In the early 1910s, Wilson lived in Carmel Point, near Carmel-by-the-Sea. He built a little cottage at 14th Avenue and San Antonio Street as a writer's studio. He gave up newspaper work and went into short story writing. Many of his stories appeared in magazines like The Pacific Monthly, Sunset, The Saturday Evening Post, and Cosmopolitan. The books he wrote while in Carmel were Across the Latitudes (1911), The Land Claimers (1911), The Man Who Came Back (1912), The Princess of Sorry Valley (1913), and The Master Key (1914).
