Which got me thinking about why I like Vegas so much.
When my husband (The Cowboy) and I got together, we played a lot of darts. And went to a lot of tournaments. Vegas's NDA shoot was a week long, filled with days of darts, either watching or playing. But we took some time to play tourists as well.
One night we hit all the big stops - Fremont street, Treasure Island, The Bellagio, Paris, and The Venetian. Walking through some of these large casinos, I realized the fantasy that Vegas sells is a lot like the story promise of a book.
Chapter one in a book take the wide eyed country bumpkin who walks through the door into the marble lined entrance and changes their world. Or that should be our job as an author. I love the Lotus Palace in the Percy Jackson series. A place where all your wants and desires are granted, but, at at cost. That's how Vegas feels to me. Filled with promises of glitz and glory.
Barb Carico, the heroine in The Bull Rider's Manager, isn't a wide eyed country girl. She's been around the block and made her mistakes. Yet when she's confronted with a handsome prince willing to sweep her off her feet, she falls for the promise. But what happens when the reality of life comes the next morning?
I've been married twice now. Once in the small church on my university campus. And five year ago at The Stained Glass Chapel in Las Vegas. I loved the fact that the new chapel had stained glass recovered from an abandoned church in my new home state of Missouri. Redemption and renewal.
I'm sure the pull of Vegas will keep being a subject I explore in my writings. And in my own life. But now it's your turn. Are you a Vegas wedding kind or do you want a more traditional ceremony?
7 comments:
Lynn--
What a writer does with Las Vegas (or any other setting) tells you something about the writer. A scene in my mystery The Anything Goes Girl takes place in Vegas. An assassin moves from the glitz and glamor of the Flamingo Hotel to "a last-resort resort" motel-casino. He goes there to collect a debt from a deadbeat gambler, and the scene is anything but glamorous or redemptive. But "whatever floats your boat" is my perspective on writers' choices. In the end, all that matters is whether it works.
Barry, I love that.
I've been thinking a lot about settings lately and am playing with a Vegas casino murder - or even a riverboat casino murder, which is all the rage here. (The riverboats, not murder. Well, maybe murder too - I don't watch the news.)
I like dive bars much better than last resort motels...
Lynn
I'm all for traditional weddings, but I love casinos, especially slot machines!
Morgan Mandel
http://www.morganmandel.com
Now, I'm more of a black jack girl. Although I do love a fun (and paying slot.)
I do not enjoy gambling at all. I do go to Las Vegas once a year though, first to see my sis who lives there and then to attend the PSWA conference. I have no problem at all walking past all the machines and the sad looking people sitting there.
Marilyn, some of them do look so sad. The human condition has such a wide range of interesting characters.
I lived in Vegas while attending UNLV and my second marriage also took place there. It's a magical place with a sinister undercurrent most people are unaware of.
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