Most locations in books I write are fictional for two reasons:
-I’m too lazy to corroborate real details of real towns, and
-I have a secret dread that an entire town will want to sue the pants off me if I write anything disparaging.
The two exceptions were “Hounded,” set in Des Moines, and “Christmas Passed” set in Milwaukee. They’re big enough to handle a few missed details or fictional murders on a fictional street. They have more pressing problems.
So I create fictional towns based on locations I love. Bayfield, Wisconsin is a great town but I didn’t want to saddle it with a dead body it didn’t deserve. So in “Winter Watch” I added a few miles of coastline to northern Wisconsin and stuck in a remarkably similar town named Barley. Same with “Killing Spring” (coming out on May 29). I fell in love with Galena, Illinois one exceptionally warm March in 2012. I began plotting a story during that visit, but since there would be another murder that I didn’t want on Galena’s conscience, I created Portia, Illinois. And added about 10 more miles to the Mississippi River, just south of the Wisconsin/Illinois border.
Here are a few photos of the real Galena. It was home to U.S. Grant and my hero Elihu Washburne. It has literal floodgates to stop the town from, well, flooding. It has hills and beautiful homes and delightful shops and restaurants and a river runs through it and Abe Lincoln gave a speech there. If you can’t go visit, consider getting a copy of “Killing Spring.” You’ll meet some pretty wonderful people, experience the pretty wonderful almost-Galena town of Portia, and get all misty-eyed over a Netherland Dwarf Rabbit named Gerta. And hopefully be intrigued—and sobered, by the murder mystery.
