Crazy from the Heat

What makes Dave Barry funny? Stephen King scary? Tami Hoag heartbreaking? All readily admit that where they live greatly influences what they write. Indeed, for both writers and readers, geography may well be destiny when it comes to fiction. Novelists often borrow from their surroundings, consciously or subconsciously, to create their imaginative worlds, just as we readers are drawn to those works that transport us to more exciting and inspiring locales, be it Hemingway's Havana, Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County or McMurtry's Lonesome Dove.