It wasn’t hard for me to pick the setting for my mystery/thriller series. I’d always wanted to write one set in the valley where I grew up and still live. I love this valley with its green trees, lush vegetation, beautiful orchards, majestic mountains and gorgeous rivers.  And it’s fun to write about murder and mayhem in a place that is so serene and beautiful.

However, there are things about setting my stories here that I never considered before I actually started publishing my books.

Like the woman who said she and a friend had been talking and wondered which people in the valley I was writing about. I told her that I have never used a real person in my books. Rather I use a culmination of people I’ve known or read about.

This wasn’t the first time someone has asked me if I use real people when I write. I say the same thing every time. No, no and NO! These are fictional characters and are not based on any real person, dead or alive.

On the other hand, a lot of my readers who live here or have lived here, or visited here in the past, love it when I mention the name of a road or a building or an orchard because they know exactly where it is. Although, I must admit, I’ve taken some creative liberties and added a few places that aren’t really here. Or moved things where I needed them for the story.

My Three Bears Story:

When I wrote my first book, a standalone mystery/suspense titled, The Truth Will Set You Free, I had wanted to set it in Hood River. But after writing a few chapters, I realized my town was too big for the story I wanted to tell. So, I moved it to a small town east of Hood River called Moiser. After I’d written a few chapters, I realized it wasn’t working. Moiser was just too small. So, then I headed west of Hood River to the small town of Cascade Locks, and it was just right!

After that book came out, I was selling my books at a Christmas Bazaar in Cascade Locks and a lady picked up one and read the description on the back. As she read, she said, “Oh, oh, oh.” Her voice rose and lowered with each utterance. Then she turned to the lady with her and said, “I’ve got to buy this. I know exactly who it’s written about.”

Since I don’t know many people who live in Cascade Locks, three in total, I knew she really didn’t know who it was about. But she bought the book and hopefully she enjoyed it.

Right now, I’m working on a standalone that I’m setting in The Dalles, a town thirty miles east of us. Why did I pick The Dalles? I spent a couple of days there last spring selling books, and I met some wonderful people. They shared stories of their town that I was fascinated by. While I’ve been to The Dalles many times over the years, I’ve never spent a lot of time there.

I love it that The Dalles has the oldest bookstore in Oregon, Klindts Books. There’s a lady in The Dalles who used to do graveyard tours. I still need to talk to her. The old buildings downtown are reputed to be haunted. Like a lot of towns in eastern Oregon, the businesses in town have gone away or moved to the west end of town. They are trying to bring in new businesses, and there are some exciting things happening. I had no idea it was such a fascinating place.

I love JA Jance’s Sheriff Joanna Brady books. The way she writes about Bisbee, Arizonia made me long to go there. When I finally did, it was nothing like what I’d imagined while reading her books. I wrote to her, and she wrote back saying writers can make any setting interesting. She certainly did.

How important is setting to a story? I’ve read books that were set in big cities and thought it could’ve been any big city in the states. And I’ve read books set in small towns that could’ve been any small town. And then there are the books where the setting is like another character. That is what I’m striving for.

When my first book came out a lady bought it and told me later that she and her husband drove to Cascade Locks to see the town where the book was set. I loved it that she thought about the book after she finished reading it and enjoyed it enough that she wanted to see the small town it was set in.

I know of a lot of authors who spend a great deal of time researching their settings. Whether they do it by actually traveling to the place or reading everything they can get their hands on about it.

Even though my books are set in such a familiar place, I find myself having to look at a map to get the name of roads and sometimes drive around to make sure that what I’m writing about is actually where I think it is.

Maybe someday I’ll go further afield. I’d love to set a book in some places I’ve been, like Venice or Vienna or the Swiss Alps. And I’d be happy to travel to different places for research. Of course, I’d have to stay a while!

by donalee Moulton

Céad míle fáilte. This Gaelic expression means “a hundred thousand welcomes.”

If you live in Nova Scotia, as I do, this is an expression you will have seen for much of your life. (Pronouncing it is a different issue altogether.) A hundred thousand welcomes in any language speaks to the type of people you are likely to encounter when you come here and the values they place on such encounters.

Riel Brava – attractive, razor-sharp, ambitious, and something much more – is the lead character in my first mystery, Hung Out to Die. He lives in Elmsdale, Nova Scotia, about a 40-minute drive from Halifax, the province’s capital. In East Coast parlance, Riel is a come from away.

Raised in Santa Barbara, California, Riel has been transplanted to Nova Scotia where he is CEO of the Canadian Cannabis Corporation – one of the estimated four to twelve percent of CEOs who are psychopaths. It’s business as usual until Riel finds his world hanging by a thread.

Riel’s chief financial officer is found hanged in his office. The police determine the death is not the result of suicide. Still, Riel resists the hunt to catch a killer. Detective Lin Raynes draws the reluctant CEO into the investigation, and the seeds of an unexpected and unusual friendship are sown. Ultimately, Riel finds himself on the butt end of a rifle in the ribs and a long drive to the middle of Nowhere, Nova Scotia.

Fact is, I could have placed Riel in the middle of anywhere. The murder is not location specific. The victim does not fall from the Brooklyn Bridge or mysteriously appear atop Old Faithful, places that are singular. Nova Scotia made sense for me as a writer, and it made sense for Riel as a character. I live here; I know this province better than any other place. I can write about it with ease, and with a personal perspective.

For Riel, who lives uncomfortably in a world where people hug each other because they care and share the pain of others because their brain is wired that way, being in a place where he does not have roots, where he is an outsider, mirrors what goes on within Riel. It’s the right place for him.

Because I am from Nova Scotia, I can also authentically and naturally insert elements of life here. Take the language, for instance. You may discover some new words such as “bejesus” and “tinchlet.” There will be expressions common to the area. “Bless your heart” is one you’ll hear a lot in Nova Scotia, and Riel hears it as well. It does not resonate.

There is also food that has Nova Scotia marinated into it, as Riel discovers. Turns out Riel is now a donair aficionado. (I am not.)

One of the things I have learned as a writer is that I am in control, and I am not in control. I can decide to situate a character in a particular place, and the character will let me know if that is the right place as the writing unfolds. In the case of Riel, he ends up in the dark of winter at a deserted row of cottages called, what else, Céad míle fáilte.

I did not see that coming. I have a feeling Riel did.