While I try to finish my Nighthawk Awards for 2009, I want to point back to my novel sleep now the angels, that I published in full (though in parts) back between October and April. Part of that is because I am almost done with my Top 250 Songs of the Eighties post (hopefully the third post after this one) and a number of the pieces in that post will reference the novel because I quoted a lot of those songs. But the other reason is because of the town that I set the novel in. I created a fictional town called Santiago Oaks, California, set in the hills between Sacramento and Reno, a mixture of Forest Grove, Oregon, where I went to college and aspects of California itself, where I was raised. The town itself got its name, as I said in the introduction, from a regional park that is now mostly ash and dust thanks to Canyon Fire 2.
Canyon Fire 2, which has been raging in central Orange County, just east of Orange and Villa Park, where I lived from 1981 to 1992, has not been getting the attention that the fires around Santa Rosa and Napa Valley have been because the loss of property has been much smaller and the loss of life, thankfully, seems to be nonexistent. But, if you go to the most recent article in the Orange Country Register, the house you see burnt to the ground stood just yards from the entrance to Santiago Oaks Regional Park, one of my favorite places. The fire came closer to my brother and sister-in-law’s house that I am comfortable with, but thankfully missed them. Still, it took down a large swath of land where I ran a lot of cross country during my years in high school.