Dispatch #4: How Las Vegas Became a Character in My Book

For most of my life I never really felt like I “came from” or “belonged” anywhere. I grew up in Burnsville, Minnesota, where the winters are long and the closest thing to a supernatural mystery is whether your car will start in negative twenty degrees. People sometimes assume I must have grown up in Las Vegas because my book feels so rooted here — the atmosphere, the energy, the weirdness, the beauty. While my childhood perhaps symbolic resembled a desert, I didn’t really grow up in the same environment.

Las Vegas didn’t become a part of my story until the Air Force sent me to Nellis about a decade ago.

And let me be clear about something I rarely talk about:
I didn’t join the military out of purpose, patriotism, or some burning call to serve.
I joined because my parents wanted me out of the way.

So I did what I had to do.
I built a career out of something I never asked for. I survived in systems and structures I didn’t choose. I excelled because that’s the only thing I’ve ever known how to do. And I carried all of that with me as I drove into Las Vegas for the first time — tired, guarded, unsure of what the future would look like.

I had no idea the desert would end up feeling like home.

Finding Refuge in an Unexpected Place

My time stationed at Nellis was, without exaggeration, one of the hardest periods of my military career. I worked under toxic leadership, dealt with toxic peers, and spent most days trying not to drown in other people’s dysfunction. It wasn’t the Air Force that broke me — it was the people in charge of my corner of it.

But outside the gates?
That was different.

The more time I spent in Las Vegas and across Nevada, the more I felt something shifting. I’d always felt drawn to the Southwest without knowing why — a strange childhood intuition I couldn’t explain. Living here finally made it make sense.

The desert has a way of stripping you down to your real self.
The mountains stand ancient and unmoved.
The sky changes moods with every hour.
And the sunsets… nothing in Minnesota prepared me for the way the light melts into purple and orange across the ridges.

I loved the city lights, the noise, the unapologetic personality of it all — but I also loved the quiet edges. The neighborhoods. The local diners. The people, who are far kinder and far more interesting than Las Vegas stereotypes give them credit for.

Some places are beautiful.
Some places are healing.
Las Vegas was and very much still is both.

Why the City Slipped Into My Writing

When I eventually started writing No Rest for the Wicked, I didn’t think, “Oh, Vegas would make a good setting.” It was more like the city tapped me on the shoulder and said, You know this is where the story belongs.

And it did.

Las Vegas already carries the ingredients of a great paranormal noir:

There’s a long, complicated history of organized crime.
Military bases where “classified” really means “don’t ask.”
Vast stretches of desert where strange things happen and nobody is shocked by it.
Old folklore, alien rumors, ghost stories whispered between locals.
And a culture that lets you reinvent yourself, hide yourself, or find yourself, depending on what you need that day.

You don’t have to manufacture mystery here.
It exists whether you’re looking for it or not.

For Max West — my investigator who lives in the liminal space between logic and the unknown — Las Vegas is the only place that made sense. He fits here. His cases fit here. His ghosts fit here.

Coming Back Made the Story Clearer

After leaving Virginia and returning to Las Vegas recently, I felt the city settle back into me like a familiar rhythm. The dry wind, the mountains that glow pink in the mornings, the locals who always have a story — all of it reminded me why I wrote Max West’s world the way I did.

Setting isn’t just scenery.
It’s mood, identity, and motive.

In my case, it’s also healing.
Because the place that held me together during one of the hardest chapters of my life ended up becoming the foundation for the fictional world I’m building now.

I didn’t choose Las Vegas for my book.
Las Vegas chose itself.

And honestly?
I’m grateful it did.

— Kat