I thought it would be fun to talk a little about the settings of my books. In a previous post, I shared how I came up with the setting for the Ignite series. Today, we’re looking at The Foster Brothers series.

In 2021, my son and I did our second cross-country trip and drove from New York all the way to Seattle. We made stops in Michigan to see my PA Vicki and her daughter, then moved on to Chicago, where we spent a few days. And it was blazing hot! Pfff, we were sweating our asses off.

I had been to Chicago before, but that had been in the winter, so it was fun to see everything in the summer now. We visited the Bean, walked down the Magnificent Mile and gawked at all the expensive shops, we took the L, did a boat tour, and much more. We had a lot of fun despite the heat!

That’s where I came up with the idea of letting the four guys from the series grow up in Chicago. I wanted them to be in a big city with inner city problems, and so Chicago was perfect. And I incorporated some of the things we saw into the books.

After Chicago, we drove on to Minnesota (narrowly missing a tornado that struck Wisconsin!) where we visited the Mall of America—the biggest mall in the US. And it is massive indeed. I spent my birthday there, and it was epic.

We also saw Theodore Roosevelt NP in North Dakota, drove through the wildfire-haze in Montana, and eventually ended up in Seattle, our destination. Seattle itself was an interesting experience. We loved the Pike Place Market, thought the chewing gum wall was gross, kept being amazed at all the coffee shops including Starbucks, and admired the view from the Space Needle. We also did a ride on the Ferris Wheel, which is always fun.

A lot of the setting details for The Foster Brothers were from that trip, as I took lots of pictures and made copious notes. The location where Reid lives, for example, was inspired by a walk my son and I did through that neighborhood, which is a gorgeous setting with lots of renovated turn-of-the-century buildings.

After Seattle, our trip wasn’t done. We spent time on the Olympic Peninsula (there’s a rainforest there, did you know?), did an orca-watching trip, then continued to Oregon and started our long drive back, stopping by several places of interest along the way. It was an epic trip, and it certainly gave me a lot of inspiration for various settings…including The Foster Brothers!