Sheryl Nantus | Where No One Knows Your Name…

As a Canadian, I love snow. I grew up with the white stuff and remember fondly going out for Halloween with my costume on over my snowsuit, carrying my goodie bag through the show. So, when I was imagining a place forWarrior Nights , my thoughts went to a small town that would be snowed in at least once a year. Just imagine—the perfect little town in the mountains, a lovely place that happened to get snowed in for a few days. Nothing big to worry about, right? You snuggle in, stay warm and read those books on your TBR pile, maybe binge on holiday movies until the plows come in from the Big City to re-establish communication…

There's a certain beauty about small towns. I grew up in
Toronto, so I was a classic city girl—mass transit right outside the front door, a corner store
within a few minutes walking and shopping… well, let's just say that my credit card never had a
chance to catch his breath. Add in an amazing number of food choices, most of them within
walking range and you can't beat a large city for making it easy to spend money!

But there's something to be said for small towns. When I
moved to the US in 2000 I ended up in a rural area, not quite farmland but enough that the
only store was at least ten minutes' drive away, nothing within walking distance. It took me
quite some time to adjust my habits—running out of milk could mean it'd take hours for my
husband to get home and drive me to the nearest store—there was no other option. Needless
to say, I learned how to stock groceries on hand for every possible weather situation.

And yet… I enjoy having wild animals traipse through my
backyard, from deer to wild turkeys to the occasional bear. When the sun goes down it gets
dark, and I mean REAL dark—not like in the city, where no matter how you draw the curtains
the odds are that a streetlight will sneak in or a bright fluorescent light from a billboard or the
other apartments around you as people stay up all night. Quiet in a small town is VERY QUIET,
where you'll hear a car approaching you from a goodly distance and know what music they're
playing as they speed by. There's nothing like it in the city, where streetcars run all night and
cars cruise the streets; people chatting to each other and yelling at each other as they get
dropped off or picked up for various events. Horns blowing from delivery trucks and loud
music bouncing off the walls.

When I started writing Warrior Nights , I thought about where someone would go for privacy, for isolation in this age where we're all connected electronically, if not physically. Where could you go and not be part of the wider world? And if you did seek out such a place, what would it take to cut you off from everyone and everything? And what would YOU do?