The Neighborhood Known as The Hill by Mary Coley

(Learn about the setting of Mary Coley's soon-to-be-released novel, The Ravine, in this blog post by the author. The Ravine release date is May 27. Order through Wild Rose Press or from Amazon.com at http://tinyurl.com/gvju7df )

I am lucky to live in a beautiful neighborhood, the one I selected as the setting for The Ravine. My forested acre has barely enough treeless area around the house for flowerbeds and walkways. The trees provide privacy from neighbors and the street. My three patios are places of refuge where, regardless of time of day or season of the year, I can find space to enjoy sky, clouds, sun or shade.

This setting seemed perfect for the story in The Ravine. The actual ravine is down my driveway and across the street. It is so easy to imagine the Werling family living in one of the houses along my hilly street, and also to imagine Katy Werling and her friend Emily trudging up and down the asphalt lane to visit each other.

In the first chapter of The Ravine, Katy decides to make that trek back home up the hill at nearly 10 o'clock at night, without alerting her parents that she is coming home instead of going to the lake for the weekend with her best friend Emily.

Truthfully, I've never walked up the hill to my own driveway at 10 o'clock at night. But I have heard the yipping coyotes, barking dogs and hooting owls, as well as the rustling breeze and the sound of scurrying feet through the leaf-strewn understory.

And the bottom of the ravine? Where Katy lies?

I've never been there myself. I can only imagine.

And that’s what I did in The Ravine.

Imagine you are ten years old, and late one night you hear a dog barking and it sounds just like the stray dog you and your family had agreed to adopt several hours earlier. You call its name, and then go to the edge of the ravine to look. The dog barks again, and you start down the barely won path that disappears into the trees. The leaves on the path are slick beneath the plastic soles of your house shoes. You slip, and begin to slide, tumbling down and then off the makeshift trail and into the thicket. Your fall ends on a ledge just above the streambed at the bottom of the ravine. You are in terrible pain. Something is broken.

That’s all I’ll say for now. The Ravine is available on pre-order from The Wild Rose Press and Amazon.com. The worldwide release date is May 27.

(Be sure to read Mary Coley's other blog posts about the Characters in The Ravine, as well as the truth behind the black dogs.)

Mary Coley
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www.marycoley.com