The other day a friend who lives outside of Detroit sent me a photo of part of her city from the sky at night. The caption said they hoped everyone liked the photo of their “small town.”
I texted my friend back. “Um…that isn’t a small town.”
And maybe I say that because the small town mentioned has 24,500 people in it.
The collection of towns my family and I moved out of in 2020 had between 12,000 and 15,000 and that was three small towns over two states that ran into each other.
The place I live now in is what I would call more a “village” than a “small town” but it is known as a small town. We have 454 as of 2022.
The characters in my books all live in small towns similar to the ones I lived in for almost 20 years with my family. They are a little bigger than where I live now, in other words. They probably are around the sizes of the town I lived in before we moved here, which by itself, without the other towns running into it, had a population of about 3,400.
In the Spencer Valley Chronicles, Molly Tanner and her family and friends live in and around Spencer, Pennsylvania.
In the Gladwynn Grant Mystery books, Gladwynn Grant moves from the fictional town of Carter, N.Y. to the fictional town of Brookstone, Pa.
Brooks one is probably about the size of a town near me that has about 2,700 in it. It’s the county seat of the county next to us and in my books, Brookstone is the county seat of Marson County, Pa.
Yes, all of my books take place in Pennsylvania, but that’s because that’s the state I know the most about.
The small towns in my books have hardware stores, diners, flower shops, supermarkets, and, most importantly, cute little coffee shops.
Gladwynn’s favorite coffee/bookshop is Brewed Awakening, a name I stole from a coffee shop that used to be located near where I live now and grew up. She loves to go there and visit with her friend Abbie Mendoza and choose a book from the bookshop in the back.
So I wonder – how small or big is the city or town you live in?
Is it as small as mine?
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That’s pretty small, wow. I thought the city we now live in is small. We came from a city of 5-6 million, although my husband thinks it was more based off of all the traffic and crime we were experiencing in the last two years. I don’t believe Phoenix even knows how many people are actually in it. Now that we have moved we live in a city of 20,000 and that is small to me, but nothing like you. Where Our Little Red House is, that’s a town of 600, it was quiet.
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Your town with The Little Red House is probably similar to ours. It is sort of quiet but a major highway also runs through it so it can be noisy because of the trucks. I can’t imagine living anywhere where there are so many people.
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Awe it sounds charming!! I want to take the time sone day to get back into reading the kind of genre you write!!
Love your photos!!
The town I grew up in has about 700 and now I live about 10 miles away in another town that has close to 10,000… Both are small to me!!
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My books right now are actually cozy mysteries, but I had agreed to write a book for this series in between. Now that I am done writing this book, I am back to cozy mysteries.
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You do live in a small town. That must be nice. My town, Riverside, CA has 320 thousand people. My daughter in Great Falls, MT has 60 thousand which is pretty nice. My son lives in the town of Orange, Ca which has 136 thousand people.
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Well, we live in the country outside of our small town (my hometown) – population of the town is just under 4,000. It’s perfect for us after living more than 20 years away in suburbs of large cities.
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The current metro area population of Wellington in 2024 is 424,000. But then there are no really large cities in NZ apart from Auckland.
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We have about 9,000 people in our town; however, it has a very small town feel because we have just a handful of businesses– in fact we have no grocery store, hardware store, or florist shop. It’s very rural and is actually composed of 10 small villages though we share one central school (and all grades from pre-k through 12 are in 1 large building).
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I don’t know if you know this or not, but I lived in the same town for 57 years. I didn’t even go away for college…well, I couldn’t because I had three little kids! It was a small town for most of those years, and it still is. But, it has grown so much that when I would go to WalMart (yeah, that’s the meeting place for everyone), I would rarely recognize anyone. There were about 5,000 people there when I was little. I just checked, and it’s now over 10,000! It doubled in size since 1990.
Today, I live in a bedroom community, a suburb, of Indianapolis. I never knew what bedroom community meant until I moved here. It basically means you just sleep here and work elsewhere.
My perfect small town would have a town square with a gazebo (my hometown did), an ice cream shoppe (yes, it needs the other p and the e), a couple of little mom and pop restaurants, a pizza place, a shoe store, a dress shop, a menswear shop, and a toy store. Throw in a movie theatre, and I’m happy! Actually, that was my hometown when I was growing up.
https://marshainthemiddle.com/
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I love the sound of your small town. And I didn’t even know what a bedroom community was! That’s very interesting to know. It is interesting that your hometown didn’t grow much more than that really, over the years. The towns around me are shrinking instead of growing these days.
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Well, since we moved in with our daughter’s family, we live in the northern suburbs of Chicago, so it’s definitely not a small town. However before that we lived in a small town in Wisconsin that had a population just over 5000. Since it was a lake town, in the summer the population definitely increased with all of the Chicago area “second-homers” coming in. We had a small grocery, pharmacy, Doctor’s office, coffee store (the last year we were there) 2 fast food restaurants, and a couple diners. Walmart and a few other big box stores were about 20 minutes away. I do miss all of the nature there. But it’s nice having stores & family close by now.
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We do miss having stores close by. Our nearest Walmart is 45 minutes north or south. Our grocery store is 20 minutes. It’s pretty “remote” here in some ways. My husband was born in the Southern suburbs of Chicago – Hinsdale and lived in Downers Grove until he was about 9.
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Wow, we were not far from Downers Grove while our kids were young! We lived in Mt Prospect, and my husband sometimes worked for a temporary agency in Downer’s Grove. We lived in Mt Prospect from 1990 to 2004 (after that to Wisconsin.) Small world!
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I most definitely live in a massive, sprawling city, haha. We’re about an hour away from downtown LA, without traffic, and our area is still somehow part of the City of LA. Years ago, my husband and I did actually live in a small town in Maryland just north of Baltimore. There was nothing to do and we had to take the I-95 to get to a decent grocery store, but I have fond memories of it. It was so quiet and I had no idea animals could be that loud at night, haha. I had to look it up and it turns out the population is a little more than 13,000, but it felt like there was no one there when we lived there over a decade ago.
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Compared to where you live now, I am sure that little town does seem insanely small to you looking back! I could never live where you do but admire people who do without losing their minds! Ha!
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Oh, I’m quite certain everyone here has lost their minds. I think that’s the only way to live here. Sometimes, I think I’d really like to move back to a small town. It always sounds so idyllic whenever I read about your life. At least, less chaotic and miserable than city life.
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