On Location – Not

It’s pouring rain outside my Washington window and Anne is junketing around England researching her book. She’s there. I’m here and probably will be for the foreseeable future. A person could get seriously bitter!

However, I have my own travel secret – I am a daydreaming junkie. If not, I never would have become a writer. I can go to all those exotic (and today, warm) locations in my mind – all without the expense and hassle of those airlines, fuel surcharges and security checks. And I’m not about to deprive readers of that pleasure either.

My last three manuscripts are set in New Mexico, Alaska, the Far East, Australia, Mexico, Peru and Lebanon – locales that I had never been anywhere near when I wrote about them. As my imagination wandered, stories about dragons intermixed with humans grew into Dust Dragons with turquoise as the catalyst. New Mexico was the place to be. Ice Dragons required massive glacial ice caves – Alaska. Stone Song catapulted the hero into exploring mythic connections in different locales around the world. And it’s a big, exciting, curious world.

Here’s the rub. I was originally trained as a journalist and I’ve become a stickler for facts. So, do I forget my stories because I can’t go there? No chance.

My research is two pronged. Second hand book stores provide me with more guide books and maps than any human ought to have. The internet gives me the rest – not in articles but in ordinary traveler’s photos.

I don’t know how many vacation pictures I’ve scanned looking, not for smiling Bob and Janie standing in front of an anthill, but at the background – the landforms, plants, shadows, sky and colors. Professional photographers give an unrealistic picture of terrain. Perfect light, framed landscapes, and picturesque scenery do not give any sense of what it is like to walk that land, how the less than perfect plants bend and break under sleeting wind, or how heat will bring sheens of sweat to the reddening foreheads of the travelers. Travel snapshots aren’t chosen for perfect light, but for the excitement of that one moment in a person’s life – kind of like a book.

I’ve since traveled to New Mexico and Alaska (after all it’s research!) and I’ve found my armchair travel descriptions were absolutely accurate. I took my own backup photos to double check against my descriptions, and it worked.

So, if you can’t get on a plane, I highly recommend the magic of your own imagination – especially when you can back it up with the magic of technology.

Happy travel writing.

f & f
Susan