I had a short list of things I had to do when I went home to Long Island.
- Go to the beach
- Eat bagels for breakfast
- Go to the diner for a Greek salad wrap with chicken, extra feta, and mozzarella cheese melted on the fries
- Visit Shelter Island for book research
My work always starts out with fragments of ideas. An island setting was an early fragment I couldn’t let go of. As the sketch of this book became more clear, so did this island. In my mind, it looked very much like Shelter Island, a small island tucked between Long Island’s north and south forks. I hadn’t stepped foot on the island since a 4th grade field trip in the mid-90s but the vague memories of it started drawing the picture of what would become Belhaven Island.
Stylized and hyper-edited photos on Pinterest could only do so much to build the world in which my characters live. So I left the kid to enjoy the pool at my mom’s and my sister and traveled an hour east to Shelter Island.
I’m no professional photographer, but I’m not as awful as these photos imply. At the time I only wanted reference photos and left the artsy ones to my sister, who has legitimate talent. I’ll link them here if she ever posts them publicly.
