As I’ve mentioned several times, I quite enjoy putting real locations in my books. I feel like it’s a little easter egg when you recognize a real place in fiction, and it’s one of those things I really enjoy when I’m reading a book.

In The Artifact, there are three major houses, and all three are real places, just not necessarily in the same location as I set them. 

The first, named ‘KAY REV LA’ in the book (which means something interesting in a language associated with NOLA), I detailed in a newsletter last year. It’s a Victorian house that actually existed in Bridgeport Connecticut back in the 1890’s.

The second is named ‘BESON WA’, and it is the Belmont Plantation, a beautiful mansion from the mid 1800’s in Greenville Mississippi. After some digging around, I even found the prospectus from the last time it was sold, with a floorplan and pictures of each room.

The final house, Oak Alley Plantation, is located in Vacherie, Louisiana, and I left it exactly where I found it. This was my favorite house, not just because it is gorgeous, but also because it’s fairly famous. If you’ve ever seen season 1 of True Detective, the tree that features so prominently in that show is at Oak Alley. 

Anyway, I really enjoyed having my characters play out their scenes (and for the last two houses, they are quite intense scenes!) in these old houses, and I hope you enjoy reading those scenes just as much as I enjoyed writing them.