It Was Never Just A Place
There’s a piece of writing advice you hear so often it almost fades into the background: write what you know.
It didn’t really land for me until it suddenly did.
Writers like Stephen King returning again and again to a fictionalized version of Maine, or Celeste Ng grounding her stories in Ohio—you’ve seen it before. Familiar places, reshaped just enough to serve the story while still carrying the weight of something real.
For me, that place was West Virginia. More specifically, the Kanawha Valley.
And if I’m being honest, I hesitated.
There was a voice in the back of my mind—one I even ended up echoing through a fictional conversation in Beyond That Starry Sky—that said something along the lines of: no one is going to want to read a novel set in West Virginia unless it involves Mothman or the Flatwoods Monster.
But I did it anyway.
Because the truth is, that place isn’t just a setting to me. It’s where I grew up. It’s where a lot of life happened—the kind of moments that shape you in ways you don’t fully understand until much later. Some of them wonderful, some of them not. All of them lasting.
When I sat down to write, I didn’t want to recreate it exactly. I wanted to rebuild it—faithfully, but fluidly. Recognizable, but still fictional enough to bend to the needs of the story.
So you’ll see Charleston in there—its landmarks, its presence—blended seamlessly with places that don’t exist anywhere but on the page. You’ll pass through an echo of the late 1980s and the halls of the fictional Kanawha High School, heavily inspired by the long-gone Herbert Hoover High I once attended. (And yes, I’m aware there’s a new one now. It doesn’t count. #notmyhoover.)
Other places drift in and out—Hurricane, Beckley, Clendenin—sometimes just for a moment, the way real places do when you’re remembering them. And alongside them, entirely fictional communities like Sunrise Hills take root as if they’d always been there.
At the time, I thought that would be it.
One story. A bittersweet romance set in a version of the Kanawha Valley that felt close enough to home to matter. Something I could finish, look back on, and say: that was my shot. Whether it led to more or not.
But stories don’t always stay where you put them.
Some characters have a way of showing up uninvited and refusing to leave—I’m looking at you, Chelsea and Ena. And as that started happening, something else did too.
The setting itself began to change.
Or maybe it didn’t change. Maybe it just stepped forward.
What started as background slowly became something more present. The hills, the rivers, the towns—they didn’t feel like places the story happened in anymore. They felt like something the story was happening with.
It’s a strange realization when it hits you: that the place you thought you were using as a backdrop has been a character all along.
And once that door opened, it didn’t close again.
What began as a small fictional detail—a book within the world titled When the Hills Were Ours, the novel that jumpstarted (and complicated) Morgan Dale’s career—started to grow beyond its original purpose. More ideas followed. More stories. More characters, all tied not just to each other, but to the same place.
It was as if the mountains themselves had more to say.
As if all those years, all those memories, all those quiet moments and loud ones too, weren’t contained in a single story—they were part of something larger, something shared.
And just like that, When the Hills Were Ours stopped being a title mentioned in passing and became something else entirely: a kind of umbrella. A shared world. A collection of stories where West Virginia isn’t just the setting—it’s the one constant presence, shifting and enduring, as much a part of each story as any protagonist.
I didn’t set out to build that.
But I’m glad it happened.
So now, as Beyond That Starry Sky moves closer to launch, and On Days It Rains continues to take shape, I find myself wondering what else is waiting out there in those hills. What stories haven’t made themselves known yet. What characters are already on their way, whether I’m ready for them or not.
There’s only one way to find out.
I’ll get back to the notebooks. Back to the keyboard. Back to listening for whatever comes next.
And as always, I hope you’ll come along for the journey.
Until next time…
It didn’t really land for me until it suddenly did.
Writers like Stephen King returning again and again to a fictionalized version of Maine, or Celeste Ng grounding her stories in Ohio—you’ve seen it before. Familiar places, reshaped just enough to serve the story while still carrying the weight of something real.
For me, that place was West Virginia. More specifically, the Kanawha Valley.
And if I’m being honest, I hesitated.
There was a voice in the back of my mind—one I even ended up echoing through a fictional conversation in Beyond That Starry Sky—that said something along the lines of: no one is going to want to read a novel set in West Virginia unless it involves Mothman or the Flatwoods Monster.
But I did it anyway.
Because the truth is, that place isn’t just a setting to me. It’s where I grew up. It’s where a lot of life happened—the kind of moments that shape you in ways you don’t fully understand until much later. Some of them wonderful, some of them not. All of them lasting.
When I sat down to write, I didn’t want to recreate it exactly. I wanted to rebuild it—faithfully, but fluidly. Recognizable, but still fictional enough to bend to the needs of the story.
So you’ll see Charleston in there—its landmarks, its presence—blended seamlessly with places that don’t exist anywhere but on the page. You’ll pass through an echo of the late 1980s and the halls of the fictional Kanawha High School, heavily inspired by the long-gone Herbert Hoover High I once attended. (And yes, I’m aware there’s a new one now. It doesn’t count. #notmyhoover.)
Other places drift in and out—Hurricane, Beckley, Clendenin—sometimes just for a moment, the way real places do when you’re remembering them. And alongside them, entirely fictional communities like Sunrise Hills take root as if they’d always been there.
At the time, I thought that would be it.
One story. A bittersweet romance set in a version of the Kanawha Valley that felt close enough to home to matter. Something I could finish, look back on, and say: that was my shot. Whether it led to more or not.
But stories don’t always stay where you put them.
Some characters have a way of showing up uninvited and refusing to leave—I’m looking at you, Chelsea and Ena. And as that started happening, something else did too.
The setting itself began to change.
Or maybe it didn’t change. Maybe it just stepped forward.
What started as background slowly became something more present. The hills, the rivers, the towns—they didn’t feel like places the story happened in anymore. They felt like something the story was happening with.
It’s a strange realization when it hits you: that the place you thought you were using as a backdrop has been a character all along.
And once that door opened, it didn’t close again.
What began as a small fictional detail—a book within the world titled When the Hills Were Ours, the novel that jumpstarted (and complicated) Morgan Dale’s career—started to grow beyond its original purpose. More ideas followed. More stories. More characters, all tied not just to each other, but to the same place.
It was as if the mountains themselves had more to say.
As if all those years, all those memories, all those quiet moments and loud ones too, weren’t contained in a single story—they were part of something larger, something shared.
And just like that, When the Hills Were Ours stopped being a title mentioned in passing and became something else entirely: a kind of umbrella. A shared world. A collection of stories where West Virginia isn’t just the setting—it’s the one constant presence, shifting and enduring, as much a part of each story as any protagonist.
I didn’t set out to build that.
But I’m glad it happened.
So now, as Beyond That Starry Sky moves closer to launch, and On Days It Rains continues to take shape, I find myself wondering what else is waiting out there in those hills. What stories haven’t made themselves known yet. What characters are already on their way, whether I’m ready for them or not.
There’s only one way to find out.
I’ll get back to the notebooks. Back to the keyboard. Back to listening for whatever comes next.
And as always, I hope you’ll come along for the journey.
Until next time…
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