My Trip To Glimmerglass

I just returned from a mini vacation/research trip to New York's Finger Lakes. My newest contemporary features a couple who meet at a lake in upstate New York, and I thought the Finger Lakes would be perfect. So, my sister, Pat, and I drove first to Rochester, to meet up with my cousins, whom I've corresponded with but have never met. So here we are, clockwise from the upper left: cousin Sharon, me, cousin Melanie, and Pat.

The following day, we went on to the heart of  Finger Lakes country. We saw wonderful lake views, sampled some of the famous Finger Lakes wines, visited in charming small towns and took way too many pictures of beautiful Victorian homes.

But, beautiful as they were, the Finger Lakes didn't mesh with my story. They were too commercial for my story line. In my mind I had pictured a much smaller lake in a very wooded area, surrounded by homes that had been there for generations.





We studied the map, and decided to continue on further east, to the area of New York where James Fenimore Cooper grew up and wrote his wonderful Leatherstocking Tales and The Last of The Mohicans. To the lake he referred to as "Glimmerglass."

Glimmerglass turned out to be a perfect setting for my fictional lakeside retreat. I'll follow Mr. Cooper's lead and set my story a bit further east into New York state than I had originally thought. The foothills of the Catskills and Adirondacks on the opposite side of the lake, the old docks, the weathered small houses dotting the shore...it all works.

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