One of the things I like best about being a writer is imagining what it would be like to live somewhere else. I’ve lived in Connecticut most of my life and am a New Englander through and through, but I dream about living in other parts of our great nation all the time. Sometimes you visit a place that just strikes you as being not just a place that you love, but a place you could live, and that happens to me all the time. Funny, my grandmother never lived more than half a block from where she was born and never felt the remotest desire to experience life elsewhere (unless it was on a cruise ship). But I’d love to live somewhere else, as long as I could come back to my little house here in the woods and sit on my front porch, listening to the wind in the trees.

 

An editor at Harlequin recently told me that the towns in my books are like characters, one of the the nicest compliments I’ve ever received. Maybe that’s due to my wanderlust. When writing a book, I try to pick a town that means something to the plot or reflects my protagonist’s character somehow. In Catch of the Day, for example, I needed simply for the heroine to have a hard time meeting marriagable men. Choosing a town on the northern Maine coast with a population of 1500 did that just fine. In Just One of the Guys, I wanted a backdrop for Chastity’s physicality…she rows, runs, hikes. She’s a strapping lass, our Chas, so the mighty Adirondacks were perfect. Too Good To Be True has a theme of unrealistic perfection in it…I figured a picturesque, wealthy little town in Connecticut was just the ticket.

 

If I had to choose a setting from one of my books to actually live in, I think I’d pick Eaton Falls, New York, from Just One of the Guys. What a pretty town! The Hudson River, the architecture, that gorgeous City Hall, all the little Craftsmen bungalows…yep, I could live there. Or Mackerly, Rhode Island, the setting of my upcoming book The Next Best Thing, which is based on Jamestown, a sweet little island just south of Newport. Absolutely darling.

 

There are actually quite a few places I wouldn’t mind spending some serious time. Pacific Grove, California, is probably the most beautiful town I’ve ever seen, flowers and gardens bursting from every inch of space, Monterrey Bay as a backdrop. I love Brooklyn and Manhattan and can spend hours — days, really — just wandering the different neighborhoods, gawking at the gardens and buildings and views. Maryville, Kansas, has such charm and sweetness, brick streets and buildings surrounded by miles and miles of farmland. The light in Portland, Maine, is unlike anything I’ve ever seen anywhere else, this clear golden luminosity that is downright magical.

 

What about you? Do you love a strong sense of setting in a story, or does it not matter so much to you? Have you lived in the same place most of your life, like I have, or have you moved a lot? What places have you visited that just spoke to some part of your soul? If you could choose to live anywhere, where would it be?