Although I’ve now lived in Milwaukee for more than two years, A Time for Murder is set in my former hometown of Sacramento.
All my novels are set in the same “universe,” where many of the stores and brands are fictionalized. (This helps when, for example, a billionaire purchases and rebrands a popular social media application! That
way, my fictional “Photoxio” social media app isn’t affected.) While car brands and models mostly stay in the real world—Fenway Stevenson drives a Honda Accord, and Luke Guillory, the main character of A Time for Murder, drives a Chevy Malibu—many of the other brands mentioned are made up:
- Marks-The-Spot is a big retail chain in all my series
- FlashRide is the most popular rideshare app in all my books
- Java Jim’s is a popular national coffee chain in my novels
I’ve done the same for local spots, too. There’s no Marquette University in The Winterstone Murder’s Milwaukee; in the book, Kilbourn Tech is the big university in town, set just a few blocks north of where the Marquette campus is in real life. And I visited a couple of fantastic taquerías when I went to college in Santa Barbara that served as the inspiration for Fenway’s favorite spot, Dos Milagros. (A few of my readers have asked me where the real Dos Milagros is; alas, both places closed long ago.)
I don’t always fictionalize the real brands or real places, although sometimes I’ll reread my books and think I’ve missed an opportunity to do so. Sometimes I like using real brands that are a little obscure—think Inka Kola at the Peruvian restaurant in The Executive Murder.
You’ll find a few fictional local places and brands in A Time for Murder, too! The prison where Luke's mother would be incarcerated is Folsom Prison, but I didn't want people humming the Johnny Cash song every time Luke visited her in prison, so it became Pioneer Mesa Prison. There's a ritzy neighborhood in East Sacramento called "The Fabulous Forties" (all the streets are in the 40s); I've modified that to "The Fantastic Fifties."
If you’re ever in Sacramento, try Temple Coffee Roasters—you’ll read about the fictionalized version in the book!