Dynamic Woman — Changing Times
Midwesterner Brian Lutterman‘s corporate mystery Downfall practically begged to be set in California, with its larger-than-life characters, fortunes made and lost overnight, and oversized schemes and speculations.
Who doesn’t like a good chase out of San Francisco? What better place to stage tom-foolery on wheels? Well-traveled John Bird chose to set his fast-paced comedy thriller Aristocrat at Large in California in the Fifties because he lived and worked in San Jose in the Sixties.
There is nothing quite like the power of place. Whether we stand in a field or on a shore, or merely recall a time when we did, being in a special place stirs our senses and releases memories.
Former university professor Susan Aylworth describes Chico, her hometown of 38 years, as a small-ish country town with a major state university all plopped into a rural, agricultural setting. The rich mix of rural-vs-urban, town-vs-gown produces creative tension that works nicely for plotting purposes. Susan enjoys researching backgrounds and careers for her novels. “It’s one way to live many lives all at once,” she says.
This year I am going to feature California, the Golden State, on my blog. My friend Charise has a website titled Prayers and Cocktails with Charise Olson; I love that title! It is so – California. Charise describes her fiction as “having a certain flavor that is distinctly Californian: opportunity, diversity, and an oddball (or two). And befitting the state with mountains, beaches and redwood trees – beauty. Beauty that stirs your spirit, soul and funny bone.”
