Romance Writers Weekly- Feb 3, 2015

This week we're taking the question from Brenda Margriet - How do you choose the setting for your book? Does where you live inspire you? this can apply even to books set in paranormal worlds - what do you use from "real life"? If you've popped over from the amazingly talented Ronnie Allen, welcome! If you missed her, head on back to read all about how she picks her stories' locations.


The setting is integral to the plot, to the conflict. It sets the context of the story, it anchors the backstories.


 

My first novella Guarding His Heart and upcoming second novella Sorcerer's Legacy in the Wiccan Haus series takes place on a mystical island off the coast of Maine where shifters, vampires, mermaids come to heal their souls and bodies alongside humans. I pitched a different manuscript and she told me about the shared world series. I was intrigued, read the novellas and immediately was inspired to write a story with a unique shifter.

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I set my manuscript Heart of Stone on the Virginia Peninsula, home to Langley Air Force Base, Fort Eustis Army Base, and Coast Guard Training Center.  My hero is a true hero, a soldier who disables IEDs where the setting is the hot, dry, gritty desert. Getting the setting right, taking the reader on a road trip inside and outside the wire (forward operating base). 

And my Back in the Boondocks trilogy (beginning with a to-be-named ghost story) is set in a Virginia County where families can trace their roots back to the original settlers. Those who can't are "come heres." The county, Yates County, is a compilation of the county I grew up in and those adjacent to it. I love places like that, where the roads are long, curvy, and narrow. Where people smile and speak to strangers, all the while hiding  family secrets as old as the colonial churches and Revolution War earthworks.

Now it's time to check out what simmers in Sarah Hegger's lush creative mind when it comes to her settings! 

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