Two great ideas for novels I'll share with you guys.

[raccoon]

(1) If you're in the Detroit/Flint area, a mystery with derelict buildings/homes, etc. figuring in the story. Maybe perps hiding out there, etc. All those derelict buildings would make for a good creepy atmosphere.

(2) A story about a prairie dog colony, similar to MRS. FRISBY AND THE RATS OF NIMH, or WATERSHIP DOWN.

[Darth_Kitten]

1. Interesting......

which one are you leaning towards more and why? :)

[petgoat]

2. Why not both? Why not about a colony of rats in derelict buildings? nt

[raccoon]

3. Trouble is, I can't do either without on-site research. Where I live

there are no prairie dogs and I'm not in the rust belt.

But chipmunks or some other little animal might be a possibility. :-)

I love Rita Mae Brown's Mrs. Murphy mysteries, and Susan Wittig Albert's Beatrix Potter mysteries.

[petgoat]

4. Oh the rust belt is easy. Hot summers where you can't breathe.

Huge box fans you place in every doorway, trying to make the air
move. At 3 am you go and stand near-naked in the front door trying
to catch a breeze. Small rooms in the house will be air conditioned
a few hours each day.

Cold winters with just enough thawing days to turn the snow into
ice, which when covered with snow again makes for vicious bone-breaking
falls. Winds that make you want to walk backwards, cause the cold
blowing through your zipper threatens to frost-bite your Johnson.

Blocks of 1915 apartment buildings where the multi story wooden back porches
are rotten, painted gray, and sometimes fall down with people on them.
The very bricks of these buildings are crumbling.

Blocks of grass with maybe two apartment buildings still standing,
because the others were torn down--or burned down in the 1968 MLK riots.

Oh the rust belt is a wonderful place--to be from.

[petgoat]

5. The other thing about the rust belt

No matter how hostile the climate, or how bleak the local economy,
residents will be insisting it's the best possible place in the world
to live. The very thought of living anywhere else is treasonous.
Young people who go out of the region to college rarely return, and
as a result going away to college is discouraged.

I don't know about Detroit, but in Cleveland and Chicago in the summer
when the dead alewives wash up on the beach, there are clouds of flies
and the stink is unbelievable!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alewife