houses. On Saturday we signed a contract to close in two weeks.

 Now I’ve got to make a dash to Tucson to haul half our belongings down because the new place is very small. It’s really a micro house no one is allowed to visit. Load up a hot tub we have in Flagstaff because if we’re going to move to Nebraska we need some perks. And be back up here to hit all the closings and finish the move.

When this post hits, all of these things should be done and we’ll be in the British Virgin Islands on a 47 foot catamaran. It’s a trip we’ve planned for months and we leave the day after we sign off on the Boulder house.

Come November 1 I’ll be a stay at home writer. I have to leave my favorite place on earth to do it but a little sacrifice is good for the character. 

And… Full Time Writer!

There's No Place Like Home

by Shannon Baker

I know the mystery world is on the high/low this week with Bouchercon fall-out. The high of soaking up mystery book vibes, the low of total exhaustion. I see the pictures and posts all over the Interwebs. I’m sad I couldn’t be there for the good times and I know they were legion.

But I experienced some pretty awesome writerness this past weekend, as well. I got to hang out, learn, be inspired, and catch book industry gossip in Denver at the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers Colorado Gold Conference. Since I started attending this con, close to twenty years ago, I haven’t missed it once. I debated long and hard this year, thinking maybe I’d head east to Albany for my first ever Bouchercon, but in the end, I couldn’t walk away from what might be my favorite weekend of the year.

Where Bouchercon and Malice Domestic are fan based conferences, Colorado Gold focuses on writers, the craft of commercial fiction, and the industry. From Friday morning until Sunday noon, four sessions run every hour all day with workshops geared toward beginners, seasoned and even multi-pubbed writers. It’s heavily genre laden so you won’t find a lot of raised noses at mystery writers or romancers or scifi/fantasy.

For me, Colorado Gold is the Woodstock of writers conferences. We all get down in the mud, expose ourselves, and have the time of our lives. Okay, I might have stretched that metaphor some, but a conference like this is one place where writers can go and be surrounded with others who share our same dysfunctions (which are also legion).

When I attended my first Colorado Gold, I brought a completed manuscript with me, certain it would thrill an agent and I’d be off on my publishing adventure. I signed up for a one-on-one session with Michael Seidman, a real live New York editor, to critique my first three pages. We got through page one, which started 1/3 of the way down the page. He didn’t spare the feelings of an idealistic Nebraska girl. I walked out of that session barely holding back tears, ready to abandon all writing aspirations. But I ran into Janet Fogg and Karen Duvall, Julie Kaewart and Karen Lin, who understood and who assured me that writer misery loves company and to this day, are still my critique partners.

        Joanne Kennedy, me, Janet Fogg at 2009 Colorado Gold with our Pen Awards for First Novel

I first won the contest for unpublished writers at Colorado Gold in 1997. I was sure I’d be published within a year. I won the contest two more times, the last in 2008. I was finally offered a contract by Midnight Ink in 2012. It’s no coincidence I met the editor who acquired that book, Terri Bischoff, at the Colorado Gold conference.

I have no doubt I would not be published today had it not been for RMFW and the Colorado Gold conference. Attending year after year is like a Masters degree in commercial fiction and continuing education. Every time I gain some competency in a small area of craft, I discover a whole array of skills I need to learn that I didn’t even know I didn’t know, yet. Know what I mean? So I’ll keep going and keep learning and hopefully, keep improving.

With Midnight Ink Acquisitions Editor, Terri Bischoff and my contract for Tainted Mountain

 

I would have loved spending time in Albany with readers and other mystery writers and perhaps hanging out for a minute or two in the bar. But schmoozing with the writers at the Colorado Gold conference is like getting to spend the holidays at Grandma’s, with only the fun cousins and cool aunts and uncles, and no one brings green Jello.

No Hesitation

By Shannon Baker

As writers, we often insert situations in our stories that illustrate principles. Of course, we try to be subtle as we layer in symbolism and analogy. But sometimes, real life gives us great stories to serve as life lessons.

I am not a risk-taker by nature. So when I’m afraid to try something new or I’m tempted to settle into the known and secure life, I remember an incident years ago.

My daughter, Erin, was eleven years-old and we were camping at Horseshoe Campground just outside of Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills on Labor Day. Summer was dwindling to a close and school had already started so this was our last outing before the rampaging activities of fall at our feed store in Nebraska and school sports geared up.

A large rock guarded the corner of Horseshoe Lake. To my memory it seems like it rose straight up from the water about 50 feet. It was probably much shorter. I can tell you it was one high platform. Local teenagers jumped from the rock into the deep lake. They were having a blast, sailing in and climbing back up.

Erin watched this with interest the first afternoon we camped. On the second day, she decided she wanted to try it. I climbed the rock with her and peered over the ledge as she contemplated the jump. To give her courage, I scurried back down and swam out and treaded water not far from where she’d enter. She stood at the edge trying to get her nerve up and I treaded water until my legs felt weary. In the end, she retreated without jumping.

What she perceived as defeat stayed with her throughout the evening and the next day as we toured the Black Hills. The next morning, as we packed up camp, I caught her gazing longingly across the lake as the big kids once again gathered and threw themselves off the cliff. We finished loading the gear and piled into the pickup. She never took her eyes off the rock as we drove past and headed out of the campground.

We stopped before entering the highway that would take us back to our real lives. Suddenly she shouted, “Wait! I want to jump.”

To the grumbles of the other family members, I insisted we stop, dig for our suits and let her change. We drove back and I once again swam out into the cold lake as she climbed the rock. This time, she only hesitated a second, then hurled herself off the cliff.

She hit the water and sank deep. A second later, her head bobbed up and her face split in a grin of accomplishment. Her pride spilled over and lasted for days. I don’t know, maybe it was a brick in her character growth and helped make her the strong young woman she is today.

What I do know is how it affected me. If she hadn't pushed herself beyond her comfort zone, if she hadn’t wanted to experience the flight and splash, she’d have gone home to the status quo and wouldn't have lost anything.

But by pushing herself, overcoming her fear, she earned not only the experience, she gained confidence to jump higher next time, to live fuller and freer.

When I asked her why she finally decided to try again, she said, “I realized I might not ever have another chance.”

When I’m hesitant to try something new and take a big chance, I try to seize the courage my young daughter taught me that day. I make a decision, put aside the fear and…

JUMP!

This IS My Happy Face

by Shannon Baker

I recently saw a funny ditty on You Tube about Bitchy Resting Face.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3v98CPXNiSk

At first I laughed, then realized, that’s what’s happening to me. My dear companion often asks me, “What’s the matter?” Or, “You’re scowling out the window again.” Or, “What did I do to piss you off?”

I’m not angry. I’m not sad. I might be puzzled and a bit frustrated, but all in all, life is pretty fine. The cause for the Bitchy Resting Face is that I’m trying to work out something. Several somethings, in fact.

First, there is the disturbing fact that I was laid off my day job two months ago. So now I’m wondering if I ought to do contracting, thus setting my own hours and making time for my dear companion’s strange schedule and my writing. That would lead to less income, more stress as I start up my own business and lots of stuff I keep putting on the list. Meanwhile, I’m sending out resumes and wondering if any of those jobs would be fun and exciting. If I actually land a new position, I’ll be starting a new job at a new company with new people and new routines. Thinking about it makes my face scrunch all up.

Then, I finished a draft of my next book and sent it out to critique partners. Will they like it? Will I end up dismantling it and doing major rewrites? When will they get back to me and how much time will it take to fix what they find wrong?

I had a book released in March. How are sales of that going? What promotion do I need to do to increase them? Maybe I ought to add a few signings. I could write a few more blogs.

Book two is somewhere in the publishing pipeline. I think I’m pretty much finished with it until copy edits or galley proofs or whatever the next step really is. I’ve seen a simple mockup of the cover and I’m happy with it. But I need to write the acknowledgments and dedication. I think. Maybe I already did that. I need to check.

I’m plotting a new series and book one of that series. It’s more ambitious than anything I’ve done before. Am I up to it? From the brick wall my brain turned into, I’m doubting it. I spend a great deal of my time holed up inside my head wondering what clues Kate can find that will lead her to the solution and just how soon they should be revealed.

In the meantime, since I’m not chained to a 9 to 5, I’ve been tearing up the trails and paths, getting out on my bike or with my backpack as often as possible before I go back to gainful employment.

I’d tell you that as soon as I get this job issue straightened out and the new series plotted and book 3 is turned in, I’ll be a glowing portrait radiating inner beauty. I know better, though. By that time, there will be another book, another life crisis, and I’ll be working out something complicated in my head.

So while I’m at the pool or wandering by a mountain stream swollen with summer melt-off, or even just sitting on the patio enjoying the soft breeze, my eyebrows are drawn together, my mouth is puckered and I seem to be scowling. Understand, I’m not unhappy. Sadly, I suffer from Bitchy Resting Face, exacerbated by deep schizophrenia and aggravated distraction.

This is me, displaying my natural Bitchy Resting Face. I'm actually having a really good time.

Idea Fairy

by Shannon Baker

Where do you get your ideas?

Writers get asked that all the time. Sit in on writers’ panels and workshops and it’s bound to come up 85.6% of the time. (Yes, I made up the statistic.) Most writers are polite but the overwhelming responses I’ve heard all come down to this: they have so many ideas coming at them so frequently they’re like Minnesota mosquitoes in June.

I want to shout, “ARE YOU SERIOUS?!”

My measly excuse for a lazy-assed brain churns out ideas at about the same the rate as ice freezing in Tucson.  

I worked on the same novel for nine years because I thought it might be the only good idea I’d ever come up with. Ever. And really, that one didn’t come from me, either. After I told some writer friends about a random news story I found interesting, one of them asked, “When are you going to write the book?”

If I’d been one of those writers who have too many good ideas to use, I’d have figured that out all on my own. But I’m much too dense to see the obvious.  Ideas are doing a kamikaze dive into my brain and I’m wondering if we should have meatloaf for dinner or if I ought to paint the living room red.

But then we moved to Flagstaff a while back. I started reading the paper to acquaint myself with the goings on around town. And there it was--the idea I’d been afraid would never arrive.

So get this: In Flagstaff, just an hour or so from the desert, there is a ski resort, Snowbowl. It’s one of the oldest in the country, dating back to 1938. Did I mention the proximity to the desert, which would hint at lack of water, and, hey, we’re in a drought!

American’s are nothing if not determined. Instead of giving in to logic, Snowbowl’s owners decided to make snow. Still, lack of water and all that. So they are using reclaimed waste water. Grey water. Pretty ingenious, right?

Turns out, not one, not two, but thirteen Native American tribes consider that mountain sacred. It features heavily into their creation stories. Are they happy about the ski resort? Naw. Does treated wastewater tickle them? Not at all.

That’s one big conflict. Perfect for a murder mystery. And I didn’t even need my writer friends, who have ideas to spare, point it out to me.

I started researching tribes in the area and found out, Hopi, one of the smallest tribes in the world lives on isolated mesas and one of their villages is the oldest constantly inhabited village in North America. This small tribe believes they are responsible for the survival of the world. The Whole World.  

Then I got a job working for The Grand Canyon Trust, an environmental non-profit whose mission is protection and restoration of landscapes on the Colorado Plateau. (If you don’t know, and I didn’t before I got the job, the Colorado Plateau covers northern Arizona to southern Utah.) For twenty years I’d lived in the Nebraska Sandhills, where environmentalists are shot on sight. More conflict.

 So my writer’s “What if” bone kicked in and I ended up with all these ideas. When Tainted Mountain opens, Nora Abbott is the owner of ski resort in Flagstaff on a sacred mountain and she’s just won a court victory allowing her to make snow. She’s got environmentalist tendencies which clash with mining interests and big business. The kachinas, Hopi spirits of the mountain, are not pleased. And let’s not even get into the issues with her annoying mother.

The what ifs kept coming and pretty soon I had a bunch of ideas. In fact, I had so many that I ended up with a series.

So now I’m feeling cocky. Look at me, the writer with enough ideas for the next few books.

Then a very successful writer friend of mine brought me back down to where I live. She was talking about her multi-book series and said, “I need to get this book finished so I can work on all these other books I really want to write.”

You mean one mystery series isn’t enough? I should be working on something else? She has so many ideas she doesn’t know where to start. Me? Not so much.

Where will I ever get another idea? 

What about you, where do you get your ideas, and do you have any to spare?

Like a Rolling Stone

by Shannon Baker

 

I’m adaptable. Until I went to high school, I’d never lived in the same place for more than two and a half years.  My father worked for a big retailer and we moved every two or three years as he climbed up the corporate ladder. We grew up like Army brats, until my mother had enough and forced us all back to my parents’ hometown in western Nebraska. When I graduated from college (Go Big Red) I’d lived in Lincoln, NE for the longest I’d lived anywhere.

I marvel at people who still live in the town they in which they grew up. Or live in the same house for twenty years. I have friends whose children graduated from the same high school where they marched to Pomp and Circumstance. That kind of continuity seems like a fantasy to me.

Then I got married and moved to the Nebraska Sandhills. I had a couple of kids and put down roots enough to feed me for twenty years. I even lived in the same house for fifteen of those. When I left, I didn’t take much with me.

Since then, I’ve been light on my feet. I moved from Nebraska to Colorado, from big family house to apartment to townhouse. Then from Colorado to Flagstaff, AZ, a rental house and then a small cabin. And now, whew, I’m back up on the Front Range and loving it. But we have a house in Tucson, too, and I hope to bounce back and forth with some regularity.  (The pic is Mt. Humphreys just outside of Flagstaff and the ski area I used as inspiration for Tainted Mountain.)

Modern communication makes accumulating friends in all these places fairly easy. I can email, text, catch up on Facebook and call friends several hundred miles away with as much frequency as when we lived in the same town. It’s a little harder to share a bottle of wine at happy hour, though. 

Each place brings challenges and new experiences. As a child, that first day of school could be intimidating but soon I’d have a whole posse of friends. Now, it’s an adventure to find a new dentist, figure out the best grocery store, and learn the walking paths and routes around town. While I have been known to pull into a random parking lot and yell obscenities because I’ve been lost for the last half hour and keep going the wrong way on one way streets, for the most part, I love discovering my new digs.

Is it any wonder that without giving it much thought, I’ve ended up taking Nora Abbott, the main character in the (duh) Nora Abbott Mystery Series, all over the west? She seems to have the same transient spirit I do. The first book is set in Flagstaff and book 2, Broken Trust, is in Boulder. (You see a trend?) Book 3 takes her back south to Moab, UT. (The pic is in Canyonlands, where Nora will find trouble in Book 3.)  I’ve got ideas for her doing time in Nebraska and Wyoming and maybe even Tucson.

As a reader, I’m drawn to books with a strong sense of place. I love the way writers set me down in bustling London or in the middle of a nor’ easter in Maine, or on a sweltering New Orleans veranda.  For now, I’m keeping Nora in the west. It is a landscape I know and love. But I don’t see her gathering any moss in the near future.

What are some of your favorite settings in books you’ve read? Where would you like to read about?