The Real Bogue Banks Behind My Books: From Across Bogue Sound to Calico Creek and Betrayal

By Dr. Dondi M. Day, writing fiction as Mike Anthony

October 13, 2026

North Carolina’s Crystal Coast is easy to appreciate as a vacation destination. There are beaches to walk, boats moving through the sound, and waterfront towns where an afternoon can disappear without much effort.

But when I write about this coast, I’m interested in more than the view. I’m interested in how people live here. How water connects communities and separates them. How a familiar route can become a difficult decision when weather moves in. How neighbors depend on one another—and what happens when that trust is tested.

Those questions take different forms in my books. In Across Bogue Sound, they become questions of survival. In the Calico Creek series, they invite adventure and discovery. In Betrayal, Book One: A Cedar Shoals Thriller, they become questions of loyalty, corruption, and who gets believed. Different stories. Different dangers. The same coastal influence.

Bogue Banks and Bogue Sound: The Real Geography

Bogue Banks is the barrier island home to Emerald Isle, Indian Beach, Salter Path, Pine Knoll Shores, and Atlantic Beach. The Atlantic Ocean lies along its southern shore, while Bogue Sound separates the island from the mainland. These are real places—not names invented for a novel.

Two road bridges connect Bogue Banks to the mainland: one at Emerald Isle and another at Atlantic Beach. Across the sound, the mainland includes communities such as Morehead City. Nearby Beaufort adds another distinct waterfront setting to the wider Crystal Coast.

For a visitor, that geography helps explain where to stay, where to launch a boat, and how to get to the beach. For a novelist, it raises questions. What happens when a bridge is no longer an easy way home? What does a boat make possible when road travel becomes uncertain? How safe is an island if the supplies its residents need come from somewhere else? The same geography that makes this coast beautiful also makes it a compelling setting for fiction.

Across Bogue Sound: When Familiar Water Becomes a Boundary

Across Bogue Sound begins The Bogue Banks Chronicles, my apocalyptic fiction series written as Mike Anthony. The story follows Evan Mercer, a boat mechanic and former Coast Guardsman. An overdue fishing boat draws him into a search that reveals the first signs of an unfamiliar illness.

His first problem is not an abstract question about the end of the world. It is a practical, personal one: someone needs help, and he has the skills to respond. Then the consequences reach closer to home. Evan has a wife, Claire, and a daughter, Abigail. His responsibility to his neighbors cannot be separated from his responsibility to his family. Helping one person may introduce risks he cannot yet understand.

That is where the coastal setting matters. Bogue Sound is not simply water in the background. It shapes access, distance, and the possibility of refuge. Boats become more than recreational equipment. An understanding of engines, weather, and water becomes consequential. An island may offer separation from danger. But separation is not the same thing as lasting safety.

Across Bogue Sound explores that tension through a recognizable North Carolina landscape—and through people who must make decisions before they have all the answers.

Calico Creek: The Coast as a Place of Discovery

The Calico Creek series approaches the coast from a different direction. Here, creeks, marshes, shorelines, and barrier islands create possibilities for exploration. A familiar place can become the beginning of a mystery. A local name can make a reader wonder about the people who came before.

In Calico Creek: The Legend of the Howling Marauder and the Pirate’s Secret, that curiosity becomes a coastal adventure shaped by pirate legend and the promise of a hidden story.

The wider Crystal Coast offers a natural setting for that kind of fiction. Morehead City and Beaufort have distinct waterfront identities. Beyond the streets and docks are waterways and islands that change how a place looks depending on where you stand—or whether you approach it by water. That is part of what I want to bring into these stories: the feeling that a place you thought you knew may still hold something worth discovering. The fictional adventures are not historical accounts. But the real coastal landscape gives the imagination somewhere convincing to begin.

Betrayal: A Cedar Shoals Thriller

In Betrayal, the coast becomes the setting for a different kind of threat. Luke Garrison, a small-town police officer and Coast Guard reservist, witnesses an unlit plane dropping bundles on an island airstrip. County deputies arrive to collect them. After he tells someone what he saw, the danger turns toward him. Then his signature appears where it should not.

This is not an apocalyptic novel or a pirate adventure. It is a coastal crime thriller about evidence, power, and the difficulty of telling the truth when other people control the official account.

What connects it to this region is the coastal environment and the pressures of life in a small community: overlapping relationships, familiar faces, and the knowledge that a professional disagreement may follow someone well beyond the workplace. My law-enforcement and Coast Guard background informs that perspective. The setting gives the story its particular shape, but the question at its center reaches beyond any one place: What do you do when the people responsible for enforcing the rules are the people you need to question?

How I Bring Real Places Into Fiction

Using a real region is not just a matter of mentioning Emerald Isle, Atlantic Beach, or Bogue Sound. The setting needs to affect the story. Water changes how people travel. Weather changes what they can safely attempt. A limited number of routes changes their options. Close community relationships can create support, obligation, and conflict.

In Across Bogue Sound, coastal geography shapes survival, access, and the search for refuge.
In the Calico Creek series, the landscape encourages curiosity, exploration, and adventure.
In Betrayal, the coastal setting supports a story about trust, criminal activity, and the pressures of a small community.

Not every real town appears in every book. Some places are fictionalized, and the series have separate characters and storylines. But each draws on the possibilities of this particular coast.

Read the Coast a Little Differently

If you have visited Bogue Banks, you may already know the feeling of crossing the bridge and seeing the sound open around you. You may know Emerald Isle’s shoreline, Atlantic Beach’s oceanfront, the communities between them, or the waterfronts of Morehead City and Beaufort.

My hope is that the books offer another way to think about those surroundings. A stretch of water can be beautiful and still present a difficult crossing. A quiet shoreline can invite an adventure. A close-knit community can be a source of strength—and a place where asking the wrong question carries a cost. That is why I return to North Carolina’s Crystal Coast in my fiction. There is more than one kind of story here.

Find Your Next Coastal Read

For apocalyptic fiction and family-centered survival, start with Across Bogue Sound, Book One of The Bogue Banks Chronicles.

For coastal adventure and pirate mystery, explore Calico Creek: The Legend of the Howling Marauder and the Pirate’s Secret.

For coastal crime and small-town corruption, begin with Betrayal, Book One: A Cedar Shoals Thriller.

Mike Anthony is the fiction pen name of Dr. Dondi M. Day. Explore all the books and meet the author, or read more about coastal apocalyptic fiction.