Terrorizing Real Places with Clowns and Mayhem

I have a tendency to take real-life locations, particularly places I've lived in or visited, and insert them into my works of fiction. I usually take substantial liberties with these locations, playing with the geography and timeline. I enjoy this perhaps more than I should. Let's take a look at a few real-life locations that I've inserted into my novels and discover the terrible things I've done to them.

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Shadows of Tockland

This novel contains three real cities (all of them located in Northwest Arkansas) but moves them into a post-apocalyptic world and fills them with danger, violence, clowns, and plague. Isn't that nice?

Mountainburg

This small town has inspired locations in two of my novels: Shadows of Tockland and Mary of the Aether. In Shadows, it becomes a steam-powered, gas-lighted town on the edge of civilization. When the novel opens, a small traveling circus has come to town, and that's where our protagonist first meets our clown heroes.

In reality, it's a small, quiet town with a strange dinosaur park. It's also home to the Dairy Dream, which inspired the Dinky Dairy in Mary of the Aether.

West Fork

In Shadows of Tockland, West Fork is a city of strange hat-wearing, plague-ridden hillbillies. In real life, it a town of about 2,000 people that is chiefly known for Riverside Park, where you can dive off bluffs and splash around in the White River.

Fayetteville

In Shadows of Tockland, Fayetteville has been transformed by plague and war into a walled fortress city trying desperately to keep the sickness of the world at bay. The name has been reduced to Fayette, and the people have become hostile to everyone. In real life, Fayetteville is almost certainly the greatest city in Arkansas and is the fifth-best place to live in the U.S. Much of the action in the novel takes place in and around Dickson Street, so when the plague hits, watch out for Dickson Street, people. It's doomed!

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The Ribbon Tree

Bartlesville, Oklahoma

This small Oklahoma town is where I grew up and went to high school. I have strong memories of this place in the years 1987-1991. It has changed a bit since then, with new roads being built and some old businesses disappearing from the face of the earth. The version of it in the novel has had its geography messed with. Tuxedo Trailer Park, the setting of the story, is a fiction. It doesn't really exist, though it is based on a much smaller trailer park where a friend of mine lived. I've also placed a strange alien power in its midst and set it loose to ruin lives, so that's fun.

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The Vale of Ghosts

Siliven

Since this is a fantasy novel set in a completely different world, you might be surprised to discover that one of the primary locations in the story is based on a real place that I once visited. Siliven is a smallish town designed and built in a grid, where the north-to-south streets are numbered neatly from One to Ten. In the very center of the town, there's a large open plaza that serves as a meeting place. It's where a lot of significant events occur in the book series, and the dominant building there is the local church.

Believe it or not, Siliven is based on the city of La Plata, Argentina. Although La Plata is vastly larger than Siliven, it's layout is the same general idea. As you can see in the photo below, the streets of La Plata were designed and built in a grid. At the heart of the city, there's a large plaza which is dominated by the Cathedral of La Plata. If you took La Plata and shrunk it down significantly and moved it into a vague fantasy setting, you'd get Siliven.

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West Fork is the scene is a brutal struggle with plague-ridden hillbillies. Fayetteville (Fayette) is the sight of a fierce gun battle involving a clown troupe, an army, another army, and a mob of maniacs. Bartlesville is invaded by weird ribbon-like creatures that stir up all kinds of evil, grief, and hatred. Siliven (La Plata) is haunted by ghosts and eventually terrorized by a weird cave-dwelling monster.

See how fun it is?

The Nineties Are Calling You

The summer of 1991 in Bartlesville, Oklahoma was a hot and humid one. Nothing unusual about that. Oklahoma gets its share of hot, humid summers, but this particular year was different.

It all started when a young man by the name of Navin Noe hopped over the fence at the back of Tuxedo Trailer Park and made his way into the overgrown wooded area beyond. He only intended to retrieve his prized baseball, the one he caught during a local high school baseball game.

Unfortunately, the woods were overrun with stray dogs and worse. Something was hidden deep in the hollow of a tree, something waiting to be roused. Once awakened, it's power threatened the whole city.

Who are the young people responsible for stirring up all of this trouble? Let's meet them.

Navin Noe

Navin lives in Tuxedo Trailer Park, in the third trailer from the end, in fact. His mother works the graveyard shift for a janitorial service at the local hospital, so Navin's aunt spends nights with him. During the day, Navin's mother spends most of her time sleeping on the couch in the living room, so he's left to roam with little supervision. Unfortunately, there's not much to do in his immediate vicinity.

Hao

Navin's best friend, Hao, actually lives across the street in a real house. His father owns a small restaurant on the east side of town, though it doesn't have the best reputation. Hao has a game room with multiple video game systems, including an old Atari 2600, an NES, a Sega Master System, and a brand-new Super Nintendo. In the eyes of most trailer park residents, Hao's family is rich.

Jane

The newest resident of Tuxedo Trailer Park, Jane arrives with a strong sense of disgruntlement. She had no desire to move into a trailer park and tried to convince her dad to rent an apartment instead. He didn't listen, and she's not at all pleased. Her old hometown, Plano, was far more exciting, and she's not afraid to make comparisons.

Now, meet our fine city. Bartlesville, the City of Lights! Actually, that's Paris, but for those unfamiliar with Bartlesville, here's a glimpse of downtown:

Cool places the kids like to hang out? Well, there's the Eastland Four. That's the "nice" movie theater in town.

There's also the Penn Twin. It's got an interesting retro vibe. Navin doesn't like it when the movies play off-center and out of focus, though.

There's Washington Park Mall, of course. The old folks prefer Luby's. Navin and Hao make the occasional trip to Aladdin's Castle to play video games. Hao is pretty good at Smash TV. There's also Time Warp Comics, but Navin doesn't really have extra money to spend on comics. He borrows X-Force or Wolverine from Hao sometimes.

So, as you can see, Bartlesville is one of the most exciting towns that 1991 has to offer. Unfortunately, it's all about to come crashing down.

Enjoy the catastrophic adventure!

The Ribbon Tree is available in paperback and on Kindle. Click the book cover and check it out.