One of the reviewers of my book Chez Stinky said she was puzzled why I would set the book almost two decades ago in 1995.
I thought that was a great question worthy of explanation. Chez Stinky is the first of a series of romantic comedies and I’ve just finished the first draft of the second installment, so I’m stuck with the mid-nineties for as long as I continue with it. So why would I want to set a book in a time frame that as the reviewer pointed out is “a tad generic”?
Often readers are curious about why authors make choices like this one, so I thought I’d explain my rationale. Selecting a time period is important to the structure of a book. After all, Gone with the Wind would not tell the same story if it were set in 1935, when it was actually written, instead during of the Civil War.
So the question remains: why 1995?
Age, behavior and style
At the risk of divulging how old I really am, the easiest answer to the question is because in 1995, I was about the same age as the main character, Kat. The way you feel and behave when you are in your twenties is not the same as when you are {ahem} older. I may not be wiser, but I do make different choices now. As I wrote, I could imagine where I was and how I felt during that time period.
Because Chez Stinky was my first novel, I was looking for anything to help make it easier to write. A lot of first novels never see the light of day, so I wanted to take advantage of anything that would facilitate the book actually being published. The fact that the mid-nineties was a somewhat “generic” time period was actually helpful, particularly from a fashion standpoint. The fifties had poodle skirts; the eighties had big hair. Does anyone remember important fashion statements from the nineties? Yeah, me neither.
Information was not at your fingertips
In Chez Stinky, a number of key plot points depend on the fact that back in 1995, you couldn’t just look something up on your computer or smart phone. Sometimes, you had to do things like get books, go to the library and do research. It was more complicated because there really weren’t a whole lot of web sites online yet.
A long time ago, I read that Sue Grafton set her alphabet books in 1988 because of how the main character had to do detective work. Access to vast online databases and cell phones would have significantly changed how Kinsey Millhone solved cases.
The Internet was a novelty
The year 1995 was the year I got online. (Yes, that’s 412 in Internet years; so sue me, I’m old.) The online world was a much, much smaller place with far fewer trolls, fraud and general nastiness. I joined CompuServe and got on the forums where I met a lot of cool people, many of whom I’m still in touch with today.
It was a big deal when I hooked up my first 9600 baud modem. It was exciting in a way that most people now wouldn’t understand since technology is now so ubiquitous. (Hey, when your refrigerator can get online, it’s not so cool anymore.)
Because my two main characters are both involved in somewhat geeky fields (a technical writer and an engineer) they were excited about the new opportunities the Internet could give them.
Deep loathing for cell phones
The biggest reason the book is set when it is should come as no surprise to anyone who knows me. I hate cell phones. And back in 1995, everyone down to the 6-year old in kindergarten did NOT have one. People did not spend all their time staring at a teeny weeny screen texting or ignoring the checker in front of them in the grocery store and shrieking at their husband about their hemorrhoids while purchasing food. Imagine that.
Although cell phones existed, mostly they were used just for emergencies by people like doctors who need to be on call. Some of my plot situations wouldn’t have worked if the characters had access to a phone all the time. They have to find and go to a telephone to make a call. It made the story significantly easier to write.
The story is a romantic comedy and some of the funny scenes simply couldn’t happen if it weren’t set in the time period it was. Given that my target readership is women 35 and up who own pets, a significant percentage of my readers may remember that time period. It may sound like I’m nostalgic for the mid-nineties, but that’s not really the case. In 1995, I had a job I did not like, not terribly dissimilar from Kat’s in some ways. (Let’s just say, that back then, I was a technical writer too and leave it at that.)
So there you have it. The year 1995 may have been generic, but it wasn’t all bad. And as it turns out, it works pretty well for fiction.