The Relentless has had its first outside reading. I am letting it sit for awhile so that I can do the next draft with fresher eyes. It is on to the next novel.
Writing during covid was so difficult because I could not go to any of the locations and get a feel for them. I set part of The Relentless in San Francisco since I have been many times. I have also been to the other settings in Washington D.C. and Virginia. For Venezuela, I just had to do a lot of research. Ultimately, there is nothing like being there to get a feel for the place you are writing about or using as a setting.
My next novel is set in a single very small town. I really needed to get a sense of a small town like that, so it was off to Julian, California for a few days. They do have great apples, which is about the only thing they are currently known for. The population is around 1500.
It was named after one of the members of the Baily family, Mike Julian, who had been a confederate soldier. The family settled in 1869, aborting their plans to travel to Arizona. What made Julian was the discovery of gold that same year by A.E. “Fred” Coleman, a former slave. He started the Coleman Mining District as well as a gold rush.
Expansion of the town was limited by the lack of water and frequent drought. It also stays small because that is how the town wants it. There was a huge controversy when they built a Subway sandwich store and a Dairy Queen. Both quickly went out of business.
The town is gloriously quirky. Almost every shop was open from 10 am to 4 pm. A very old woman said to Belle about the short hours “Well, you city folk just like to get started earlier than us up here.” Many of the restaurants closed at 6 pm. A couple of them stayed open all the way to 7 pm, at least on weekends. This is in a town that, other than apples, really only has tourism going for it.
We attended the Christmas parade. I joked to Belle that I bet they had at least one tractor covered in lights. The parade was actually led by Santa Claus, driving a tractor festooned with lights. A few cars decorated with lights drove by, and that was the parade. It was a bit different from our local Hollywood Christmas Parade that we are used to.
We went into the town hall, which had their main auditorium, which will become a setting in my story. Being in the place really helped me soak up the feel for it. I also did a lot of listening to get the rhythm of the way people there spoke.
A lot of new elements in the story were developed just from observing. We went to a small Italian restaurant. We had to wait at the bar for our table. Belle kept asking for different types of wine until they found something they actually had (and we are not talking specific vintages but just generic categories like Pinot Noir and Chablis.) They were proud to announce that they now had Diet Coke by the can, as for some reason that is hard to get there and he did warn us that they might not have more the next time we came. The owner worked the floor while his son handled the front of the house. I reimagined these people with a bit of exaggeration and now they play a major role in the story that I would never have come up with had I not gone to this restaurant.
Another scene was inspired by the local but tiny grocery store. The selections were quite limited, and we wanted some crackers. They had two options and the one we selected cost eight dollars, a lot for just a box of Triscuits and more than double the cost at home. It inspired a scene where a local man is pursuing an out-of-town woman and has offered her cheese and she wants some crackers to go with it. When the only two options at the small store are Saltines and Ritz, she goes for the very expensive Ritz crackers. He tells her “Don’t worry about the price, the fancy stuff just costs more here.”
There is an awesome diner where a model railroad traverses the entire ceiling. A tiny train continually rolled over our heads while we heard the distant booms from the Candy Mine. This was an old basement decorated to look like a mine and filled with old style candy. I bought a couple that I remembered from very early childhood. They tasted like that was about when they were made. One was Cup o Gold, created by the Hoffman Candy Company in the 1950s here in Los Angeles. It was primarily a West Coast candy. Later after we returned to civilization Belle got me one fresh from the factory. Still not as good as I remembered from childhood. My tastes may have gotten a little more sophisticated.
As a journalist I did a lot of coverage of events. It is not just a recitation of who was there and what happens. You wander around and observe, looking for interesting stories. Listening and observing are where you get some of your best information and ideas. You also need to talk to as many people as you can and get them to tell you their story.
It is very similar for fiction, except you get to make up a lot more stuff and you don’t have to worry about getting every detail right. Being on the ground and observing can be one of your best sources of ideas, ideas that come from other people’s experiences rather than just your own.