Citric Acid, An Online Orange County Literary Arts Quarterly of Imagination and Reimagination, generously gave me the space in their latest issue to celebrate the second birthday of my second novel. And also do some second guessing. Here’s an excerpt. Read the rest here.
Two years ago, in October of 2023, She Writes Press published Those People Behind Us. There are five characters in the book (a realtor, an ex-con living in his car, a Vietnam vet, an aerobics teacher, and a teenage boy) who live in a tract very much like ours. Initially, they don’t believe they have anything in common with each other, but it turns out that they actually do.
Their fictional city is increasingly divided by politics, protests, and escalating housing prices. I set the story in the summer of 2017, post-Trump’s first election and pre-pandemic. I never thought I’d have to clarify which Trump election, and I used to say at my book events that this period of time felt like it should be classified as historical fiction. I’d generally get a chuckle from the audience.
In the novel, I changed Huntington Beach’s name to Wellington Beach for several reasons. It was fun to tweak the names of Orange County landmarks just enough so they’d still be recognizable to locals. I thought the conflicts in the novel weren’t specific to Huntington Beach, but common to most American cities at that time. I created characters on both sides of the political spectrum, and although I did my best to show their humanity, I knew that some Surf City residents might bristle at my take on the city and find it too critical.
Two years later, I realize I wasn’t critical enough.
