This month I'm exploring names and their uses in writing. Today, in particular, I'd like to focus on names of places.  Whether you realize it or not, what an author chooses to call the name of a place does have an effect. It can be a way to steer a reader to or from a particular genre. Kat and the U.S. Marshal  by Celia Yeary is one example of a Western romance, accurately set in Old San Antonio, Texas. Of course, there are exceptions to any rule and any genre. What comes to mind is the movie, Cowboys and Aliens , a surprising, yet successful combination of Western and science fiction, set in the 1873 Arizona Territory, yet featuring a strange combination of aliens, spaceships, Apaches, outlaws, a gold mine, and more. For the most part, though, you want to stick with the name of a location that makes sense. For example, it wouldn't do to name a city Chicago, when the story actually takes place in England, or in a time period before America was even discovered.  The...

Oregon Rain Forest Watercolor by Stephen Quiller Writers spend enormous amounts of time and imagination creating memorable characters, paying special attention to appearance, habits, speech, and interactions. We try to develop strong and identifiable voices, some so distinct and vital, we don't really need tags to know them in dialogue. There isn't a good writer in the craft who hasn't asked himself the question, "would he really say that?" Today, as I was writing a new story, my characters spoke to me in crystal clear voices. There was a reason for it. Morning brought a blissfully calm and quiet winter day, the ground muffled in a heavy blanket of wet, gleaming snow. It was a blessed reprieve after several days of intense lashing winds that kept my muse well tucked away someplace safe, while I grappled with a stabbing inner earache from the wicked drop in barometric pressure. Who could write? The weather was like a demon, and that got me thinking about how ...

By Bob Sanchez My first foray into fiction began out of my experiences with the Cambodian community in Lowell, Massachusetts. The idea was to tell the tale of a young Cambodian woman’s odyssey, with emphasis on the Khmer Rouge atrocities and the Thai refugee camps. I read almost a dozen gripping memoirs and talked to a few of the refugees, although the language barrier created a serious problem. Overall, I’d accumulated enough detail to flesh out a decent mainstream novel. Or so it seemed. What were the sights and smells like? The bugs, the plants, the animals? What was it like to have your feet in the rice paddy or to pedal a bicycle barefoot on a bumpy road? What did the inside of a home look like? I could pick up some of these details from books, but my novel may have suffered most of all because I’d never been to Cambodia or Thailand and could never convey the rich detail the story deserved. So what to do with my ton of research? Write a mystery about the Cambodian community in ...

Writers don’t always have to be from the place they write about or even visit there. But whenever possible, it is of great value to immerse yourself in the setting for those small details that book or on-line research can’t give you. Montana is my inspiration—for my books and many other things in my life. The “Big Sky” stretches from horizon to horizon like a great blue dome. Its sunsets are unequaled, with streaks of orange and gold painting the edges. In spring, green-tinged hills roll through the landscape, buttered with bright yellow wildflowers. White-faced reddish-brown calves frolic through the meadow pastures, happy to be alive. Spring in Montana often comes late, after a long, snow-filled winter that seems to last forever. After four or five months of isolation, cabin-fever, and bone-numbing cold, spring is the new awakening, a new beginning, a season of hope. As the saying goes, “You can take the girl out of Montana, but you can’t take the Montana out of the girl.” Ther...