Talking Location With Joanna Fitzpatrick – CALIFORNIA

28th August 2021

#TalkingLocationWith…  Joanna FitzPatrick, author of The Artist Colony, set in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California.

My father was called the Father of Travel. He bragged about going around the world thirty times, but he wasn’t making it up. He produced hundreds of travelogues for MGM and I got to be the lucky little girl that walked in and out of historical cathedrals while the camera rolled. He finished each of his travelogues with a sunset and I would wait, not always patiently, for him to film the sun slowly sinking behind the horizon, which was later synced to his resonating voice: “As the sun slowly sinks in the West we most reluctantly say farewell to . . .” I guess you could say travel is in my blood.

Perhaps that is why locations have always been the inspiration behind my novels. When I wrote an historical novel based on the life of Katherine Mansfield, to understand her better, I visited the sites in France, England, Italy and the Swiss Alps where she had written her short stories and pursued a cure for her tuberculosis. For my novel The Drummer’s Widow I took my widow on a European jazz festival tour, imagining her in settings where I had been, knowing travel would soften her grief and start her on a new journey.

Before writing The Artist Colony, I extensively researched Carmel-by-the-Sea locations from the 1920s and studied black and white photographs from that era. I was amazed at how little things had changed. The pristine beaches are still here. The cypress trees are still twisted by the wind. The sky is still cobalt blue. And historic buildings have been well-preserved by Carmel’s conscientious historians.

Though Carmel-by-the Sea is now a popular tourist destination and a far cry from an artist colony, I was able to turn back the clock and take my readers to an idyllic artist colony where women were free to paint with other “spinsters” on the shores of Carmel unfettered by patriarchal laws or families ordering them to marry and have children.

My great aunt, Ada Belle Champlin, was one of those artists. It was a thrill for me to track down her art studio, meet the artist who lives there now, and then stroll on the streets she had lived and breathed on and find the locations she had painted, like this one.

James House View

Hotel La Playa still operates as a hotel though now a luxury hotel instead of a boarding house, and it still has a popular lounge. Many an evening I strolled through its hallways and studied the historic photographs hanging from its walls. Then I’d sit in the lounge and imagine I was sitting on a bar stool inside a Prohibition speakeasy, a piano player playing “Baby Won’t You Please Come Home” and my characters smoking cigarettes and drinking whiskey sours. I had quite a few myself! Outside the lounge is a terrace with a wide view of the ocean. I set the scene there for my heroine, Sarah, to meet a tall, dark stranger who promises to show her the Green Flash.

The dramatic James House still perches a hundred years later on a rocky cliff. What better location for a party where Sarah finds the courage to confront her sister’s suspected killer. I never got to go inside but I imagined that scene by standing above its stony edifice and looking down at the turbulent waves crashing below.

Tor House and Hawk Tower

The famous poet Robinson Jeffers built the Tor House and Hawk Tower. I was privileged to tour the house, walk up the steps to the stone tower built by Jeffers, and look down at the cultivated grounds below. I envisioned a garden party where Jeffers gives Sarah important clues and his Scottish wife Una pours her an elixir from the Scottish Highlands.

The wild surroundings of Point Lobos induced an exciting twist in my plot.  From the moment I saw the rustic Whalers Cabin on the shore of Whalers Cove and the anchored fishing boats and schooners, a suspenseful scene gripped my imagination.  Something bad was going to happen there for sure.

Kadoni Village, Whalers Cove

Whalers Cabin is now a museum with an excellent photographic display of Point Lobos’s history. I was curious about the nearby precipice that once was the village of Japanese immigrants.  Gennosuke Kodoni, a young Japanese marine biologist, settled here in the  1890s and built a successful abalone cannery. The village was later razed but I was able to resuscitate the village people and put them back on the summit long enough to tell their stor

Cypress Point

Recently I moved near Pebble Beach. In The Artist Colony, Sarah takes a bicycle ride with a friend on Pebble Beach’s iconic 17 Mile Drive and has a picnic at Cypress Point. What glorious fun it is to ride my bike on the same roads Sarah pedaled and see the magnificent sites again through her eyes.

Catch Joanna on Facebook and connect via her website and here you can buy her book on Amazon US

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