Adapting Reality to Fit Fiction

Or is it the other way around?  The advantage of a fictional town is that no one can say something like, "Eighteenth Street is one way north, not south! Don't you know anything about DC?"

On the other hand, if you have a fictional beach town that is set in a Mid-Atlantic state (as Ocean Alley is), when you describe the way the ocean looks it cannot sound like the lighter blue-green of the Caribbean.

The characters who populate Ocean Alley are busy with their own lives when their peaceful pursuits are occasionally interrupted by a dead body or two. I choose to have parts of their lives focus on people who have less. So Jolie heads a food pantry committee and the fundraisers can take her focus off a crime--or be part of one.

At some level, I hope that a reader will realize that they can volunteer for a good cause without having to devote huge amounts of time to it. However, if action or dialogue deals a lot with people who need food or the couple of homeless veterans whose paths cross Jolie's, then it appears the books have "a message." And when fiction seems to want to educate, readers are likely to tune out.

So, Jolie sits above a dunk tank for a fundraiser and Scoobie chases cans of donated beans across a parking lot when a box rips. In book six, which I'm writing now, other members of the food pantry committee gang up on Jolie, Scoobie, and their friend Ramona by deciding the fundraiser will celebrate the trio's 30th birthdays. With any luck, the party games won't be deadly.

The major reality in New Jersey is recovery from 2012's Hurricane Sandy. That is not fun. But as the Ocean Alley boardwalk is rebuilt, even that reality can give readers a chance to make reality a better place.