Behind the Scenes: Portland in Eight

A reader once complained to me about Ollie’s affection for Portland. At the time, they were reading the first draft of Eight, and felt that his reminisces about the city were distracting from the story. Ollie was in a new world, after all. The focus should’ve been there, right? 

Well, yes, but the new world also needed a counterweight—something to help contrast between Ollie’s experiences before and after his arrival—and that was the role Portland played. 

The honor certainly wasn’t going to go to Ollie’s first family. They were a mess, no matter how much he cared for his grandparents. The family was dysfunctional at best, and his experiences in Sherwood weren’t any better. The wooded areas around his family home were important to his development into the man he’d eventually become, but the actual town and its people, not so much. 

No, the story demanded that Ollie have a place he could call home and where he could find happiness, otherwise there’d be no sense of loss upon his arrival. His life in Sherwood sure wouldn’t cut it, which is how Portland came into the picture. It was where he met Helen and where he raised his kids. 

In the same way Sherwood conflated with Ollie’s first family, Portland conflated with his second. He could’ve potentially moved away from Oregon entirely to find his happiness elsewhere, but I didn’t want to complicate his background by introducing an exodus to some other setting. Besides, Portland’s weirdness lended itself to the darker, more mystical aspects of Ollie’s background. 

As an aside, after writing the scene in Eight about the Midnight Man, I was dogged for months by the desire to write a series of ‘Weird Portland’ short stories featuring Ollie’s family going around town solving mysteries like Scooby Doo and the gang. If only my writing time weren’t so limited, I might’ve done it. 

Anyway, if you’ve seen maps of Portland, you know the city has a number of bridges connecting its west and east sides. That was the role I envisioned the city playing in the book—a bridge between Ollie’s early life and his new life. A place where he could plant roots, so that they could more clearly be torn out when he arrived in the new world. 

It also didn’t hurt that I’d lived in Portland, and knew the city well enough to be able to describe it decently well. 

### 

I recently just came back from visiting, and it was clear that the last few years have been hard on Portland. I still saw a fair share of characters walking the streets, and kindness too, but also many more store fronts for lease than I’d ever seen before. For nostalgia’s sake, I stopped by an old place of employment, and the building was empty and for lease. 

While I was there, I also grabbed a bunch of shots of street and found art. It’s something I do whenever traveling. 

If you’d like to see more from Portland, as well other places I’ve visited, check out my Instagram page.

P.S. Sherwood is a real place, just like Portland, and the folks I’ve met from there have been great. Don’t forget that Eight is a work of fiction.