“Stepping Out” is a story set in a rural small-town high school (and in the surrounding town) “Somewhere in America.” The precise location in the continent where Cole Valley can be found is being deliberately kept somewhat vague but it’s very definitely “Horse country” – Equine characters make up a larger proportion of the population than you might find in other settings. If you find the place to have a bit of an Appalachian “feel” to it, say perhaps central Appalachia, or just outside that area but still in rural KY, then I can promise you it isn’t truly intentional but it’s not something I tried to avoid either.
I know quite a few people from that area (If you’re one of them, take a breath and relax. None of the characters are based on you) although I’ve never lived there myself, but for the small-town setting I am also drawing from the kind of places you find in rural parts of the Midwest that it sometimes seems like time has forgotten, and the village where I lived in the UK which had families that had been there for three generations but who were still though of as “the new folks”
