Memorial Day weekend means one thing to most people: freedom. The grills and beach chairs come out, the days stretch longer, and people generally become happier versions of themselves. It’s a perfectly reasonable way to think about summer.
It’s just not mine.
I live in Provincetown, a beach town at the tip of Cape Cod. And while I genuinely love it here, Memorial Day weekend feels less like the beginning of freedom and more like the end of it. Overnight, the roads fill up, parking disappears, and the grocery store takes twice as long. Rules that were lightly enforced in February are suddenly enforced with new enthusiasm in June.
None of that means summer is bad; it just means the same season can mean entirely different things depending on who is experiencing it. And that is where you find the writing lesson.
Imagine you’re writing a character who lives year-round in a seasonal town. You do your research and capture the beaches, the restaurants, the energy, and the sunshine. Everything you’ve written is accurate. But you might still get the character completely wrong, because accuracy and truth are not always the same thing in fiction.
The facts might be correct, but the experience isn’t. A visitor sees the crowded streets and thinks, this place is alive. A shop owner thinks, this is when I make my living. A year-round resident thinks, I should have gone to the market yesterday. And a police chief thinks, this is going to be a very long weekend. Same town, same weekend, entirely different story.
When I write Silas Lopez, the fictional police chief in Provincetown, I have to remember that he doesn't see summer as a vacationer does. He sees the same sunshine, but he interprets it through the lens of traffic, noise complaints, medical calls, and an overloaded infrastructure. The seasonal population swing isn’t background color to him—it’s pressure. If I missed that, I would miss the core of who he is.
That is where fidelity comes from. A character is not a camera; a character is about how it felt, like a consciousness. They don’t merely record the world around them; they interpret it through their responsibilities, fears, history, and desires. Until you know what your character sees when everyone else is looking at the exact same thing, you don’t really know the character yet.
So yes, summer in a beach town can be beautiful, but it can also be chaotic, profitable, and exhausting. It can be freedom for one person and the end of it for another. The writer’s job isn’t to decide which version is "correct"—it’s to know which version belongs to the character.
If you are interested in ordering The Washashore you can find it at—or order it from— these local bookstores: Wellesley Books (Wellesley, MA), The Bookshop of Needham (Needham, MA), Provincetown Bookshop (Provincetown, MA) and Elm Street Books (New Canaan, CT)
Or if you want the convenience and speed of online, but still want to support local bookstores, grab The Washashorethrough Bookshop.org
Reach Out to Me: Facebook Author Page | Say Hi on TikTok | Say Hi on Instagram
Or if you are an EBook or Online person: Kindle eBook | Barnes & Noble eBook | Kobo eBook | iTunes eBook | Google eBook | Amazon Paperback & Hardcover | B&N Paperback & Hardcover
Leave a Review where it helps most with the algorithm: Review The Washashore on Amazon Leave a Review where it also helps a lot: Review The Washashore on Goodreads
