Finding Inspiration in my Real-Life Happy Place

Finding Inspiration in my Real-Life Happy Place

My second book, Last Summer at the Lake House, published October 26th with Storm Publishing, is set in a fictional town called Summerville—but it’s inspired by one of my most favourite places to visit in Canada. 

In the little town of Bobcaygeon, Ontario, you won’t find a lot of action, but you will find a lot of charm. It’s a quiet town nestled between two lakes in the Kawartha region of Ontario. There’s a strip of road leading through the main part of town lined with shops and a few restaurants and pubs, including a great place to get fish and chips, an awesome coffee shop, and a bakery that makes the best cookies, scones and butter tarts I’ve ever tasted.

It’s a place where I went with my husband and three daughters to rent a cottage for a week every summer from the time my oldest daughter was only 18 months old until she was 11 years. During all that time, we developed so many good memories that have clearly had a strong impact on me. When I started writing my novels, I found it was natural for me to set them in a little lake town. As I wrote, the setting came out of me without me even thinking about it. I found I couldn’t write about anything other than the setting of my dreams—my quiet little happy place.

Of course, if you were to want action, you could find it in Bobcaygeon. There’s fishing and boating, a beach to visit, the well-known (and some might say legendary) Kawartha Dairy where they sell the biggest and best scoops of ice cream in many flavours. There’s even a big shoe store for those of us who love to shop. This is part of the charm of the place. You can find things to do, but for me, I suppose the quiet of the small lakeside town is the point of vacation. I prefer to not have much on my to-do list each day.

In Summerville, my characters are the same. They relax by Shadow Lake (also fictional) in the mornings while they have a cup of coffee. They float and splash and swim in the fresh lake water together. They’re outside, surrounded by the beauty of the natural world, while their lives take twists and turns they never could have predicted. I think it felt right for me to create a calm and serene setting to counteract the upheaval I was about to create for my characters. And I couldn’t think of a better place than one that was very similar to Bobcaygeon.

Last Summer at the Lake House is about three sisters who grow up with this same kind of setting my own daughters have had—spending their summers as children with their family by the lake, in the sand, at the campfire. However, for my characters, it’s only when they’re adults and their father dies unexpectedly that they return to the lake house to be with their mother. And, of course, because a plot had to develop from there, I created problems and family secrets and personal struggles for each character.

But when I’m in my own real-life lake town, I find everything about it calming and magical. It’s a place where I can disconnect from work and from being online all the time. It’s a place where I can stay up late and sleep in and spend almost all my time outdoors. It’s quiet and quaint, but also filled with happy vacationers—in boats out on the water, walking through town, indulging in ice cream or something from the bakery. 

It’s a place surrounded by a happy buzz.

And so, when I started writing my novel, I started with setting. I knew I wanted to create that magic and bring it to life for readers. I was hoping to replicate the same kind of feeling in them that I had every summer when we drove back to Bobcaygeon for vacation. I suppose you could call it nostalgia. It’s individual and unique to every person, but I wanted to bring to life the warm, relaxed atmosphere I knew so well, and make readers long to go to their own little lake town.

Writing this book for me was cathartic in some ways. Now that we no longer visit that little town every summer, I’ve missed it. I wanted to bring it to life again on the pages, in the little details, in the sounds and smells. 

On the one hand, I’ve wanted to do this as a way of paying the town I’ve loved so much some respect. On another, I know first-hand that there’s nothing like getting swept up in a book, or lost in another world, and feeling like you can’t wait to get back to it. With this book, I wanted to create an escape. 

I hope Summerville is that for readers in the way Bobcaygeon was for me.

—

Heather Dixon is author of contemporary fiction, including Burlington, Last Summer at the Lake House and The Summerville Sisters. In addition to writing fiction, she is a managing editor of a non-profit website, and has also spent over a decade in the marketing and advertising industry as a copywriter and freelance writer. She lives just outside of Toronto, Ontario with her husband, her three young daughters and her 95-pound Bouvier, Zoey.

LAST SUMMER AT THE LAKE HOUSE

After the death of their beloved father, three sisters return to their family lake house. As they sort through his precious belongings, they find a crumpled pile of letters and unearth a devastating secret…

Eldest sister Alex discovers the stash of love letters by accident, hidden away in the shed beside the lake where they used to play as children during long, hot summer vacations. She knows the handwriting isn’t her mother’s, and it’s clear the notes were written when she and her sisters were kids. She adored her father. But she just has to know who wrote these notes. Why don’t her sisters want to know the truth too?

As each sister deals with their grief and tries to protect their mother from more trauma, tensions rise in the lake house. Even under one roof, sharing a room just as they used to as children, the three women have never felt so isolated from one another.

When Alex makes a shocking discovery about her father’s affair, the true scale of their father’s deception is revealed.

Can Alex hold onto the family life she thought she had, and held so dear, if everything she ever knew was a lie?

A poignant and heartfelt tale of sisterhood and marriage, Last Summer at the Lake House explores the power of forgiveness and the unbreakable bond between sisters. Fans of Mary Alice Munroe, Pamela Kelley and Barbara O’Neal will be drawn deep into the heart of one family’s dramatic summer, sharing their bittersweet journey of heartache and rediscovery.

BUY HERE

Tags: featured, women writers

Category: On Writing