Welcome to Oregon

My husband and I got married back in 2013. He had just taken a new job the month before and being that he was a temp, we couldn't take a honeymoon. We got married on a Saturday, had Sunday to ourselves in our home, and he went to work on Monday.

Fast forward to our first anniversary, we decided to take a special trip. Sort of to replace our honeymoon. I found what I thought was a great deal on a trip to London. But after reading the fine print, it was going to cost twice as much as we had originally thought. What a bummer! So I did some more research and we found that we could spend the same amount of money that we had saved for the trip to London and fly to Seattle.

Now, this was a great idea! Because everyone knows that the first Starbucks is in Seattle. (Fun fact, did you know that it was actually the SECOND Starbucks? It moved locations a few years after it started getting popular.) And everyone knows that I'm a Starbucks addict. We did our research, opened up the map app on our phones along with Mapquest, and planned our trip for the day after Christmas. It came out to five days of travel from Seattle to our home in California.

Now, we only spent the first night and half the day in Seattle. It took us the rest of the day to drive the coast down to our first stop. And let me tell you... Washington was nice, but man, Oregon was gorgeous. Every "for sale" sign I saw, I would check on Zillow to see how much it was. I fell in love. We stayed in a different hotel along the coast every night. I can't even begin to say which place was my favorite, because I loved it all.

Present day: When it came time to write my book, I wasn't sure where to set it in. First, I thought I'd use the area I currently live in, but the desert just didn't work out for what I was planning. Then I remembered that Oregon had lots of trees but also an ocean. There are a lot of areas that don't have many people and I could play around with imaginary worlds. So, my story is now set in Oregon. It will show more through the rest of the series, since the first book was set in one place for the majority of the time. Since I can't live in Oregon, I decided that my lovely little characters could.

Photo by everett mcintire on Unsplash