In the fall of 2021, I had a bright idea for a book that was badly in need of a really cool setting. I needed a rural PNW island, someplace remote enough that the services we city-folk take for granted are not so much available at the drop of a hat. These locales are easy to come by in the southeast, but I am not in the southeast and this story called for a cold, remote beach in a forlorn northern environment.
So I started poking around maps, looking for a likely suspect.
Before long, I found one - across Puget Sound and to the north, out in the geographic middle of Nowhere, USA. Only a few hundred full-time residents. No cops. No fire fighters. No stoplights. Most of the roads unmarked. Thirty minutes from the nearest emergency services if you’re LUCKY. Not even any mailboxes until recently, because all the mail arrived general delivery at the single store on the island - which burned down just a few months before I trekked out there with my friend Kat for a writer field trip/let’s get out of the house/come on it’ll be fun, I bet.
It was fun, too.
Two silly, exhausted, masked middle-aged writer women. By this point, we’d done a lot of hiking and walking in windy, wet weather. We were not at our personal shiniest, but we were TRIUMPHANT.
We stayed at a 19th century industrial alcohol plant that had been converted into the only hotel within shouting distance of the island, and had dinner at their restaurant downstairs - which seems to be the Fancy Place where the locals go for a nice night out. The food was pretty good, too. We had a grand old time, poking around for a couple of days, taking a zillion pictures, and generally absorbing the damp, chilly fall vibe.
Then I went home and got to work. Fast-forward a little bit and…well. Voila!
Screencap of a Publishers Marketplace Deal report: “Philip K. Dick, Hugo, and Nebula Award nominee and Locus Award winner Cherie Priest’s THE DROWNING HOUSE, set on an isolated island off the Washington coast, where something sinister has washed ashore, to Rachel GIlmer at Sourcebooks, in a two-book deal, by Stacia Decker at Dunow, Carlson, and Lerner (world English).”
So it’s official! Coming next summer, a rural American gothic hits the streets! What’s it about? Well, I’ll tell you: During a terrible storm, a house washes up on a beach - and the sight of it stops the heart of the only woman who knows what it means. Now her grandson (and only heir) has vanished; but two of his childhood friends are on the case, scouring the remote PNW island for answers…
Stay tuned! I’ll deliver more details as I learn them.
See? I do have stuff going on, other than bold new cats and big cowardly dogs, learning to live together, heh. Thanks so much for reading, everyone. And check back soon, as I will undoubtedly have more Monty updates for the masses. I know what you people really come around here for, after all…