I'm going to pick your brains for geographical knowledge

So I'm making up an American city (or possibly just a very big town) for Company of Ravens, for a number of reasons but mostly because the idea of fixing it to any real place fills me with all kinds of anxiety. (I think I've mentioned my setting phobias in a previous entry. Honestly, I don't know why I'm a writer; everything from dialogue and characterisation to simple plot fills me with dread argh.) Here's my problem: while I have a solid idea about the city itself (I drew a map. It's not to scale or anything, but still), my ideas on where it is in relation to other places and what state it's in - absolute mush. I've done some digging around Wiki and the US Census site and I have a vague idea that my city fits somewhere between the southernmost of the Mid-Atlantic states, the Midwest and the northernmost of the Southern states. Like I said, mush. And it's possible that I've selected random geographical features for my city and mashed them together in a way that doesn't exist in real-world terms.

All of this is a long-winded way of soliciting some geographical feedback, if I can. Basically: where on your rough mental map of the US would you put a city like the following?:

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On a completely different though still related note, should I be using US spellings in this story? I'm already watching out for pants/trousers and sidewalk/pavement, but I'm talking about things like color/colour and gray/grey. One major character is English-born, though she's been living and working in America for a good number of years now.

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On another completely different but still related note, I adore Lance Nightingale, one of my vamp characters. He's terribly lonely and put-upon and Jill's Aidan would eat him for breakfast, but I heart him all the same *pets* Ah yes, this is why I'm an writer, so I can pet poor ickle vampire boys >:D