Great questions. Firstly, I live in Indiana and spent my first ten years in Chicago, but I was born in Ohio and I came of age, as an adolescent and teenager in Nothern Ohio, in Toledo. When writing I find it necessary to distance everything from "reality" and from my immediate surroundings, so Cartimandua is roughly based on Toledo and Saint Vitus on my school, Saint Francis. However Bancroft Street was actually the name of the street my school was on. Matt and Chris are based on real people as well. The neighborhood, however, is pretty much the one I live in now.
When I graduate from college I was ver briefly going into the seminary and in college thought of it seriously. Later, however, I entered a Trappist monastery instead, and still live a more or less hermetic life (alone, quiet, reflective). So I understand what is like to believe in the Church, to seek out your own belief or even to deny believing altogether. These answers may just peek more questions, and that would be great. I love chatting.
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