When I started my first novel, Lake Miskatonic, I knew I wanted to write a story that takes place in Oakland, and I wanted to keep things simple and write it in a current-day setting, even though I also wanted to explore Oakland's complex past.
But of course Oakland also has a complex present. In just the past fifteen years that I've been here, the changes are striking. Not all of them are bad, but the bad changes are pretty damn bad. We have a gentrification problem that can't be overemphasized. We have policies in place that help make houselessness a growing problem. We have horrible, horrible roads (this isn't a small thing--it affects all of us in more ways than I think we pay attention to).
And the changes are going to keep coming quick-and-dirty for the foreseeable future.
One of the plot threads in my new novel, Miskatonic Bay, involves tabletop gamers, people who play a Dungeons and Dragons type of game. (I mean, they say write what you know, man, so sue me.) The plot takes our heroes to a game shop that opened not long after I came to Oakland, Endgame. It was such a sweet little place, even though I didn't really game there. I tried to support them as much as I could, because they seemed to really be fostering community.
When I started the book they had not long before opened a cafe next door. By the time I finished the book, Endgame was gone, another victim of increasing rents and demographic changes in Oakland. So now all of the fictional interactions my fictional characters have in a game store hearken back to a time that feels long ago already, in an Oakland that was. I suppose if you're writing in the present, you're always really writing about the past, but this one kind of kills me.
But of course Oakland also has a complex present. In just the past fifteen years that I've been here, the changes are striking. Not all of them are bad, but the bad changes are pretty damn bad. We have a gentrification problem that can't be overemphasized. We have policies in place that help make houselessness a growing problem. We have horrible, horrible roads (this isn't a small thing--it affects all of us in more ways than I think we pay attention to).
And the changes are going to keep coming quick-and-dirty for the foreseeable future.
One of the plot threads in my new novel, Miskatonic Bay, involves tabletop gamers, people who play a Dungeons and Dragons type of game. (I mean, they say write what you know, man, so sue me.) The plot takes our heroes to a game shop that opened not long after I came to Oakland, Endgame. It was such a sweet little place, even though I didn't really game there. I tried to support them as much as I could, because they seemed to really be fostering community.
When I started the book they had not long before opened a cafe next door. By the time I finished the book, Endgame was gone, another victim of increasing rents and demographic changes in Oakland. So now all of the fictional interactions my fictional characters have in a game store hearken back to a time that feels long ago already, in an Oakland that was. I suppose if you're writing in the present, you're always really writing about the past, but this one kind of kills me.
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