Hello from Bodega Bay. So far, The Birds haven’t attacked us. We’re not on vacation down south here. Oh no, we’re on a book research mission. Shelley and I’ve been touring Sonoma wine country and now we’re out at the coast partaking of salt-air hikes and sumptuous seafood. All this for the very businesslike purpose of backgrounding my next Peyton McKean mystery, tentatively entitled “High Stone Chateau.”
How better to get that verisimilitude that’s needed to give the reader a feeling for the place and circumstances of a story? Sip some wine at this chateau, hike the hills at that nature preserve, snap some photos of those vineyards, and, you know, get a feel for the milieu.
This is the hard work of fiction writing, and I take it very seriously. So far, Jack London’s Wolf House, built of huge rough hewn stone blocks, has been the favorite place where.
More later on this story as it reels off the keyboard. Enough for now. Gotta go get some fresh oysters on the half shell down at Inverness.
