The decision to have a newsletter was not an easy one for me. I didn’t come to it naturally. At first, I resented spending the time and moola sending out something I wasn’t sure anyone was going to open, let alone read. My webmistress really pushed me to do it, saying any writer worth his or her salt had one. I like salt, so I relented.

Three years ago, she began to build one. And it was an immediate disaster. The first model used SSL, I believe. If I don’t have the right name for this, it’s because I’ve blocked it out. The bad taste of it stays with me. The newsletter, itself, wasn’t actually written by me, but used info pulled from blogs I was steadily writing at the time. It was supposed to be effortless, even going out to a designated email list at a pre-designated time.

It didn’t work. Sometimes it would go out but without any information attached. Just a banner with an image of me and Tugger the Cat would show up in their emails. Other times, it would go out containing bits and pieces of Gobbledygook, not one straight word. But most of the time, it didn’t go out at all. Meanwhile, I was paying for all of this through the schnozzola.

After three months of this nonsense, I started writing them in real time. Then I was in real trouble. I had no idea what to say. Just buy my books sounded a little too blatant. And for whatever reason, I couldn’t be amusing or witty in these newsletters I was writing to a bunch of strangers. Neither informative nor entertaining, the newsletters laid there like a lump. My readership dropped off significantly. It wasn’t unusual for me to lose five to ten people a month. I was desperate.

I was ready to abandon the whole idea of a newsletter and save myself 35 bucks a month in the deal. I happened to mention my decision to Julie Smith, who not only is my publicist, but a fantastic writer, herself. She was totally against the idea of not doing a newsletter, claiming this was the only way to reach out and truly get to know your readers. Hmmmm. You mean, a newsletter is something more than just buy my books?

I should also mention, in the meantime I had been reading other newsletters, from writers like Camille Minichino and Cindy Brown. These are authors whose work I not only admire, but who have newsletters I found myself reading from top to bottom. I discovered something amazing. They not only engaged the reader but wrote about stuff they were interested in. And it had an intimacy about it, like writing to a penpal.

Armed with the idea of getting to know my readers, I became more chatty in my newsletter and even asked questions. I started receiving emails back from them filled with tidbits about their own lives. I came to know many as more than names. I learned some of their stories. They became not just readers but friends. Not only did the email list stop declining, more names were added.

And they are all really neat people. I like them. I’m happy to write to them, to share something from my life, a joke, an anecdote, or even a book I recently discovered they might be interested in reading. Sometimes I mention my own books, but not often. I also found out, incidentally, most of them do buy my books, but not because I hawk them about it, but because my style fits into their reading pleasure.

This writing a newsletter is so win-win.

Real places. For the most part, that’s where I set my novels. When I began writing the first Jeri Howard book, Kindred Crimes, I used Oakland, Alameda, and San Leandro as settings. I’ve lived in the Bay Area of California for decades, and at various times have called those cities home. In that book, Jeri travels to the town of Cibola in the Mother Lode, the old gold mining area along Highway 49. Cibola is fictional but it’s modeled on the towns I encountered there when I took a vacation in that area.

I also write about real places in the California Zephyr books, the places my protagonist Jill McLeod goes when she steps off the train. Alameda, of course, since Jill lives there with her parents. Also San Francisco and Oakland. In the most recent book, Death Above the Line, Jill is Niles, which was at that time (1953) a separate township soon to merge with four other townships to form the city of Fremont.

Writing about real places means I pay attention to the landscape as it exists and make every effort to portray it accurately. Although I will exercise the writer’s prerogative. That means if I want to put a café on that corner, I will.

I take field trips from time to time. Most recently, that involved going to the Niles District and walking around to check out what various fictional characters could see from real sidewalks and corners.

The Sacrificial Daughter will be published in mid-February. Protagonist Kay Dexter, a geriatric care manager, is an advocate for elderly clients and their families. The book is set in Rocoso, a city in a county also called Rocoso, located in the Northern Sierra Nevada. It’s the county seat and has a four-year college where Kay’s significant other, Sam, teaches history. There’s a historic narrow gauge railroad that goes up a scenic river canyon to an old mining town called Jermyn. The river itself is known for its Class Five rapids and is popular with rafting enthusiasts. At a midway point are the abandoned ruins of a resort hotel where people still go to soak in the hot springs along Lost Woman Creek.

None of these places exist, except in my imagination. And now, in the pages of my book.

To be sure, anyone who has ever been to Durango, in southwest Colorado, or who has ridden the Durango & Silverton Railroad will recognize their counterparts in Rocoso and the Rocoso & Jermyn Railroad. The landscape and hot springs at Princeton in the Colorado Rockies might strike a familiar chord. The river could be the American or Yuba in Northern California, the Animas or Arkansas in Colorado, or any rugged river where rafters challenge the rapids.

The advantage of creating a fictional setting is that I can arrange the streets to suit me, as well as the topography. And most important of all, the history and culture of the place. Kay’s office is located in the former stables behind Rocoso’s historical society and museum, a building that once housed a bordello. That derelict hot springs resort at Los Woman Creek plays a role in the plot. So does the river and the rapids.

That’s what writers do. We revise the landscape to suit our needs, whether it’s putting a nonexistent café on a corner in a real town, or making up a whole county full of towns and populating them with characters.