Adapted from Jocelyn’s newsletter, originally sent January 31, 2026.
I've lived in Bellingham for over a decade now.
I always make a point to get to know the places I live. To feel them in my bones.
I thought I knew Bellingham. Rain. Mountains. Water. Lumber town history. Coffee on every corner. Pretty standard Pacific Northwest.
Then a few years ago someone mentioned the coal mines.
I'm sorry, the what?
Turns out, entire sections of this city are built on top of old mines. Coal mines. Tunnels, under actual streets, under the neighborhood where people walk their dogs and grab groceries and live their whole lives with no idea what's beneath them.
Coal. In the Pacific Northwest.
(I'd always thought that was an Appalachian thing. Nope.)
Now look, I grew up in Seattle. I've done the Underground City tours beneath Pioneer Square. Old storefronts and sidewalks that got built over after the Great Fire. I've walked through it. So the idea that cities have secret layers isn't new to me.
But there's something different about finding out the city you live in has its own version of that. Something nobody talks about. That's not a tourist attraction.
It's just... there. Under your feet. Forgotten.
The City of Bellingham's 2007 coal mine map shows it in purple.
Those purple lines? Tunnels. Under neighborhoods, schools, a shopping center. Down to 1,100 feet.
(WTF?)
I stood in my kitchen the night I learned this, looking at my floor, thinking: what else is down there that nobody remembers?
And that's when The Hellgate Chronicles stopped being an idea and started being a book.
Because that's the question that drives everything I write. What's under the surface of the place you think you know? What's been buried and built over and forgotten? What happens when it wakes up?
That's what Meg walks into when she crosses back into Bellingham in Chapter 1 of Reunion. She's been gone for twenty-five years. She knows this town. She grew up here. She bled for it. But the city kept going without her, kept layering new over old, and now she's walking streets that look familiar but feel wrong. Like the ground is humming at a frequency only she can hear.
Because it is.
The Gate's roots don't care about city planning. They spread through rock, through soil, through the same geology that gave this town its coal mines a century ago. Bellingham didn't just host the Hellgate. It grew around it.
And this is where I get on my soapbox, because this is one of my pet peeves in urban fantasy.
Cities have personalities. I was born in Seattle. Even 90 miles north, Bellingham is a completely different place. Different feel, different rhythm, different people. I lived in Vancouver, WA for over a decade, and that's different from both of them. Same damn state. Same rain. Totally different cities.
Boston doesn't feel like Seattle. They don't even smell the same. New York isn't Miami. Los Angeles isn't Dallas. Cities shape the people who live in them, and the people shape the city right back.
You change the air and the air changes you.
If you're on this list, you already know that. You've felt it. You've walked into a city or a building or down a street and known something was there. Felt it in your guts. You didn't need anyone to tell you. That's why you read what you read. That's why you're here.
So why the hell would I set a book in a city that could be anywhere? In some generic urban fantasy backdrop where the streets have no smell and the neighborhoods are interchangeable and you could swap the name out and lose nothing?
No.
I wanted you to be able to finish Reunion, drive to Bellingham, and stand where Meg stood. See the place where the Boulder stood. Stand on South Hill and look over the Bay. Walk the streets. Feel the place. And wonder, even for a second, what might be underneath.
The place matters. And the magic should cost something.
In Bellingham, those are the same thing.
So here's my question: what's a real place that feels supernatural to you? A city, a building, a stretch of road. Somewhere you've stood where the air changed and something in you went quiet.
Tell me. I'm always collecting real places that feel like the veil is thin. Some of them end up in the books. Yours might too.
Jocelyn
Tell me what you’re thinking. I love hearing from readers.