SEAL COVE

I’m currently working on an ensemble piece set in the small coastal town of Seal Cove in Northern California. Seal Cove is a fictionalized version of Moss Beach, where I’ve lived most of my life, combined with neighboring Princeton by the Sea at Pillar Point Harbor, and perhaps a few touches of Del Mar, where I grew up.

I began work on it this summer and was hopeful of getting it done before the end of he year, but I was overly optimistic, and I’m now shooting for March 1st. The first working title was Cypress Cove, but I found that title had already been used for a series. I then settled on Smuggler’s Cove, with he same results. For awhile it was Rum Beach, which is a good title, but gives the expectation of a Caribbean setting, which doesn’t fit. At this moment I’ve settled on Seal Cove, which is an actual cove about a mile from my house.

I’ve lived all but a couple of years in seaside towns and have never used the coastside as a setting for fiction (save for an unpublished novel called Fog Beach). Seal Cove is about life and death and aspirations and disappointments, expectations, surprises, hope and discovery. It’s about the people who live here, or might have lived here. They’re a nice group of people trying to find their way through life.