Hello! Sorry for missing yesterday’s blog post. I did some research, but not enough to feel like I could talk about it. Location research will always be a big challenge for me! I added quite a few places to my travel wish list.

Today, I did pretty well. I scouted all of “Centennial Park”, from trains to hotels, apartments to estates. All the gloriously extravagant places make Emerson the weird and insanely rich man he is. The book takes place in LA, Paris, Cannes, St. Moritz, Heidelberg, NYC, and Tokyo. That’s a lot of locations to keep straight. Normally, I just make Notion pages with each location’s requirements. This time, I made a database so that I can sort through and see exactly which apartment, house, or hotel I am working with. It was kind of a pain to set up and set up the link back to scenes, but I think in the end it will be worth it because it will stop me from leaving my writing app to Google something. That is a pretty big momentum killer for me. I really wanted to minimize that as much as possible.

“Harder to Forget” takes place only in LA, NYC, and Seattle. That is way easier because those are three cities I have spent a lot of time in. It means that it is way easier to have the neighborhoods and locations in my head. I made a database for these cities, but I haven’t been as meticulous with the details as I am in the other ones. Plus, there is some overlap that I can absolutely use. LA and NYC are always going to be in my stories because of how important they have been in my life.

I am really excited to start writing tomorrow. I am a bit nervous about the opening scenes of “Harder to Forget.” I really need to make it feel like both sets of outcomes could come from this one singular event. Once we get to the hotel room and the choices start happening, I think it will be easy, but that first part where they are hanging out with friends has to walk a very tight line. I am pretty sure it will be the part of the novel that changes the most through the process.

So good luck to all the folks doing Camp NaNoWriMo in whatever form you are choosing: editing, plotting, writing, or rebelling like me!

❤ Spencer