Elizabeth Guider's Blog

Snatches of conversation, sights of dog walkers along the boardwalk, the sound of ocean waves, the smell of salt air, the taste of tart wine—these sensations of a particular time and place—combined to provide the backdrop and to inspire the plot of my latest novel. Though the title is still under wraps, the book is set along the Central Coast of California. It’s a sliver of the state where I love to spend time and to imagine what it would be like to live there. And so, off and on over the years, I observed, or became acquainted with, some of the locals, their rhythms and rituals, even occasionally their presumed relationships. And I freely wove disparate threads of their lives together. Or, at least, how I imagined their lives. The plot of the novel focuses on a recent widower residing in a real place called, conveniently enough, Shell Beach. Trying gingerly to rejoin the circle of life, he is given a hand by several interesting women, themselves very different in age, background and ambition. Turns out they use casseroles as their calling cards. Ironically (and somewhat sadly), I suppose, the story came together in my head only during the period when it became impossible for me to travel back up the coast: namely, when the pandemic took hold here on the West Coast. Hunkered down at home here in Los Angeles in the spring of 2020, I found myself fretting over the virus and frittering away time—way too much, in fact. Eventually, however, I buckled down and penned the first draft in eight months. More on how that all worked out in a blog to follow. I hope some of you will be intrigued. The novel, my fifth, will be published in a couple of months.