St. Patrick’s Day in Seattle (2009) and Research for Hunted
When I originally conceived the idea for Hunted, I decided to set much of the story in Seattle. One of my best friends had moved there a few years before my first trip there, and she’d explained to me a number of times that the weather was dreary almost year-round. It seemed the perfect setting for a book focused on demons and summoners, the conflict between perceived good and questionable evil, and a story where two sisters are ripped apart by their inherent differences.
The trouble was, I’d never traveled to Seattle. As a matter of fact, I’d never been farther west than Idaho. So, I decided to book a trip to visit my friend and her husband, learn what Seattle had to offer, and do a little research on the city for the purpose of writing.
Back in 2009, I’d gone back to school to get a teaching degree, so my husband and I booked our trip to Seattle during mid-March—spring break. We were there during the week of St. Patrick’s Day.
We visited the typical tourist attractions: Pike’s Place Market, the Space Needle, Columbia Tower… And then my friend suggested we should take the Underground Tour. We happened to take the tour on St. Patrick’s Day morning, a fact I remember only because we were serenaded by a group of very drunk college-age people on the way to the tour. It was only 9am, but I guess the celebrations start early for some.
Here are a few of the photos I took from the trip:
The weather had been miserable all week, but on that particular morning, the sun was shining. I wouldn’t call it warm, but it was definitely better than the constant drizzle. (On a side note, we visited again a few years later in August. The weather was much better; it was warm, and the sun was almost constant. Much better for someone who comes from Colorado where it’s unusual to have more than a couple overcast days in a row.)
The Underground Tour itself was very interesting. While they don’t let you explore, there is a lot of history presented. I also saw enough to get a good idea of how to incorporate that subterranean area of the city into Hunted.
Most of the establishments mentioned in Hunted are completely fictitious—the arcade and the night club, just to mention a couple examples. And the coffee shop Chandra works at in the beginning of the book is never named—but for those who have been to Seattle, I’m sure you can guess pretty accurately which shop it might be. Let’s just say we made a bit of a joke during our visit that you couldn’t go a whole block without passing one.
I believe the only real location from Seattle mentioned in the book is the underground area. It was a fitting location for the pivotal event that happens about 60% through the novel, and again for the events at the end.
During that trip, we also took a drive south one day and passed through Astoria, Oregon. I thought it was a very picturesque city, and wound up incorporating it as the location of Chandra’s childhood home.
I don’t usually do any location-type research for my books, since the majority of my writing is epic fantasy. I create those locations from scratch. But since Hunted is an urban fantasy based in our real world, I felt compelled to do some. (I suppose the other exception to this is some of the unfinished paranormal fantasy works I’ve written, which are based in a fictitious mountain town here in Colorado. Maybe one day I’ll get around to finishing some of those, but it’s not currently on the docket. Having grown up in Colorado, I had a very good idea of the location, however.)
At the conclusion of our trip, Seattle proved to be exactly the sort of city I needed for the basis of Hunted. I also learned a few things about myself during that trip: I prefer open spaces and mountains to the big cities, I really dislike drizzle, and I need far more sunlight than the Pacific Northwest has to offer. Seattle is a fun place to visit, but I think I’ll stick with Colorado as my home.
Hunted is a standalone urban fantasy. For more information about the book, you can read more here: Hunted.
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