SUSAN MALLERY | Turns Out Size Matters After All!

I grew up in Los Angeles, one of the largest, loudest cities in the world. There’s a lot to love about living in a city. The sights, the sounds, the colors are exciting and energizing. No matter what your interests, you can always find classes and groups where you can meet like-minded people.

Then there are the events. Every day, a hundred ways to answer the question, “What should we do today?” Art shows and museums. Live music and theater. Baseball and basketball. (I’ll confess. My answer to the aforementioned question would only be “Let’s go to the game” if there was a high-end luxury spa around the corner named The Game.)

I’m big on luxury, and I enjoy instant gratification. I like that cities are on the cutting edge of technology. I like thorough cell phone coverage. When smart phones move to 5G, city people will be the first to be wowed by everything they can do.

I love living in a cultural melting pot. I love walking down the street and not understanding all the languages I hear. I love the cosmopolitan feeling that comes from mingling with people from all over the world. Immigrants bring the colors and fashions and attitudes and flavors from their home countries, and we city dwellers get to benefit from the influx.

Speaking of flavors… great restaurants are right up there at the top of my list of the joys of living in a city. What a great excuse to slip on a fabulous pair of heels and my best jewelry. As a girl, I loved playing dress-up, and that hasn’t changed.

But…

You knew a “but” was coming, didn’t you?

But there’s a lot to love about small towns, too, which is why I chose to set my new series in Fool’s Gold, California, population 43,412. A small town, but not tiny. The Fool’s Gold series is something new for me, a series with no end in sight. The first book, Chasing Perfect, was released yesterday. There will be two more Fool’s Gold books later this year, three next year, and I hope to continue after that.

The thing I love best about small towns, especially those towns that are not a suburb of a large city, is the strong sense of community. When you see the same people at the grocery store and the soccer field and the dentist’s office, you get to know them a lot better.

Readers will enjoy the same feeling with the people of Fool’s Gold, I hope, as they get to visit with some of the same characters from book to book. You can meet some of the people of Fool’s Gold at www.foolsgoldca.com. Lots of fun freebies on the website, too! I’d love to hear what you think of it.

In small towns, people introduce themselves to their new neighbors. Cities are more transitory. People come, people go. It’s all part of the ebb and flow, the pulse of the city. In small towns, people are more likely to settle in for a good, long while. Often even for life.

I couldn’t make Fool’s Gold tiny, though. It needed to be large enough to support at least a few great restaurants. That’s the one thing this city girl can’t imagine living without.

Are you a city mouse or a country mouse? What’s the largest city you’ve lived in? What’s the smallest town you’ve lived in? How many times in your life have you moved? (I’m not sure I can count as high as the number of times I’ve moved!) What do you think is the ideal sized town, and why?

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