Dagger Lake, Virgin Territory

Today is the first entry where I'm fudging it, though I suppose I could have used Dark Origins, Tales of the Scarlet Knight #0.  But I didn't feel like it.

Anyway, Dagger Lake is a town featured in my novel Virgin Territory and also referenced in one or two other books like The Naked World.  Virgin Territory tells the story of Gary, a young man who's fled to northern Michigan after losing the love of his life.  One night he finds a naked young woman washed up on the beach.  The young woman has no memory of who she is or how she got there, so Gary takes it upon himself to help her.  In the process he and the girl start to fall in love...

A real Michigander would point to it on his hand!

Located a little north of Houghton Lake, Michigan, Dagger Lake is mostly a tourist town.  Once the temperatures drop, not many people stick around the area.  Only a few locals like Gary hang around the place all year long.  The reason Gary finds the girl is that he frequently walks along the beach in the off-season to pick up any trash that ends up on the shore.

The town is not a real place.  It's not even really based on any real place.  It's more of a composite of various small Michigan towns I've been to like Freeland, Harrison, Cadillac, and so forth.  Had I felt like it I could have come up with a whole backstory for the town, how it got its name and all that, but I didn't, because it's not really important.

Other than the lake there's not much going on in Dagger Lake.  There's a diner, a secondhand clothes store, a print shop, and a park.  Most people go to the nearest larger town, Pine Cove, that has a Wal-Mart and such to stock up on groceries and other stuff; you only shop in Dagger Lake when you don't have the time or inclination to drive a ways away.

So basically Dagger Lake is a sleepy little town where nothing ever happens--until that naked girl washes up on shore.

This and the rest of my books are available at the new Planet 99 Publishing site!