Original Setting for Beyond the Lost: Cozens Family Lake House
The Cozens Family Lake House walked into my mind when I started writing Beyond the Lost Horizon, only for it to fade into the background.
The lake house is way out in the middle of nowhere in Eastern Ohio. Pass through the village Quinn Cozens’ grandparents’ home sits on the edge of, and head southwest. Turn right onto a road that has nothing but weeded fields flanking it, and follow it down into a wooded valley, where a small creek that ultimately makes its way into the Ohio River flows.
Drive over the rickety single-car bridge and up another winding, wooded hill. At the apex, keep going straight, beyond the State Forest entrance.
Two more grassy fields will sit on either side of you, traditionally called Upper Dukes and Lower Dukes. The grassy terrain again turns wooded, and you’ll find yourself on a gravel road, nearing the threshold of an old Sportsman’s Club.
Turn into the club and make a hard left up an embankment. There, you’ll see it. A small lake house made from white brick with a pyramid-shaped green roof. A few small homes, mainly trailers, are dotted across the landscape, which overlooks a small lake. On the other end of that lake sits yet another gravel road. A dead end that leads right into the Walbum Woods.
On paper, it was perfect for Beyond the Lost Horizon
Quinn Cozens and Yui Kikuchi would’ve had a safe house way out in the sticks. One loaded with guns, ammo, and fishing poles. With the nearby lake, one of a few nearby lakes, there was plenty of food to go around. Plus, they could use those woods for hunting, all while the terrorists who ran America into the ground most likely would’ve stayed away.
As I’ve said in previous articles: that would’ve made for a good short story, but the problem was, it never would’ve reached even novella length. Not unless I used a hell of a lotta filler words and scenes.
Plus, I never had the same emotional attachment to that lake house’s real-world counterpart: my own family’s lake house.
The story evolved when I relegated the lake house to secondary status
I revised the concept to a place where myself and Quinn had such an emotional attachment. It brought about even more of an emotional pull for the story, and took it from something around 8,000 words to 37,000 words.
That tension — between places that make sense and places that matter — is baked into every page of the book.
If work that bucks traditional genre expectations and tropes is your thing, along with libertarian and revisionist concepts, you’re gonna run through Beyond the Lost Horizon like a freight train. Check it out now.
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