So that where these authors have a richness of regionalism, I have a dearth, or an absence. Which isn’t intended as a criticism against myself, but only as an observation. For what a fictional reality becomes, if it has no regional complexion, or if its region has no obvious significance to the plot that is transpiring within it, is not a realm where a story can never take place, but only a kind of desert of value, where characters must find purpose without the (often beneficial) friction or pressure of circumstance, and where the materiality of creation insists itself on the senses without the clarifying effects of its history.