Uh, 💙 Carly: poems & novel , 1970s-NYC was a death zone, a criminal filth hole! (Researched that, too, MMC's dad was a cop back then.)

I remembered when I told my friends at home I'd go to the Bronx, they were like "WHAT!? They'll rape you, rob you, skin you alive! You wanna die for an effing piece of cheesecake?" (I went there because I'd seen a TV-feature on a German-Jewish family who'd just so escaped from Nazi-Germany and opened their bakery in Riverdale in 1960).

I said, "Guys, we're not in the 1970s anymore." (It was bright daylight and the subway AND the police only a block away. And even IF they'd have robbed me, raped me and skinned me alive, I woulda died a happy death as the cake was divine. )

That was the ONLY thing that wasn't motivated by novel research.