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I reread RW for a discussion here on the bb and I was struck by how little "local color" there was. It almost seemed as if RW could have been set in any major American city. Was the lack of "local color" in RW intended? Please know that I'm not being critical - this was just an observation I made.
Interesting question. I just re-read RW for the first time since I wrote it, so my recollection of my thought processes during the writing of it are a little fresher than they would have been.
As you probably know, I live in Houston where RW is set, so it's possible I took for granted I'd sketched in enough local color, simply because it's so familiar to me.
Having said that, I don't think that was the answer. During RW, I wrote often and in rather great detail about the Foster family's business. I remember worrying, during the writing of RW, that I'd gone too far with all that "local business background/color," and that worry probably caused me to veer away from adding more Houston color.
Today, I wouldn't worry at all about that, but when RW was written, romances were still exclusively about romance. I was subtly trying to move my readers toward a more "Mainstream Romance" which was a subgenre that didn't actualy exist at the time. I was "feeling my way in the dark," and experimenting--trying to meet readers' goals and my own as well.
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Did you base "Kingdom City, TX" & "Keaton, TX" and any of your other fictional Texas towns on real Texas towns, if so which one(s)?
They're completely fictional, but having lived in Texas ten years longer now, than then, they're pretty typical of a lot of little towns.
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