To Amityville or Not to Amityville...

Yes, that is the question—as it pertains to my Portraits trilogy. I set the opening book, Portrait of a Girl Running, in fictional Milleville, Long Island, New York. This setting has no bearing on the next two stories, Portrait of a Protégé and the work in progress Portrait of a Girl Adrift, but when I publish Adrift, I plan to release a second edition of Girl Running*. As I work through edits, I’m wondering…since all the other settings in the series are factual places, although used fictitiously, how important is continuity of settings?

The geography of Milleville, where the majority of Girl Running takes place, is based upon my hometown, Amityville. (I wrote about this in an earlier post.) Geography aside, there is only one other detail very loosely based on reality—I had a math teacher, Mr. Miles, who had a reputation for being cantankerous but loved by many students during his long career that spanned generations at Amityville Memorial High School. After his death, shortly after I graduated, the middle school was named after him. As far as I’m aware, he never married, and I don’t know that he has any surviving family.

Aside from the fact that I suck at math and Mr. Edmund W. Miles was very displeased with my performance, there are no other similarities to my character Mr. Clarence Myles—nor are there any similarities between any of my other characters and the teachers or staff in the Amityville school district.

As I talked about earlier, the reason I didn’t use Amityville as the setting has to do with the notorious horror flick and not wanting that stigma attached to my story. But now I’m wondering if that is so much of an issue. How many readers even recall the movies, especially on the worldwide market? Editing-wise, it would be a cinch to change Milleville to Amityville. And no, it’s not a huge issue for the story—just an issue of tidiness and continuity (yes, I obsess over such things!). Before I hit Find>Replace, I’m curious if anyone has any thoughts on the subject.

*I’m adding back in a few deleted scenes—nothing major, but information that rounds out supporting characters that show up in the third book.

When Amityville Is Your Hometown

Now that I have decided to forgo a formal outline for Blind Sighted, I’m diving into writing and thinking about settings. Should I use a fictional New England town, or an actual, real-life village? I was faced with the same question when I wrote my other novels. In Uncharted, I went with fictional, just so I could contrive the quintessential coastal-Maine community. With Portrait of a Protégé, sequel to Portrait of a Girl Running, I chose a true-to-life setting—the Sunapee Lake Region in New Hampshire, even naming some establishments in the community—but with Girl Running, I had a dilemma. I wrote with the geography of a particular town in mind—the village I grew up in—Amityville. So much easier than plotting out the ‘floor plan’ of an entirely new imaginary setting.

Since it has been a few years since the debacle, The Amityville Horror, was produced—thirty-four years to be exact—I don’t know … perhaps many people don’t remember the movie. I never saw it, and not just because I have an aversion to horror flicks. There are quite a few of us who still remember the horrible night that spawned the movie. I was an impressionable fourteen years old. I did not personally know the DeFeo family, but their tragedy rocked my safe, predictable, middle-class, ordinary life. Their tragedy was incomprehensible and it still reminds me of how precarious life can be.

Nevertheless, I have many fond memories of growing up in Amityville. It was a unique setting amongst the suburban towns that surrounded it, with its quaint village and mixed racial community. It was not only picturesque (and I believe it remains that way), but it felt safe. For me and my siblings, life happened in a three-mile radius. Aside from occasional trips upstate or to Florida, and out to Iowa to visit grandparents, Amityville, with its nearby beaches—Robert Moses State Park and Gilgo Beach—was all I knew for the first eighteen years of my life. It was only natural for me to write from memory when I constructed Girl Running. Even though at the time I had no plans for publication (that’s what new writers say when they set out to write their first real-live novel!), I was saddened to know that I could never use the actual name Amityville in a fictional setting. So sad, because it even sounds like the perfect fictional setting—Amityville! Doesn’t it conjure images of a happy, safe, amiable place? I mean, the word amity itself means friendly! Alas, I had to alter the name to Millville. Yeah, it’s pretty generic and it still works for fiction, but I would like to have held true to my hometown.