My Magic Carpet

The subjects I like to write about are either a) places I have been and am familiar with or b) places or things I wish I knew more about. I have lived in Malibu, Cincinnati, Central Oregon and now Florida and have visited Savannah, San Francisco, London and NYC, all of which I have written about with some clarity of mental imagery. I have not, however, been to Rio, Iceland or the Southwest of England or the Irish countryside. So how do I infuse stories with any semblance of realism?

My answer has been Wikipeda.

Wikipedia is my first and best source for much of the location facts, history and color of my stories. Oh, if possible, I will interview friends who have visited places I can’t, but Wikipedia has been my stalwart, reliable well of lore. ‘Southwest’ is a coming-of-middle age tale of a frustrated wife that became close to a travelogue with the many stops on her solo adventure around England and Ireland. ‘Triangle’ research provided me with knowledge about the slave trade, the industrial revolution, the morphing of the Great Houses of England, the history of Scotland Yard. The character of Iceland came alive during my creation of ‘Skullduggery in Reykjavik’. For ‘The Jewess of Savannah’, my uncomfortable ignorance of the Reconstruction era after the Civil War sent me to learn about it and the surprising chapter of when General Sherman paused in Savannah during his March to the Sea. Wikipedia even revealed much I didn’t know about my home town of Cincinnati during my backgrounding for ‘Over the Rhine’.

Oh, sure, I would love to roam around on tax deductible trips to get first hand, on-the-ground experience of the locales I will put into future stories but until I can figure a way to create the travel budget and overcome the mobility limitations of my beloved muse/wife, I will be a grateful armchair traveler via Wikipedia.