An analysis of the 100 books published since 1900 that most often appeared on best-of lists found that for 61 of the 100, the book was at least partly set in a place the author lived.
Of the other 39 books, the average minimum distance between where the author once lived and where the book is set is just 73.7 miles.
This should be good news to me, even though none of my five published novels have made it on these best-of lists.
Something Missing, Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend, and Twenty-one Truths About Love are all set in the area where I have been living for the past 25 years. Almost all of the locations are real, including the homes that many of my characters inhabit.
Unexpectedly, Milo is also set in the town where I live, though it also includes a long section of road trip to a town in North Carolina.
Storyworthy: Engage, Teach, Persuade, and Change Your Life Through the Power of Storytelling is a nonfiction book, but it’s filled with stories set in many place, but most of them are towns where I once lived, including the town in which I live today.
The Perfect Comeback of Caroline Jacobs (and the upcoming The Other Mother) are both set in my hometown of Blackstone, Massachusetts, where I spent the first 18 years of my life. And that town is just 68 miles from where I’m currently living, meaning every one of my books would fit perfectly into this analysis.
All except for the best-of lists part.
In fact, the only book I ever wrote that was set in a fictional town was my only unpublished novel. It’s set in an invented town in Vermont.
Sadly, nobody wanted it.
This doesn’t mean that it wasn’t any good, of course. I think it’s a great story that deserved to be written and published, but unfortunately, no publisher seems to agree.
Yet.
But it’s interesting how it’s the only book that isn’t set in a town within the seemingly magical 73.7 mile limit is the one that I could not sell.
Maybe all I need to do is shift it south to Connecticut…
