A number of the stories I’ve written (short stories, mostly) are set in the fictional Midwestern town of Wakefield. The Afton Morrison Series is no exception.

Wakefield, in terms of age, climate, landscape, and architecture, is loosely based on the Canadian border town I live in, Fort Erie. Wakefield, however, is a third of the size, much more rundown, and as evidenced by some of the stories I’ve published, home to endless tragedies and dangerous people.

To quote Terrence in A Book With No Pictures:

Picture the town you live in. Now picture it after a gruesome fire, an influx of unlimited methamphetamine, and an unemployment rate well into the double digits. That’s Wakefield.

After writing Fender last year, which was set in a number of real American cities over the course of a cross-country road trip, I thought it might be fun to invent a place that didn’t exist. It would give me free reign to mold the town—its people, industries, political values, economy, and local folklore—into anything I wanted.

It would also present opportunities to write stories, taking place at different times, that might overlap at certain points.

Such is the case with Go Home, Afton.

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After releasing both Fender and The Fifteenth of June, I had some fun by creating meet-the-cast blog posts. They were both done in good fun, of course, choosing celebrities who I thought would do a great job portraying the characters I’d created, in an imaginary film or television series…

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