Setting -- China and Dragonlines
The decision to set Dragonlines in China was immediate once I returned to Felicity Whitehall/Matrika Devaki after undergrad. The original story involving the character had been my undergrad thesis at Pacific University Oregon under the tutelage of the fabulous Kathlene Postma (seriously, if you have a chance, attend a reading of hers), and centered around an embassy party in India. I moved to Wenzhou, China right after graduating and taught English at the medical college there. I spent that year doing very little in the way of writing (though I did a little journaling, about the only time in my life where that has worked out) until I came back from my vacation for Chinese New Year. I'd spent about ten days in Xi'an and a week in Hangzhou, then got gloriously sick. I came home from Hanghzou earlier than I had intended, carting English translations of Journey to the West, Water Margin, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and Dream of the Red Chamber. Turns out, the translations I purchased were challenging to read at best, but they did inspire me to spend the rest of my vacation in a fever dream, writing about Felicity in China, dealing with the ghost of a tormented old woman. That scene still lives in Dragonlines (cleaned up a tad), where Felicity breaks into the apartment of the criminal fixer Chen Lichuan, and gets possessed by the ghost of Lao Fong, an old woman that Chen's callousness had condemned to death.
It's one of my favorite scenes, because it's the biggest indication that the spirit world that Felicity deals with on a daily basis can have an actual impact on her (there's a short flashback to her as a child, but it doesn't have quite the same intensity). When the vengeful Lao Fong merges with Felicity, and Grandfather can't do anything about it, we get a chance to see just how strong of will Felicity is, and where her moral compass really points. Their thoughts merged into a single stream of consciousness, Felicity/Lao Fong find themselves standing before a man who promised Lao Fong's family opportunities in London, but who left them without enough food for their journey as stowaways. Lao Fong eventually starves to death, and her daughter and grandson are forced to eat her corpse to survive. Lao Fong wants bloody revenge, and urges Felicity to kill him while he's sleeping, but Chen isn't alone. His wife and young child are also in the same bed, their dreams and desires readily visible to Felicity even as Lao Fong pushes Felicity to murder everyone. The push and pull of that scene, with Grandfather trying to break the other ghost's hold on Felicity, is really fun and creepy.
Eventually, I would set my graduate thesis (what would become Dragonlines) in Wenzhou because of that fateful week of horrible sickness. Most of the scenes involving actual daily living in the city, Ulrico's bar La Luna, the college, and Felicity's trip to Xi'an are based on my real-life experiences. In fact, my friend Jorge is the real-life (if somewhat idealized) Ulrico, who asked to be a villain in the book!
