(View entire post here)

I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area (born in Martinez, schooled in half a dozen towns and cities); it's thus natural that I would set the October Daye books in the same place. I know the geography, I know the local history, and more importantly, I know how the Bay Area feels. Every city has its own atmosphere, its own set of tropes and customs. In the Bay Area, where geography and meteorology conspire to create a dozen tiny micro-climes, going from one city to the next can feel like going to an entirely different state. We have deserts, forests, tunda, gravid farmland, and craggy mountains. It's possible to start the day in Concord in midsummer, cross the San Francisco Bay to winter, and go out to dinner in Berkeley's lovely autumn. Northern California is a place where "logic" holds very little sway.

Toby spends the majority of her time in San Francisco, an iconic city, nestled up against the water and ringed at night in cotton-candy fog. I've spent years wandering around the city, and it still sometimes seems like a fairy tale to me, a place too improbable and perfect to be real. Then the sun comes up, or I'm walking to the train station and I'm just too tired to care anymore, and everything is dirty and broken-down and old. That's San Francisco, too, and it's that dichotomy that makes San Francisco such a perfect place to anchor my particular version of Faerie.

In Toby's world, the truly distant parts of Faerie—what they call "the deeper lands"—have been lost, leaving them much more tied to mortal reality. Because of that, the fae Courts (and by extension, most of the fae nobles) have really started to echo the mortal world. So a Court in San Francisco will be more urban and strange, while a Court in Sacramento will be sun-baked and practical. Toby's San Francisco is full of shadows that can't be trusted, fogs that hold more than just moisture, and impossible things taken as a matter of course.

One of the great things about working with the Bay Area as a setting is the flexibility it gives me. Shadowed Hills—home of Toby's liege lord, Sylvester Torquill—is located in the city of Pleasant Hill (which is actually where I went to high school—go Falcons!). It's quieter there, calmer, and more laid-back, but it's still part of the Bay Area. Book two, A Local Habitation, takes place almost entirely in the city of Fremont, right on the edge of Silicon Valley, and I'm able to exploit that "at the edge" status to create a setting that both reflects the mortal side in a recognizable way, but respects my Faerie.

The geography and native wildlife of the Bay Area has also played a large part in the design of Toby's world. San Francisco, a city surrounded by water, naturally has a big Kelpie problem (fae horses that want to eat you). Sacramento doesn't have Kelpies, but does have issues with Manticores who enjoy the arid climate and easy access to chewy human snacks. Pleasant Hill, Berkeley, and Concord are crawling with rose goblins, and there's not a city in the region that doesn't have pixie problems (and invest regularly in fly strips). Fae flora and fauna are selected to work with the local geography, rather than working against it, because it's just more fun that way.

I love it when I'm reading a book and can tell that the author really knows and cares about the places he or she is using for a setting, and I try very hard to capture that in Toby's world. Besides, I love the Bay Area. Kelpies and all.

--Seanan McGuire

Seanan McGuire, Rosemary and Rue, fantasy, faerie, books, Penguin Books