Writing From Experience

There is an old piece of advice in the writing world, “write what you know”.

In the world of H.P. Lovecraft, that’s hard to do. Unless you’ve confronted supernatural terrors or battled otherworldly creatures, you’re not likely to be writing from experience.

But for the next book in my series, Shadow Zone, I did write from personal experience. Like my main characters, Andrew Carter and Ellen Logan, I was part of an emergency evacuation.

Let me set the stage.

In October 2017, my husband and I recently returned from a trip to Scandinavia. We were just getting settled again when a strong wind blew in from the east. An improperly wired hot tub set off a spark that ignited the dry brush on Tubbs Lane in Calistoga.

The view from our window: October 8, 2017

Thus, the Tubbs fire, the worst inferno in Sonoma County history, began.

We didn’t know there was a problem at first. It happened late at night, and we were already in bed. Fortunately, an alert neighbor banged on our door and woke us up. He pointed to our picture window, and we saw the orange glow on the horizon. It seemed far away, but fueled by seventy mile an hour gusts, it approached with breathtaking speed.

We packed our cars and headed to a friend’s house, convinced our house would be consumed by the inferno.

The fire on our property

Turns out, we didn’t go far enough. After only an hour taking refuge with our friends, the fire jumped a six-lane highway and started raining embers on their neighborhood. We had to flee once again and found ourselves stuck in the middle of a traffic jam. With the wind howling and smoke limiting visibility, we struggled to escape the fire’s path. I found myself constantly glancing in my rear-view mirror, debating whether to jump out of my car and run if I saw the flames approaching.

Coffey Park, Santa Rosa California: After The Fire

Thankfully, my husband and I and our two friends escaped the neighborhood. Our home miraculously survived. But the place where we sought shelter burned to the ground, along with 5,000 other homes. Twenty-two people died in the flames.

I never thought I would use this experience in anything I wrote. For a few years, it was just too immediate, too raw for me to process. But over the years, as it became more of my past, I found myself wanting to make it work. Wanting to fold it into my fiction. So when a crisis sprung up in my series, I knew where I would be drawing my inspiration. Where I would be using the chaos of that night, the uncertainty, the sense of staring into the void as dangerous as it was historic.

From the ashes of the Tubbs fire, the shadow zone was born…