#CollegeTown: Setting

College Town has been live in the wild for one week! Honestly, at my current level of fatigue, it feels more like a month. I've been spamming the heck out of y'all with promo posts, and I can't claim I'll be quitting that anytime soon. It was a delightful book to write, a great way to stretch and grow as a writer, and a story I'm really proud of. You can find it here:

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In today's debrief, I want to talk about setting, and my different approach to it with this novel. Turn back now if you don't want to read any spoilers.

With Dartmoor and Sons of Rome, the characters live in, move through, and travel toward real world cities. Knoxville, and New York, and Amarillo, and New Orleans in Dartmoor. New York, and Buffalo, and a variety of locales in Eastern Europe - chiefly modern-day Romania, Russia, and Turkey - for Sons of Rome. I use a blend of real and fictional landmarks, and have spent a lot of hours walking down streets on Google Earth to get the lay of the land. 

But with College Town, I made the decision to be purposefully vague. 

Eastman is a fictional town, but I purposely didn't reveal exactly where it's located. We spend time in places like Flanagan's, Coffee Town, Estelle's, and the characters' homes, but Eastman itself is less of a presence in the story, the way Knoxville feels in Dartmoor, and more of an extended metaphor for Lawson's life. 

In the US, college towns are a unique blend of small town and destination spot. They aren't the sleepy, Mayberry cities of Hallmark movies; they're full of young people going to school, and alumni returning for games, for reunions, for lectures. They're a crossroads of sorts: the student population will always make it feel like a youthful place; a place that is, at least a little, frozen forever in adolescence...the way Lawson seems to be.  He's stuck, and he lives in a city that is forever stuck thanks to the big, sprawling shadow of the school it's known for: a forever reminder that he wasn't able to graduate and therefore can't move on. 

I kept Eastman vague because I wanted it to feel, as much as possible, like any college town in the country, just as Lawson's situation is one that feels so universal in today's world. So many people, including myself, aren't where they'd always hoped and thought we might be, struggling with a sense of self-worth and accomplishment. The title, then, isn't a reference to the town itself, but to that sensation of coming up short in your own life. 

“You’re still friends with Dana?”

He sounds so surprised that it gives Lawson something to focus on. He turns down the next aisle of parking spaces, going slow to avoid the shoppers that move in drifts. Slow enough that a man with a gun could catch up to him on foot, but he’s betting the guys behind him don’t want to be witnessed murdering someone by fifteen people in broad daylight.

“Yeah. Of course. She’s my best friend. Always has been.”

A beat. Tommy says, “Of course.” Forced lightness. “But I thought maybe she’d moved away.”

“What’s wrong with staying here?” Lawson bristles, though he knows exactly what’s wrong with it.

“Nothing,” Tommy says in a rush. “I just thought…nevermind.”

“No, what? What did you ‘just think?’ That she might have actually been successful? And gotten the fuck outta Dodge?”

Tommy sighs. “Law–”

“Not me, though. My dumb ass is still here. Still working a high school job in a college town, because I’m such a–”

“Shut up,” Tommy says, without heat. “I see you. Hold on.”

Lawson’s making his second pass in front of the Happy Hobo, and coasts along the curb, hands at ten and two. “What do you mean ‘hold on?’”

“I mean hold on. God.”

Lawson looks into his rearview mirror, and sees a hulking black Lincoln SUV pulling up behind the Mercedes. Its windows are tinted, too, but sight of it makes Lawson’s heart leap in an entirely different, less terrifying way.

“Is that you?” he asks. “Behind the Benz?”

“Yeah,” Tommy says, tightly, and then a horn blares.

A man on the sidewalk jumps in alarm. The couple crossing in front of Lawson’s car break into a run.

The Mercedes peels away from the curb, goes around Lawson, and speeds off and away, barely missing a pedestrian.

Lawson steps on the brake and lets his hands fall to his lap, where they jump and skitter like landed fish. His breathing goes thin, and high, and he can’t reel it in. The panic, ratcheting his whole body tighter and tighter throughout the crisis, crashes over him now all at once, a great tide of it, and he bends to press his forehead to the wheel, dizzy, stomach churning.

“Hang on,” Tommy says, and the call cuts off.

Lawson hangs on – barely, in the case of his sanity – because there’s nothing else to do. He can’t even summon the energy to reach over and disconnect the call from his end. The barest glance reveals his phone has handled that for him, its screen all cheerful oranges and pinks before it goes black.

The sharp rap of knuckles on his window should startle him, but he hasn’t got enough adrenaline for that. When the rap repeats, he heaves himself back and sees Tommy’s scrunched-up, worried face on the other side of the glass.

For a moment, Lawson’s seventeen again, and Tommy’s hair is too long and curling riotously over his ears, the lines on his face and the wrinkles around his nostrils born of fond annoyance. Law, open the fucking door. Because they were locked just because he got so cute when he was huffy. Then he’s thirty-seven, and Tommy’s voice is much lower, and rougher, when he says, “Law, open the fucking door.”

What can he do but comply?

When he shoves it open, Tommy leans in right away. Grips his shoulder, then his biceps, even ghosts a hand through his hair, brief but electric. He takes Lawson’s chin in a firm grip and turns his head so they’re eye-to-eye. God, it’s been twenty years since Tommy touched him, and the effect is no less staggering.

Not that he gets to bask in the magic of the moment.

Tommy snaps his fingers in his face. “Lawson. Are you having a breakdown?” he asks, quite seriously.

“Uh. No?”

Tommy frowns. “Yeah, okay. Come on.” He tugs, ineffectually, at Lawson’s arm.

Lawson blinks at him. “My car.”

“Leave it.”

“But I’m in a No Parking zone.” He doesn’t know why logic, of all things, plagues him now, when Tommy’s touching him, and leaning into his car, close enough to touch back. When he’s wearing a black shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and a red tie, and the sunlight winks off his watch, and strikes all the gold and tawny filaments in his dark eyes. He’s like the stern, masculine specter of a Renaissance painting, and Lawson’s worried about No Parking zones.

He's never claimed to have good timing.