Fresno Books
Several of my novels are based in Fresno and the surrounding areas.
Books Based in Fresno:
Patrimonious
A dementia-laden old man escapes from Sunrise Assisted Living in Fresno, bent on revenge for past wrongs. In his confusion, he travels between the Tower District, Clovis, Woodward Park, the Westside, the former Squaw Valley, and even up to Coarsegold and Oakhurst.
We meet several well-known characters from the Fresno music and art scene, local business owners, and corrupt government officials.
Rockstar Nobody
A local band sets out on their first tour from their hometown of Fresno. Like most bands, they’ll meet new fans, play exciting shows, kill bad people, party all night, and get lost on the interstate highway system.
Wait…what?
Anyway, it doesn't all take place in Fresno, but the beginning and end do, and it stars a Fresno band.
The sequel, The Carlin Trend, follows the band from Fresno and back again on their second tour.
Freshman Nobody
A totally fictional, not-at-all-true account of my youth, growing up in Coarsegold and going to high school at Yosemite High School in Oakhurst. It's based in the 90s, so there are a lot of period references and anyone who has visited the Oakhurst/Yosemite area are sure to be familiar with some of the local landmarks.
It's a YA book, but contains mature themes, like sex and drugs and being assaulted by your Explorer Advisor.
Nobody Gets Out Alive
Picking up where Freshman Nobody left off, we see the main character (again, totally not me) graduating from Yosemite High School and moving to his first apartment in Fresno. Contains some '90s and early 2000s local references -- the old American Music on Blackstone, crashing a car on Highway 41, exploring downtown and the Tower for the first time.
Okay, so this isn't technically my book, but I dig it, it's a weird post-apocalyptic adventure with multiple writing styles, which is fun. But it's relevant here because the story starts off at the Fresno Fairgrounds Internment Camp. What was once a camp in WWII is a camp again. This time for anyone who doesn't fit in with the Regime - minorities, the disabled, dissenters, free-thinkers. One woman escapes the Fresno concentration camp and makes her way north, through a destroyed San Francisco and into Oregon and Washington, where the Regime has less control and a utopian society is forming.