Laura DiSilverio | Creating Heaven

No, this isn't a religious essay! It's about how I invented the fictional town of Heaven, Colorado, the setting for my new book club mystery series featuring the Readaholics.

I started with my protagonist, Amy-Faye Johnson, who is an event organizer. I thought about the different events she might be hired to organize (and how they might go hysterically wrong--but that's a different post). My mind drifted from corporate events, to parties, to reunions and weddings. Weddings! Wouldn't it be great if there were something special about where Amy-Faye lived that encouraged brides and grooms to get married there?

I know that Loveland, Colorado (not all that far from where I live) gets a lot of destination wedding business because of its name, so I thought about naming my new town Heaven, figuring that lots of brides would want to say they were married in Heaven. Once I had the name, the rest fell into place.

I made the naming of the town a practical matter, with the town council deliberately setting out to attract wedding business by renaming the town when Amy-Faye was in high school. Thus, Walter's Ford, Colorado became Heaven, Colorado. The town's new marketing slogan came from the Kenny Chesney song, "Everybody wants to go to Heaven." (FYI, there are a bazillion songs with "heaven" in the title, as I discovered when I Googled it.)

Not content with renaming the town, the council and city merchants re-christened streets, housing areas, stores, and more. John Elway Boulevard, for instance, became Paradise Parkway. (If we win a Super Bowl, not this year, alas, they may rename it yet again to Peyton Manning Parkway.) I've had fun coming up with funny names, and I'm grateful that there are lots of words that relate to "heaven": paradise, elysium, angels, cherubim, eternity, etc.

I hope you'll come visit Heaven and meet the Readaholics--Amy-Faye and her friends, Maud Bell (a conspiracy theorist blogger), Lola Paget (who owns a plant nursery),Kerry Sanderson (Heaven's part-time mayor) and Brooke Widefield (Amy-Faye's best friend who married into the town's richest family). You can listen in as they discuss The Maltese Falcon and solve a murder in THE READAHOLICS AND THE FALCON FIASCO!

If you have any ideas for "heavenly" street or business names, please leave them in the comments!

About THE READAHOLICS AND THE FALCON FIASCO

Amy-Faye Johnson’s book club, the Readaholics, enjoys guessing whodunit in mysteries like The Maltese Falcon. But when a murder happens in their midst, they discover that solving crimes is harder that reading about them…

Amy-Faye has always loved her idyllic Rocky Mountain town of Heaven, Colorado. Her event-planning business is thriving, her fellow book-obsessed Readaholics are great, and her parents live only a few blocks away. But lately her hometown has felt a little less heavenly. First, she agrees to plan a wedding without realizing the groom is her ex-boyfriend. Then, Ivy, one of her fellow Readaholics, dies suddenly under mysterious circumstances.

The police rule Ivy’s death a suicide by poisoning, but Amy-Faye and the remaining Readaholics suspect foul play. Amy-Faye soon discovers that Ivy was hiding dangerous secrets—and making deadly enemies. Taking a page from her favorite literary sleuths, Amy-Faye is determined to find the real killer and close the book on this case. But finding the truth could spell her own ending…