Talking Location With Perrin Pring – The American MidWest

23rd July 2026

#TalkingLocationWith … Perrin Pring, author of Cash and Gravity – The American MidWest

Low Cost Inspiration

I’m not sure if I’m a writer because I love to explore, or if it’s the other way around. In the end, it doesn’t really matter. Traveling fuels my creativity. Last year I went to Istanbul for the first time, and I got to see and do things I’d never dreamed of. I drank tea on a ferry on the Bosphorus. I ate pudding made of chicken. I saw the Hagia Sophia. I bartered at the Grand Bazar. Do I wish I could jet set to new (to me) nations on a regular basis? Of course I do. Is it feasible? No. I have this pesky thing called a job.

So while I love a big trip, what sustains me is exploring the sights and sounds in my own neck of the woods. Born and raised in the American West, I’ve always been drawn to the Western American landscape. I’ve spent countless days crisscrossing the highways and byways from the Great Plains to the Pacific Ocean. Getting out on public land is something I love to do, but I also love a weird tourist attraction.

Some people will poopoo the idea of a tourist trap, but not me. Recently, while driving south of Moab, UT, I stopped in at the Hole N” The Rock, a place that would be easy to dismiss as a waste of money and time. The Hole N” The Rock has a petting zoo, sculptures made of various pieces of rusted metal, several gift shops, and the piece d’ resistance, the weird cave-house some guy in the 1950s blasted into the base of a sandstone cliff and filled with poorly done taxidermy and lead paint.

It was the taxidermy that really captivated my attention. The man who made the cave-house also decided, in addition to blasting his house into existence, he also wanted to get into taxidermy. So he went about making his own taxidermized horses which he then displayed in his living room. This is not something I would ever do, but as I stared into the glass eyes of a long dead mare, I thought, maybe someday I’ll write a horror novel and one of my characters will also be into this. And I would have never known this, had I not taken this seven dollar tour. I did not need to fly to another continent to encounter a new way of thinking. All I had to do was slow down enough to turn off the highway.

The other thing I love about visiting tourist attractions are the people. Writers are observers of human behavior, and human behavior is on full display while people are traveling. You can sit at a table at a touristy restaurant and watch an entire Shakespearean drama unfold at the family reunion at the table beside you. At a scenic vista you can watch young couples envision a future together. At a gas station you can watch a school bus disgorge an entire track team, and teenage politics are on full display.

Traveling opens your mind, which we all know, but we do not need to trek to the far corners of the globe do this. You can encounter new cultures within the boundaries of your own country. I went to a farmer’s market in Joshua Tree, California. I stood in line behind a twenty-something-year-old man wearing a leather Speedo and a net tank top holding hands with a fifty-something-year-old man in a golf polo and khakis. Two weeks later I went to a farmer’s market on the Colorado/Utah border, and a Mennonite farmer told me that he didn’t take digital payment, but he would give me what I wanted. It was then between me and God if I came back the following week to pay him what I owed him in cash. All American farmer’s markets are not the same, and it only took a little bit of driving to really understand that.

So while taking a once-in-a-lifetime vacation is always welcome, don’t be afraid to check out what’s just around the corner from your house. You never know what you’ll learn. You’ll never know what will inspire you. My novels are full of little details I gleaned from dusty rest stops and underfunded rural museums. It’s in these forgotten spaces that true inspiration waits.

Happy Travels.

PERRIN PRING

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