Q. Which Vegas casino is a fake?

  • Sands
  • Dunes
  • Desert Sands
  • Desert Inn

The answer is at the end of this post.

Las Vegas is the setting for my romance novel The Tom Jones Club starring International Wine Sales Rep Lucky Stryker. On the day before Release Date, I thought I’d tell you something about how Vegas works so you’ll have a little insight into the book.

Having visited Las Vegas from the time I was seven-years-old on family trips from our home in southern California, I eventually moved there. And I’ve seen a lot of changes to Vegas during my lifetime. And this lifelong Vegas experience led to telling the story of Lucky, Eric, Johnny, Copper, Mona, Syd, Matt, Red, and the Tom Jones Club.

Las Vegas is a city that continues to reinvent itself. This often includes throwing out old icons to the neon barnyard, imploding old properties to make way for the new, or giving a facelift to an older property and keeping the name or creating a new one.

Other Vegas facts: 
  • In the old days, the properties on the Strip were so spread out, you would drive from casino to casino – not walk 
  • The Aladdin, where Elvis married Priscilla, is now Planet Hollywood
  • The Stratosphere replaced the old Vegas World.
  • Mandalay Bay is where the Hacienda used to be
  • The Desert Inn is where the old Dan Tanna TV show took place
  • Ann-Margret’s character, Rusty, gave swimming lessons at the Flamingo in the Elvis movie Viva Las Vegas, which is now the Flamingo Hilton
  • The Montecito, as shown on the TV show Vegas, never existed
  • The Desert Sands, the locale in The Tom Jones Club, is a composite of several properties, replacing an older property made new, much like what happens in Vegas

Published by Kathy

Kathy writes novels set on cruise ships and other travel locales, writes and produces dance music, and likes to imagine life as a DJ.