Friday 27 March 2015

April’s Interlude #9

 
The idea of Pickleville
I’m a little weird and probably make sense to very few people with my logic. Naming the town Pickleville is a prime example of this. So first, I had a dream about a girl and boy who were on a date at the movies. The girl was cute and very girl-next-door type. The boy was small in every way, geeky but in a sweet sort of way. They were maybe sixteen years old and were clearly in love with each other. It was really dark by the time the boy walked the girl home. He kissed her good-night and started for home. On his way home a group of older boys in a car stopped him, dragging him in the car. They took him to an out of the way dirty road and beat him to death. Needless to say it was a very sad, terrifying dream that stuck with me for a while.
So what does all this have to do with how I got the town where Jaron and Travis live?
About this same time my best friend was dating a cowboy type guy. I’m talking the real deal here, cowboy boots that were scuffed up and an expensive hat. He ended up breaking my friend’s heart so of course we hated him after that. I had to give my friend a happy ending so Travis was born. Jaron’s character came to me and I began to write. A little into the first few chapters I had to come up with a name for this town, except the name for the town had to be unique because initially Jaron hated being there and couldn’t wait to leave.
Then I remembered the dream and thought maybe the boy that died felt a lot like Jaron did about his town. Neither fit it very well. I wanted something completely ridiculous sounding as a punishment for the group of older boys that hurt the geeky kid.
And that was my weird, twisted logic for naming the town Pickleville.