The Shore, the City, the Mountains...Oh My!
The places in The Shore Series books are as unique as the stories themselves. The Shore takes place in the Outer Banks. For You spends time in Charlotte. Beside Us hosts a vacation getaway in the mountains. But what do those areas mean to the characters?
The Outer Banks, for Ryan, was where her memories lived. It was where her family spent her childhood summers. Hanging around Abby. Having her first crush. And then? Life. High school. College. Getting a job and adulting. So when she would return to the shore, it was a vacation for her. A chance to reminisce about the past and step away from her present.
Then she runs into Cody. And suddenly, the shore starts to change for her. There’s Cody. There’s the rest of the Shore family she gets to know again. There is kite flying at Jockey’s Ridge, campfires after sunset along the beach, and family dinners. The Outer Banks changes from the place where she had fun as a child to where she can build her life.
Madison is a feisty redhead, and her DNA screams city girl. I couldn’t start Madison out on the shore because it just wouldn’t have fit her. She’s artsy, metropolitan, and snarky as hell. The question was, what would have to change to allow her to spend her life with the man she loves?
The answer was bigger than Declan. Madison finally found the family she always longed for. That’s the part of her that grew during her story and would allow her to become an Outer Banks native. However, when I think about Madison and Declan years down the road, I absolutely see them splitting their time between Charlotte and the Outer Banks, with those periodic side trips to Columbia.
Abby belongs to the Outer Banks. That’s her home. Where she was raised. Where she was raising her son. But the hard part about being at home is there’s always school. Work. Laundry. Homework. Being a mom. The daily interactions sometimes make it hard to see beyond the everyday.
Until it’s time for a vacation. In the mountains, Abby could be, well, Abby. She wasn’t Mom. Or business owner. Or sister. Or homeowner. Or any of the other titles she wore day after day. The mountains allowed her to relax. To breathe. To open her mind to something outside of the everyday. To Luke.
I’ll fully admit that when I fell in love with North Carolina, I fell in love with these three areas of the state. Writing The Shore, there was no question it would take place in the Outer Banks. With the other two books, it was the same. I wanted to make sure the characters spent time in the city and the mountains…however that would work for their stories. And if I needed to do a little traveling for research…oh well. 😉
I’d like to think that in some small way, the locations these stories take place in helped shape the characters. Ryan wouldn’t be the same woman if she lived in Marin, even if it is on the California coast. Madison wouldn’t be the same if she were pounding the pavement in another large city like Dallas or Nashville. And Abby wouldn’t have been the same if she hadn't left New York and come back to the shore, where in my opinion, she always belonged.
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