May 2025 – The Writers in Residence

Get Those Details Right!

By Maggie King

Recently Linda Johnston posted about where writers set their stories. I commented that the next day I planned to visit Charlottesville, Virginia for a research trip. I had finished the first draft of a short story set there, and needed to verify setting details.

I live in Richmond, but lived in Charlottesville for many years, and visit occasionally. It’s a cool place to spend a day. Lots of bookstores! So I have a fair picture of the place. But how accurate was my memory? And Charlottesville is a growing, dynamic city—what had recently changed and what hadn’t?

Here are the setting details in my first draft:
The story opens at the Jefferson Madison Regional Library in the downtown area of Charlottesville. As my main character stands on the steps under a columned portico, she turns and sees the Market Street Park, scene of 2017’s Unite the Right rally. I provide some information on that rally, formed to protest the proposed removal of the Robert E. Lee statue.

Once inside the library, the character takes a wide staircase to the lower level and locates a meeting room where a writing group is meeting.

After the meeting, she and a woman she just met leave and walk to Charlottesville’s Historic Downtown Mall. As they approach the Mud House, a trendy coffee shop, they decide it would be a good place to chat.

Later they drive to a semi-country location, the scene of the crime they cooked up while drinking expensive lattes at the Mud House.

Based on my research, some rewriting is in order.

The character standing on the steps gazing at Market Street Park: she could only see a sliver of the park from where she stood. I could have her walk through the park and see the patch of dirt left behind when the Lee statue was removed in 2021. But neither the park nor the statue are important to the story, they only serve to add color to the setting. To use film parlance, this bit is destined for the “cutting room floor.”

The library interior: for all the times I visited this library, apparently I was never in a meeting room. They are located on the top floor, not the bottom, requiring the character to take the elevator (I didn’t check out stairway access). The rooms were in use, but I got a peek of the interiors through the glass doors. As the library is a real place in my story, being accurate with descriptions is important.

The Mud House. It’s a very attractive space with a nice, and pricey, selection of coffee and pastries. But it’s been completely redesigned and not conducive to private conversation. And the conversation my characters have needs to be private. But I can fictionalize a coffee spot, so no problem there.

Then there was the trip to the semi-country, where I once lived. The route, which must be accurate, was pretty much unchanged. I drove past the Earlysville Oak, estimated to be 250 to 300 years old.

My old neighborhood was also unchanged—except for the owners of my previous home not keeping up the grounds. But I digress. I’ll make up the neighborhood based on this one. After all, it’s where the crime takes place, and I don’t want to rile my former neighbors!

I’m grateful I took this trip. It pays to verify aspects of the setting, especially if using real locations. I also took lots of photos, noted sights, sounds, and traffic patterns (lots of traffic!) and made time for those bookstores.

See Linda’s post, “LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION!”

Characters: Real and Imagined

by Gayle Bartos-Pool

Writers create characters. Often, we use people from our own lives, or at least snatches of their personality, as the basis of those people. A favorite relative or friend might form the background for one or two main characters or pop up as a bit player here and there in your story, but if we’re smart, we won’t use someone we don’t like as the villain. Lawsuits can be so messy.

But What if we use real people such as celebrities or legendary individuals who changed the world in one way or another? You know, someone from a movie, a history book or the nightly news.

Would that method work?

Oh, yeah… But with limitations.

For instance, in my spy novels I use many real people like presidents and military generals and famous politicians who helped win World War II and changed the world in other ways through several decades. But my main character is totally fictional. He’s a master spy in my books, but he “knew” a lot of those real folks, “spoke” to them, and his story intertwines with what really happened back then. It took me ten years to research things that went on from WWII though part of the Cold War, because that was when those three novels took place. I read a lot of history books and even watched movies made during those times and some later movies made about those eras. The visuals alone let me “see” what it was like back then.

I have my characters “talk” with real people like Ian Fleming, the guy who wrote the James Bond novels. He was really part of the British government and one of the reasons we got in the war when our country was reluctant. He and my spy hero knew each other…fictionally, at least. But it made for a fun encounter.

I used historical figures who were our allies as good guys in the books. The bad guys like Stalin or Hitler were bad then and that’s the way they were written. I’m not changing history. The other bad guys I created came from my fertile imagination.

Even some of my contemporary books have characters that might be based on a real celebrity. I might not use their actual name, but a clever reader might figure out who it is. But these are the good guys. I come up with the bad guys from whole cloth. I watch the news and know basically what a bad guy does. I prefer to add my own twists to the villain’s personality, so I know how my guy thinks. After all, I’m telling the story. I don’t know what a real killer is thinking.

Mixing fact with fiction gives me that extra layer of reality that makes the story seem…plausible. Why not? Even Science Fiction has reality in it, mostly because the writer is guessing what the future might look like.

But here’s something fun. Take a look at old Star Trek episodes from 1966-1969. Lots of the gadgets the Enterprise crew members used are things we use now like cell phones and tablets. They didn’t have those things when the show was running. And something else. Their time frame was supposed to be in the 22^nd, 24^th and 32^nd Centuries. We’re only in the 21^st Century now, and we have those things…

So, when you write, create the world you want and put in characters with those touches of reality gotten from people you actually know and then toss in some character traits you’d like to see in contemporary folks or those coming up after us. You never know, maybe your characters will be the guide and inspiration to a whole new world. Write On!

LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION!

by Linda O. Johnston

Location, location, location. I Googled that phrase when I thought about that as my blog theme today, thinking there was a movie with that name. No, there’s apparently no movie about it, but the phrase originated many years ago, referencing real estate sales. There’s also evidently a British reality show with that name. I’m always interested in real estate. Yes, I used to be a real estate attorney.

But I’m a writer now, and the locations in which I set my story are important. Sometimes, they’re real, as in my most recent mystery series, Alaska Untamed. And my first mystery series, the Kendra Ballantyne Pet-Sitter Mysteries, was set in Los Angeles. Kendra was a lawyer who lived in L.A. with her Cavalier King Charles Spaniel Lexie. I was practicing law at the time, I live in L.A., and one of my Cavaliers at the time was Lexie.

Then there were my Alpha Force books for Harlequin Nocturne, where the setting was mainly a remote, fictional military base where the shapeshifters could change without being too much in the public’s eye. The stories are currently being republished as eBooks.

Currently, I’m mostly writing for Harlequin Romantic Suspense, and my settings are fictional. For example, my Shelter of Secrets series, which is ending, is set in a fictional remote area of Southern California where a special shelter that cares for animals—and people in trouble—is located.

So how do other writers decide where to set their stories? If you’re a writer, how do you decide? How do you determine whether to use a real or a fictional location? In any event, location is an important part of the story, since the characters have to live their lives in the area and deal with whatever is going on in their fictional lives there, or in other locations to which they travel.

What’s your favorite location to read about—and maybe to visit, for research purposes or just for fun?

IT WAS THE DEAD BODY IN THE LADIES’ ROOM…

by Rosemary Lord

She was enjoying such a lovely holiday exploring the English Devon Coast, the charming fishing village and the cream-teas that were to die for. But it was the dead body she found in the Ladies’ Room of the church hall that made her pause. It was most inconvenient…

How come my mind goes to those bizarre ideas – and gruesome murders – or at least a simple dead body… I mean, it’s not like I am a mass-murderer – or that I even killed just one person – not that I recall….

Maybe I should have continued that opening as a sweet and charming Cozy. I do write Cozies, too. I’m not always weird.

Perhaps, I should be writing some ladylike Regency, Jane Austen style romance, or a simple bodice-ripper. Or a sci-fi marvel. Or a very clever spy thriller or possibly a police procedural. Or perhaps not.

But my writer’s mind just goes there. My sister thought it was because our grandpa was a police detective. Could be… So, it’s probably a good thing grandpa wasn’t an insurance salesman. I mean, even a door-to-door salesman would have more interesting tales to inspire a writer.

But where would we be without our writing, without our amazing world of imagination to escape in to. I often think how lucky we writers are. When life gets really tough, when things around us are going haywire, (like today!) when we’ve had more than just a ‘bad-hair-day,’ when we think that Life has given up on us – we have our writing to retreat to.

Make a nice mug of coffee or tea, settle down in our comfy office chair, a blank page in front of us and away we go. Whether it’s with pencil and pad or the familiar clacking of the computer keys – we are transported to another world. Our Writer’s World.

Tough to explain to anyone who doesn’t write. But suddenly we’re galloping across the Sahara Desert or sneaking through the back streets of Charles Dickens’ London or stretching out lazily aboard a luxurious yacht. How about enjoying a gourmet meal in a super-posh Paris restaurant, swimming in the Mediterranean – or walking across Regent’s Park, hearing the elephants at London Zoo in the background. Or climbing Mount Everest – if that’s where your mind goes…

You see how endless a writer’s imagination can be? And what a wonderful diversion from the tough times in the Life-of-Hard-Knocks, a distraction from everyday humdrum, or just a brief diversion from today’s offering.

Mark Twain said, “write what you know.” Which is sometimes very useful. But I find it much more fun to write about a world that I never inhabited. Besides, I absolutely love researching. I devour all the books, articles, newspaper clipping to do with whatever I am writing about. I especially love reading the 1910 or 1918 Sears & Roebuck Catalogues. Just like the adverts in old magazines, one can tell so much about life in those times when you see what they wore, household items they used and the hobbies they had. There are endless opportunities for stories in those pages. Even looking at the world around us today. The Farmers’ Almanac in Kentucky will have advertisements that spark an idea, or a fishing magazine in Finland, a local paper in New Zealand or the Scottish Highland Times – all sources of tidbits of ideas that, like Topsy, will grow. I find the Obituaries in these far-off places fascinating – apart from providing me with a cornucopia of character names to use.

What other profession gives one the opportunity to snoop, eavesdrop and blatantly plagiarize another’s life? The snooping is most fun!

And we get to add historical figures into our mix. Where else could one throw in a vision of the evil sinner Sisyphus, condemned to an eternity of pushing a boulder up a mountain, only to be thwarted once he got to the top, when the weight of the boulder forced it to start rolling downhill. So, he had to start again. And again. Or how about our use of oft-quoted characters from Shakespeare? You see – we get to use it all if we want.

So, after an extremely busy, stressful day at work, I retreat into my world of writing – this Blog being way overdue. And somewhere in my brain I am now thinking of taking that opening paragraph and running with it. Murder and mayhem in Devon anyone?

Whatever odd twists and turns my writer’s brain takes, I always feel so relaxed and satisfied when I can print out a new page or three. So maybe it’s a good thing to have that weird streak? I just know how lucky we writers are to have that Writers’ Place to go to.