This presents a bit of a problem. There are plenty of places near Los Angeles for weekend trips, but I have never been to any of them. It's not impossible to write about places you have never been. I'm sure Robert Heinlein never went to Mars or the Moon, and I doubt Douglas Adams got anywhere close to the end of the universe. But science fiction is different. I like to think I know a little bit about the places I write and that, just maybe, some of that knowledge comes through sometimes.
I specifically made one of the characters from San Francisco. I was thinking that she might take the weekend getaway. I have been to San Francisco. I'm hardly an expert, but I know what the city feels like. When it became obvious that a different character had to go away, I either had to change the location or change which character is from San Francisco.
So I went with Santa Barbara. I don't know anything about Santa Barbara, other than its proximity to Los Angeles and Steve Martin likes going there. That does not leave me a lot to work with.
I just finished a scene that is mostly dialogue. I like the idea of writing a book that is nothing but dialogue, cover to cover. The reader is told the story through the characters telling the story. There would be no omniscient narrator, unreliable narrator or any kind of narrator at all. I suppose it would read like a play, but structured like a book, with chapters instead of scenes and acts. But that is not happening this time.
The narrator in this book is mostly omniscient, with a little bit of subjective third person thrown in the mix. I doubt it will confuse anyone who has ever read a book. It has been done a million times before, so it's not like I'm revolutionizing the written word here. Hopefully, the narrative voice changes are subtle enough that most people will not even think about it.
This poor bridge gets hit in most of them.
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No hate, please. There's enough of that in the world already.