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Early on in this blog, I talked about Staten Island, NY – my hometown and the setting for most of my novel. I decided it would be a good chance to bring attention to the forgotten borough for those two reasons.

Overall, there are four locations mentioned in The Dark Proposal: Staten Island, New York, Paris and Bedminster, a small town in central New Jersey. You might be curious as to why a little known place was chosen as a location in my book, so here I go:

The idea for The Dark Proposal began during the summer of 2011. As I’ve mentioned once, I was watching the fourth season of True Blood and imagining what would happen if a sexy vampire came to life. Realizing that vampires are actually evil changed that fantasy, and my book idea was born.

Image via Wikipedia

Image via Wikipedia

During this, I was doing a five month temporary job at AT&T. The corporation has many locations in New Jersey, which is right over the bridge from Staten Island. The place I primarily worked at was in a small township called Bedminster, which is in Somerset County. AT&T’s Bedminster location is one of it’s major headquarters. It’s large, highly secured campus even has it’s own highway exit, which was great for drivers!

I temped at AT&T from May until September 2011. It was an OK job for me, I developed some skills here and there. But my best memories of my short tenure were my co-workers. Since the campus had it’s own cafeteria, the team I worked with had lunch together at the same time every day, and those were great lunch breaks. I enjoyed the team I worked with very much – which is always a prize at any job.

While working though, there were some moments where work will slow down and even dry up. This is when I would dabble in some writing. I actually wrote half of the first chapter of The Dark Proposal during this time. I will eventually pick it up again during NaNoWriMo later that November.

Once I truly dedicated myself to writing this book, I promised to mention Bedminster as a way of acknowledging where my book ideas was born, as well as the cool people I once worked with. I even named one of protagonist Claire McCormick’s family members after one of my former co-workers.

But by choosing Bedminster as Claire McCormick’s hometown, I was also giving a good location for the small town girl whose dreams of living in New York City blind her from the red flags of her boyfriend, who is secretly a vampire. Bedminster is a small town, with only a population of less than 10,000. I saw a little of it, mostly when I stopped to get gas for the long drive home. But from what I saw, it is nice quaint town with a colonial feel to it. It was established in 1710, so it does go back a ways. It did look like a good place for Claire’s simple upbringing.

I haven’t been back to Bedminster since my last day at AT&T and I really have no reason to return. But my time working there had it’s memorable moments and I wanted to acknowledge that in my book – and I did!