As I’m preparing my next project, I keep thinking about where it will take place. I prefer fictional places. One because I’m already doing so much research on various things (time period, lifestyles, etc) that it is just one less thing I have to research and get right. Nothing worse than reading about your hometown and the details aren’t quite right.

Second reason, I love the creativity of it. I can make up something that wasn’t there before. That is part of the fun of writing in the first place. Creating, pretending, imagination. To me that is fun.

And third… well I actually have no third. Its just fun, no research and I get creativity license to build it however I want! I love that.

As I start this next project, yet to be named, I’m trying to work out the imaginary place. I don’t want it to be real, but picking names is hard y’all. I do research on names I like to see if it exists. So while one of my reasons for not doing a real place is research, I do end up doing some level of research always.

Here is my version of the disclaimer about fictional writing that you often see in books. If I ever get my stories published, be assured a lot of time, energy and research went into them so that they aren’t a real place. If I actually, accidently pick a real place, please know it was unintentionally. These are places I have made up and not meant to be real places.

So there you go. Fiction, fiction, fiction!!!