Fun Fact Friday -- Where, Oh Where, Are These Places?

Happy Friday! I hope you had a great week! Next week we go into the start of the holidays so good luck with that. Remember, if you have any readers in your life, the best present to give them is the gift of a new author, with a couple of series to read. Might I suggest either the Cedar Grove series or the Portrait of an Unlikely Affair series, all of which can be found over on my Author Page at Amazon (Imagine the 'adorable look' from that that cat with boots on from that animated movie with the ogre and the donkey and the fairy tale creatures as I suggest my books to you. You know the look I'm talking about it. And if you don't, how have you never been forced by a child in your life to watch that movie?)

OK, shameless plug out of the way now, this week I'll talk about places. Why did I choose these places and do any of them exist in real life?

In the front pages of each of my books, you know the pages you always flip past to get to that first page of writing, you will see a little clause  that states, "This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental." So, to answer your question, outside of states and recognizable city names, yes, they are made up. Totally. Completely.

Actual towns and cities have unique and interesting ways of being named in real life. Just like roads or landmarks, they are named from the surnames of people, landmarks, and the places people have come from. Some locations have very intriguing history behind them, while others don't have much drama connected to them because the city planners and developers named them, which makes me wonder now, is there an online Place Name Generator? 🤔 I'll have to look that up. Anyhow, since I adore history, it is always fun for me to look back at the history of an actual location and know how it came into being. Does the history of your hometown or current area of residence intrigue you? How did it get its name? Do you have a favorite historical place to be? How was it named? (Side note: History and genealogy go together hand in hand. If you are curious enough of a person, you can look back at your own ancestry and discover the places they have been. One branch of my family tree can trace its roots back to where we have several founders of towns throughout the centuries and have been in areas at the same time of significant historical events. With connections like that, it makes learning history of those time periods even more interesting.)  

So, how do I come up with the names of my fictional places? 

From Along the Way and Wherever It Goes, the main city is Cedar Grove, with some trips to Junction City and Kings Lake. Cedar Grove is a state college "town" with a river that runs through it. It's got a lot of green trees and has hills around it. It has a pond in a large park, a decent downtown, night life, and commerce. Up in Carson Hills, you have the gated community where the wealthier people live on their "estates." An hour away from Cedar Grove is Junction City. There we know it is a larger city, complete with a small military base used for training mostly, and an airport. Beyond Junction City, and two hours from Cedar Grove, is Kings Lake. This is known as the "Riviera" of the area, and has a large lake with very well-to-do wealthy community surrounding it. That is basically all we see in the stories in regards to Kings Lake but obviously, there are areas of commerce and the like. I was purposely vague about Ryan's town home in Washington and its area because I felt the story wasn't about his job or where he lived outside of Cedar Grove. The story was Cedar Grove. And with Cedar Grove, I also purposely didn't assign it a state. It can be wherever you want it to be but we know it isn't in Texas or Washington State or Georgia... Or Oklahoma for that matter.  The name of Cedar Grove came because I am partial to cedar trees and a grove is a group of trees so, why not be Cedar Grove?  

In The Allegheny Chronicles: Eden & the Alchemist, I just give you basic, generic areas. I don't even name the hometown of the the Magnuss Clan nor do I go into great detail about it. West Virginia is a gorgeous state, with a lot of history behind it. But when it came time to create and nail down "exact" locales for the story, I felt doing so would detract from the story line. I didn't want it to bog down in the details of the location. 

Portrait of an Unlikely Affair is a bit different because I assign my fictional towns states. Sentinel Ridge, Texas is somewhere in Texas that ISN'T east Texas near the Louisiana Border, because somewhere, over there, is where Brian was sent to the orphanage. There are trees where Sentinel Ridge is. There are cattle. It's an hour from large city. Other than that, it's wherever you want it to be in Texas. I did choose the state of Texas because I enjoy the Texan spirit, demeanor (or attitude), and of course, the accent. The name for Sentinel Ridge spurs from a location of one of my local favorite areas. In California, off Highway 88, between Silver Lake and Kirkwood (on the way to Nevada), there is a landmark called the Two Sentinels at the Carson Spur. They have always fascinated me so I decided to name the Ridley birthplace after those Sentinels. (GASP! No! A fictional place in Texas named after real life landmarks in California!!! The horror!!! Sorry guys, it just has to be. But to ease your mind, there are two California's after all. There's the California that is stereotypical and  immediately pops into people's minds and then there's the "Other California" that is often forgotten about and overlooked. This landmark can be considered being in the "Other California.")  By the way, I'm sure you know sentinels are soldiers or guards whose jobs it is to stand and keep watch. They are protectors.

The idea for Cable Glen was also inspired by one of my most favorite places to look at in the world -- Hope Valley, which is also on Highway 88 in California on the other side of Carson Pass. In fact, Fort Hope Outpost gives a nod to Hope Valley. The Ridley home, overlooking a meadow on the ranch was inspired by this amazing looking summer cabin/home off of Blue Lakes Road in Hope Valley. It is tucked off to the side of a large meadow that has a little creek running through that little valley. It is well off the road and you really can't see the place unless you are actually looking for it, because the area is absolutely crazy with traffic these days in the summer and fall and there are so many blasted bicyclists ruining the drive, but, I could sit there for hours, lost in my imagination as I look at that meadow and that cabin (deep dreamy sigh.) I had considered having Cable Glen be a fictional place there in Hope Valley or north of it off Highway 89 toward South Lake Tahoe, but the more I studied about it, looked at it, considered the believability of it, the more I knew it couldn't be there. We can't have a super secret military base located there in the mountains south of South Lake Tahoe, can we? That whole Pacific Crest Trail thing going through it really would mess things up, huh? As well as all the campers, fishermen, tourists, bicyclists, winter snow parks, traffic, annual large wildfires....Yeah, that won't do. So, I looked around to find somewhere that could be a similar landscape, just as rugged, if not more, where mining wouldn't be odd for the area, but there was still trees and snow and all that. So, I went with northwest Montana. The exact latitude is truly up to you. Montana is a gorgeous place of varied biomes and is the perfect place for Cable Glen. Besides, it's fiction. But, knowing where I was originally basing Cable Glen on, now you can see why Mineral City is beside a large lake and is a haven for winter-goers and the like and also the city of Castle Rock having the airport and so forth. The name for Cable Glen was just me wondering what a glen was because I was looking at a real life town or village in something I was reading and wondered what a glen actually was (a glen is a narrow valley, in case you wondered.) I later developed the story for the town, by opening up a phone book, covering my eyes, and flipping to a random page, putting my finger down on a name that ended up being Cable (that highly complex and scientific method is also one that I use to develop character names as well.) It was originally Cable's Glen, but for simplicity it's Cable Glen. I don't even say what ore the mine at Fort Hope Outpost is supposedly mining but it's all good cover. 

So, the burning question on your mind, especially with the Portrait series is how do the towns and families NOT know what is going on? It's been my experience that people aren't that observant these days and many are self-involved or so distracted by media and glamor that they really don't look around or ask questions, especially if it's a place that is comfortable and calm. If nothing challenges you, then why would you even need to question what you have been told? Things can be brushed off as "ah, that's nothing. Happens all the time;" or "you're just crazy;" or even "that's just a conspiracy theory. Put your tin foil hat away, for God's Sake." Odd things can be logically explained away. Take into consideration this: I grew up in an area where every summer we'd hear what we assumed was thunder in the mountains. Every summer, like clockwork, these booms would go off. We were always outside so we always heard them. The explanation/assumption was afternoon thunderstorms or dynamite blasting for roads or such. Decades later, as an adult, I moved back the county, every summer I'd hear these booms again. And once again, that assumption came back to what it was. It was only then that I discovered they had a name now, "Mother Lode Mystery Booms," and could be heard over great distances. People pondered them. Scientists did their best to explain it, calling it a "phenomenon" (in science speak, that just means it is something that is observed to occur or exist) and telling inquirers that it was probably due to ordinance disposal (aka blowing up things that already go boom) at a military base in Nevada and that the sound somehow, mysteriously, just travelled over to this area, hundreds of miles away. (Insert shrug here while saying "OK.") So every year, starting in June and lasting through to the fall, in the afternoon, the booms still go off, sometimes loud, sometimes rattling the house, sometimes for a minute, sometimes for five minutes, sometimes not at all for days. Is that really what it is? No telling. But with a "logical" explanation, people don't really question it much any more. It just is what it is now. So how do the people and families in Cable Glen and Sentinel Ridge NOT know what is literally beneath their feet? Simple. They've been given logical answers. 

So, there you have it, life inside a fiction writer's head. 😳

On that note, I'll let you get on with your day. If you have any questions or comments at all, by all means, let me know! I'm not scary (well, at least I don't think I am 🤔) and I will respond to you (writers do love to write.) If you enjoy reading these little blurbs, enjoy reading my novels, or just enjoy life, be sure to share those thoughts with your friends. If they like to read, I just may have some books for them to enjoy. Also, thank you for letting me know what you think in your reviews on Amazon!!😍

Thanks for stopping by and hanging out with me today. Hope you enjoy the rest of your day and have a great weekend!!💕

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