Looking for Haunting and Beautiful?

Halloween happens to be my birthday. I also live in the northwest corner of the continental United States, the setting for many a scary book, movie and television series from the Twilight Saga to Twin Peaks and many, many more in between. It’s no wonder that the title of my first book is Outrunning the Devil!

Those of you unfamiliar with the Pacific Northwest are probably picturing a dreary, gray, waterlogged landscape, inhospitable in every way. A place dark enough for vampires to wander the streets during the day, Native American burial grounds a plenty, and abounding in miles of deep, thick forests ideal for werewolves to camp out in.

Those of us who live here and love it, know it as so much more than that. Yes, the sun does shine here occasionally and most of the rain we get is just drizzle, rarely the heavy pounding squalls and monsoons in other parts of the world. We do get a good amount of precipitation over the course of the year, but we live in a rainforest region which stretches along the coast from Northern California to Anchorage, Alaska. It’s jungle-like, similar to the Amazon or Hawaii—only with evergreens, Salal and heavy moss. It’s the Garden of Eden.

The setting of my first book, Outrunning the Devil, was primarily in the small town of Anacortes, Washington, on Fidalgo Island, the jumping off point to the San Juan archipelago. Laura Adams comes to Anacortes from Connecticut as a fugitive from a dangerous hitman bent on murdering her. She finds shelter there in the home of a man she’s never met, an old friend of her brother.

She falls in love with the haunting beauty of the Pacific Northwest and finds comfort and safety in the overcast skies. She loves the deep emerald waters under the Deception Pass Bridge between Fidalgo and Whidby Islands, the tulip fields of Mount Vernon, and the mossy forest around her new home. She also has the opportunity to work at a seafood company in Seattle for a few days. She gets to know some of the members of the Swinomish Tribe as well as the Croatian community in Anacortes.

The place is haunting to her, but it’s not scary. It’s beautiful and safe, the place where she falls in love and finds a secret haven from the danger stalking her.

Deception Pass Bridge between Fidalgo Island and Whidby Island

Tulip Farm Near Mount Vernon, Washington

The next town over from Anacortes on the mainland

The Rainforest of the Olympic Peninsula