Not actually a musical question, unless you want to put it to music. Uptown Funk is always a favorite.

ANYWAY, Dan Antion is my guest today, so take it away, Dan!

Where’s Rascal’s Guidebook

When Marian offered me a chance to visit her blog and talk about the guidebook I put together, I wasn’t sure what to say. The book is nonfiction, but it’s not a travel guide — a message I think the person who gave me the lone 1-star review missed. The book highlights many of the interesting sights in Pittsburgh, but it also explains the curious geography of the region. When Marian added that she’d like to see “a crossover of places in the Rascal Todd mysteries that are also in the guidebook,” my job became easy.

I introduced Rachael (Rascal) Todd in the final book in the Dreamer’s Alliance series. Rachael moved to Pittsburgh from Chicago, after attending college in Georgia. She works for a newspaper owned by a family friend, and she met her boyfriend Terry on a boat in the Gateway Clipper fleet of sightseeing boats while on an assignment. Terry tends bar on the boats — all of my books have a prominent bartender — and he offers to be her guide to her new home. All of my books also include a scene or a reference to the Gateway Clipper fleet.

While on her first date with Terry, he slips through one set of tunnels through Mt. Washington, stops for a hearty breakfast — my characters eat — drives up and over a steep hill — the area they’re in is home to the steepest street in the lower 48 states, Canton Avenue — and slides back through the more famous tunnel. The view as you exit the Fort Pitt Tunnel is what a New York Times writer labeled “Pittsburgh’s Front Door.”

Terry takes Rachael (Rascal) on many dates, and Bernie, the editor of the newspaper she works for builds a series around her discovery of the city. He calls it Where’s Rascal, and the feature allows me to have Terry explain some of the sights in the book in a way that keeps it interesting and explains the setting to the reader (I hope).

On that first date, they visit Phipps Conservatory to see a flower show. Terry explains the area, Oakland, which is home to the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University. He points to the Cathedral of Learning, which they visit later.

The cathedral appears in all but one of my books, but without images, it’s hard for a reader to imagine. The 42-story gothic building on the university’s urban campus is unique. Rascal is amazed, and when she visits again in Bridge to Nowhere, she recalls having been there with Terry.

Terry takes her to many well-known tourist spots, including the Strip District, which is an old warehouse district revived and converted into a popular retail and residential area. He takes her to a ballgame at PNC Park, recognized several times as the “prettiest ballpark in America.” He takes her over bridges, and she experiences two of Pittsburgh’s noteworthy bridges firsthand in Secrets Held Against Evil when she is injured on the Smithfield St. bridge and taken across the West End Bridge on her way to Allegheny General Hospital.

Those bridges and that hospital are mentioned in several books, so explaining the network of three rivers and more bridges than are found in Venice, is important. Rachael is one of several characters who find driving in Pittsburgh challenging. Several readers who have visited Pittsburgh echo that feeling in comments on my blog.

One place that Terry takes Rachael and that is mentioned in several books, is an area known as The Mexican War district. It’s a residential area on the north side of Pittsburgh that was once a separate city. The mayor of then “Allegheny,” named several streets after heroes and battles in the Mexican American War. It’s home to a fantastic collection of street art called Randyland and it’s also home to fan-favorite police officer Cynthia Leyman.

I didn’t publish A Novelist’s Guide to Pittsburgh to monetize the vagueness of certain settings in my books — rather, the reverse. I wanted to give readers a better understanding of those settings. Toward that end, the book is priced low on Amazon, and the Kindle version is often offered for free. In fact, in preparation for this post, I’ve updated the book to include a few places in my latest novel, The Museum Murders, and to express my gratitude for Marian’s support, the Kindle version of the Guide is free beginning today and continuing for the next five days.

Thanks, Dan! Be sure to visit and subscribe to Dan’s most excellent blog, No Facilities, for updates on his and his friends’ writing, for bar talk over beers, for world-wide doors, for woodworking and building project fulfillment, and much, much more!

MA