Hailey's Novel Diary – 4/7/17

I looked up apartments in the San Fernando Valley and was surprised by how expensive they are. I assumed Los Angeles would be an expensive place to live. Houses in Bel Air and Palos Verdes sell for insane amounts of money, but those are some of the richest neighborhoods in the country. The Valley is generally looked down upon by people in Los Angeles.

I put my characters in a $2,300 Chatsworth apartment between a Del Taco and train tracks. That seems high to me. My first Minneapolis apartment was $835, but that was more than a few years ago. Even so, I looked it up and that same apartment starts at $1,100 today. But Los Angeles has always been more expensive than Minneapolis. The important thing, as far as this book is concerned, is that the apartment has a swimming pool. As it turns out, that was pretty easy to find in the Valley.

The Chatsworth apartment