Victorville, CA

If you’re ever feeling like a complete wreak, do a little reading up on Victorville, California and you’ll feel better about your life. Unless, of course, you happen to live there.

I’ve been working on fleshing out a few scenes in my novel and this morning I came across an article that gave me some real insight into the setting of my story. Well, technically my story is set in Oro Grande, CA, a small town of less than 1000 folks, that is really more like an old ghost town, but the nearest city (just to the south) is Victorville. Here’s a quote:

“It’s a hustle and bustle every sun-baked day: No Country For Old Men-style shootouts, tweakers forgetting to take their babies out of their car seats, leaving them to be cooked alive in the hundred-plus heat, harmless bums getting sentenced to life for picking pockets thanks to three-strikes-and-you’re-out laws, drug dealers swallowing baggies of meth to hide their goods from the cops and overdosing, people trying to rob stores with BB guns and getting laughed at by shoppers, middle-aged women on parole getting arrested for fucking underage teens, wasted grandmas crashing into storefronts and flipping over on sidewalks…” (click here to see the whole article)

That’s some juicy modern-day western kind of shit. The article goes on to describe in some detail a few amazingly awful things that have gone on. How is it that I’ve been working on this story for over two years and didn’t know that the city I’m writing about is down right wild, wild west?

I guess I had romanticized the place. Since my characters live outside of the city, what I’ve seen of the place is the stunning rolling hills of the desert, but this is great. This adds a whole new layer to my story. The safe farm life verses the scary city life is something that works quite well in the world I’ve created.

Is it bad that I’m rejoicing in the downfall of man, in the utterly terrible ways we treat each other some times? Maybe, but what the hell. A good story’s a good story.