Mining My Life For Book Settings by Allie Burton

 

This month’s theme is about mining your life for inspiration for your novels. Since most of my books are about teens’ with superpowers that would be hard for me to do. But I do use my travels for inspiration for the settings of my books.

I’m a big traveler and have been to 45 states and 44 countries. (Check out my social media posts of #writingviewtoday #amwriting on Instagram @allieburtonauthor and Facebook @AllieBurtonAuthor.) I love reading fiction books with great location descriptions and wondering if I’d ever been there— or knowing me, planning to go soon.

Location becomes a character in so many books including mine. Many times while traveling I think, “this would be a great place to set a scene for one of my books.”

For example, I was hiking in the Valley of 10,000 Smokes in Katmai National Park, Alaska and knew I needed to use this eerie and other worldly scenery in the book I’d just started drafting at the time: Snow Witching White, the 6^th book in A Glass Slipper Adventure Series.

Created by a volcano which sent ash into the sky, the valley was transformed. Barren ash covered the landscape and water buried by the ash percolated into steam and emerged in vents like smoke. A setting perfect for a witch coven situated above the barrier to the underworld.

Here are a couple of photos followed by descriptive passages from the book.

For the first time I scanned the area where we’d landed. The ground we stood on was made of shifting sand and gray rocks. A harsh wind lifted the sand and tossed it up, pelting small particles against my skin.

Whitish-brown cliffs surrounded us. The cliffs came to sharp points as though sand had been drizzled on the top and dried into a hard cone. On the sides of the sheer cliffs, deep gouges had been carved out by Mother Earth over time.

The harshness of the land contrasted with the distant green mountains in the Kingdom of Alandaska. Mountains I was more familiar with. Mountains where the palace and the capital city of Lindenhamn were located. Mountains that felt like home.

         Narrower at the top, it widened out buffeting the rocks below. No calm and clear lake at the bottom. Just a muddy river with a fast current. “Don’t you think it’s beautiful?”

I wouldn’t have chosen that word. I would’ve said dark, bleak, otherworldly.

My Lost Daughters of Atlantis series takes place in an imaginary town called Mermaid Beach which was based on Santa Cruz, California. Part of the series takes place underwater, where I took inspiration from snorkeling in the Bahamas and the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. The underwater palace was based on castles I’d seen in Germany and Wales. A hodgepodge of places I’d visited and had been inspired by.

 From the first book, Atlantis Riptide, the heroine has never seen the underwater palace before.

I gasped. Bubbles escaped my mouth. The palace was bright, sun filtering through the water. Those eels must put off a lot of electricity. The grand hallway was sculpted out of coral. Not brownish, dull coral but vibrant white and pastel pink coral. The walls were fine filigree carvings with fancy cuts and curlicues. Lavender, bright orange and turquoise anemone made patterns on the ground like they’d been planted to replicate a design. Starfish evenly spaced apart, clung to the wall. Coral polyps, with their sac-shaped bodies, spread out tentacles in search of food. A crystal chandelier made of glass and shells hung from the coral ceiling and swayed with the water instead of a breeze. A seaweed door swished open and two similarly-dressed men emerged. Blue with gold stripes down the side, their swim trunks looked like a uniform.

And here is the same palace, although a different location, but from the point of view of the heroine in book 2, Atlantis Red Tide, who’d lived in the palace most of her life.

Trying to blend into the background, I hid behind the streamers of seaweed acting like partitions in the palace hallway. I peered into the grand, cavernous foyer. The beauty of the room struck me, so at odds with the ugliness of my emotions. Starfish decorated the walls in intricate patterns. The crystal and shell chandelier swayed with the flowing water sparking colors of light across the room. A throne room to be admired. But not in the current conditions. Too much uncertainty. Too much intrigue. Too much doubt.

As I write this post, I just arrived home from a trip to England. The gated gardens and small thatched homes in the small villages that dot the countryside inspired the small town in the book I’m currently writing, Through the Witching Glass, a twist to the Alice in Wonderland Adventures.

This summer, I’m traveling to Andorra, Spain, Morocco, and Portugal. I can’t wait to see what the scenery inspires me to write!

Allie Burton is the author of several young adult fantasy books including A Glass Slipper Adventure, Lost Daughters of Atlantis, and Warrior Academy. You can find out more about her at www.allieburton.com.

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