Small Town Settings-Big Author Challenges

By Linda Lovely

I write romantic suspense and mysteries with romantic elements. My choice of setting—large city or small town—plays a large part in shaping each of my novels. Of the five books I’ve published to date, all but one feature small towns—well, actually small communities, which is slightly different.

My decision about setting is driven by two factors—familiarity and plot. Since I’ve lived in smaller communities most of my life, I have a good grasp of their social fabric and how things work, including who has power/clout and how it can be used for good or evil. This helps me construct credible plots that are intimate and personal.

In big-city thrillers, the villains (and heroines) tend to be individuals we’re unlikely to meet face-to-face. I find plots far more compelling if the villains could be signing my paycheck or passing the collection plate at church. I’m also more passionate about rooting for heroines and heroes who sound a lot like next-door neighbors who share my everyday joys and troubles.

That’s not to say there aren’t problems writing small-town fiction. Here are three biggies:

• Accuracy & Research. If your fiction is set current day in a “real” small town, you’d better be committed to doing solid research. You also have to expect disconnects between your research and readers’ experiences. The trendy restaurant where your heroine hangs out may have gone belly up by the time your reader visits it on the written page. The woods where you have a crucial chase scene may be leveled to make way for a used car dealership. Streets may be renamed. Courthouses may be moved. The list is endless.
• Permission If you plan to include real institutions and commercial entities in your book, seek written permission if there’s any chance someone might think the mentions put them in an unflattering light. An example? Saying your heroine is poisoned at her favorite restaurant—even if the villain (who has no association with the eatery) slips in the poison while your heroine visits the ladies’ room. Still most restauranteurs would not want “poison” and their business name coupled in the same paragraph. 
• Unintended Slurs. Okay, we’re talking fiction, but that doesn’t mean “real” police officers, sheriff’s deputies, bankers, preachers, developers, university presidents, or entrepreneurs who reside in your real burg won’t see the depiction of any unsavory characters in their professions or institutions as being a potential slap in the face.  

So, how can an author solve these problems? Here’s what I’ve done on a book-by-book basis.

DEAR KILLER: I lived on a barrier island outside Beaufort, South Carolina, for a dozen years. I wanted to capture the special flavor of the Lowcountry and life in a small residential/resort community. However, I didn’t want to use any real island since the plot included less than admirable characters in the island’s power structure. My solution? Fictional Dear Island, a composite of several islands. I located it near Beaufort, but in a fictional adjacent county. This compromise allows my characters to visit many favorite tourist spots in Beaufort, Hilton Head, and Charleston without the risk of accidentally impugning anyone’s reputation.  

NO WAKE ZONE: My second Marley Clark mystery is set in Spirit Lake/Lake Okoboji, Iowa. I love this real community, having spent many wonderful summers there with my aunt, uncle and cousins. There’s a statue of my late cousin Steve Kennedy on the waterfront, honoring his contributions to the area. I collaborated on the history of the area with Steve. After he died, I asked for special permission to include the Queen II excursion boat, the Iowa Great Lakes Maritime Museum, and Arnolds Park, a century-plus old amusement park, in the plot. It’s worked out beautifully.

DEAD HUNT: This is the second romantic thriller in my “Smart Women, Dumb Luck” series. I now live in Upstate South Carolina, and wanted to incorporate real and very special Foothills wilderness locations and state parks in this plot. However, I once again decided on a fictional town and county. In this case, the heroine is head of security for a private university, and I didn’t want to associate threats with any real university so I created fictional Blue Ridge University.  

LIES:  Unlike my prior novels, this romantic suspense is not set current day. It takes place in 1938 in a real Mississippi River town, Keokuk, Iowa (my hometown). While I did considerable research to make things as accurate as possible, I also asked two librarian/historians to review the manuscript for accuracy. While I attempted to get most things “right,” I did create a fictional bank to avoid maligning the history of any current institutions. At the suggestion of one of the reviewers, I’ve also changed the names of a couple of my fictional characters to avoid any possibility of offense. For example, I had no idea that the name I picked for one of my characters was the owner of a bank in 1938 and his relatives still live in the town. LIES is set for release this summer.

If you’d like to know more about my settings or my writing process, please visit my website— www.lindalovely.com —or add in any comment here that you’d like to receive my newsletter. Don’t worry, you won’t be inundated. I tend to send an average of one newsletter a year!  

HOPE CAN BE A SLIPPERY LITTLE DEVIL

By Linda Lovely

“There is a crack in everything.
That's how the light gets in.” 
― Leonard Cohen, Selected Poems, 1956-1968

This month’s blog theme is hope—a slippery little devil that seems hardest to grasp when we need its restorative powers most. I must admit I’ve all but abandoned hope of finding an amicable solution to a controversy that has me sleeping too little and worrying too much. In this instance, hope eludes me because so many elements are beyond my control.

So what does that say about hope? Let’s pretend my fondest hope is that a leopard will change its spots. Not going to happen. About the only folks who might realistically expect that hope to come to fruition are brave beauticians armed with stun guns and hair dye or, perhaps, geneticists willing to play with DNA in order to alter spots in future generations of leopards.  

This scenario relates directly to both my personal frustration and the turmoil and troubles my heroine encounters in my newest—soon-to-be-released—romantic suspense novel. I think we all need hope. So once it appears a given situation—or at least one aspect of it—is hopeless, I simply transfer my hope elsewhere. I look for a crack in the gloom, a place where a sliver of light can let a new hope take root, a place where there’s a possibility, however slim, that my actions can influence the outcome.

It’s no surprise my fictional heroines react the same way I do when all hope seems lost. They search for those cracks where even a trickle of light shines through. My new suspense novel is set in 1938 Keokuk, Iowa. While I grew up in Keokuk, I’m happy to say the story unfolds long before I was born. Because the book is set during the Great Depression, a number of editors have told me it runs the risk of getting labeled as “depressing” before anyone read page one. That would be a shame since the exact opposite is true. This romantic suspense is uplifting because the heroine doesn’t lose hope for a better tomorrow. She finds ways to live, laugh, and love despite seemingly insurmountable obstacles and dangers she is powerless to change—economic hardships and a few other tiny problems like a police chief determined to frame her for her estranged husband’s death and a faceless foe who wants to kill her and her two-year-old son. Of course, you’ll have to read the book to find out where she finds cracks in the gloom and how she pins her hopes on things she can influence with her own talents and determination.

  

I think this is my best novel, my favorite so far. Will it become one of your favorites, too? I guess I can say I “hope” so, since I’ve already done all I can to make that outcome a reality. The title is LIES. Release date will be early summer.