What Do You Do When You're Homesick?

Disclaimer, this isn't a picture of my hometown, but the image for my book cover.

 If you're me, you write a story set in your hometown.

Introducing my new Kindle Vella story, Small Town secrets. 

When Sadie inherits a cottage in the middle of nowhere from a grandmother she never met, she hopes to find the father she never knew. Instead, she finds mysterious messages that may or may not lead her to her father.

When a storm knocks out the power and washes out the one road that can take her back to civilization, Sadie turns to her only neighbor, a man with a secret agenda of his own.

It's set in a small town patterned after my own hometown. Here are some pictures I took in Arlington.

These are a few of my favorite houses in town.

This was my dad's garden.

These beach scenes are of a neighboring community.

This is the house I had in mind when I wrote Verity and the Villain.

Have you ever been to the Pacific Northwest? I grew up in Arlington, a dairy farming community about forty miles north of Seattle. When I graduated from high school, Arlington had a population of a little more 3,000. Today, there are close to 20,000 residents. Thanks to clever city planning, downtown Arlington looks pretty much the same as it did all those years ago. The difference is many of the surrounding farms have been converted into housing developments. This means that the town smells better, but the streets are more crowded. Sometimes, especially in the fall when the leaves are changing, I find myself homesick for a place that no longer exists.

How about you? Where is your hometown?