I Call It 'Research'

I've been very lucky to be able to travel quite a bit, and I often find that places I've visited pop up (quite independently) in my stories. They tend to get mangled together. For example, my novel GATEWAY is a mash up of the time I got lost on a road in the middle of the night near Fukuoka, Japan,

JUST LIKE THIS! (I couldn't find the attribution, sorry)

the time we lived in Guildford, Surrey, and the neighbourhood I lived in for a few years while at school in Toronto, Ontario.

SIX is a different mash-up. When we lived in Etobicoke, we used to go to Humbertown Shopping Centre, and the kids loved it because there was a lovely fountain and garden (and ice cream store, if I remember correctly).

Thanks, Google Maps.

 

 

So, of course, that's the mall where The Bestiary is, but later, Six meets Pounce at a place I know of from Cambridge, Ontario, and the landscape Six spends that long, cold winter in is taken from the Dundas Valley, which is where I live now.

Original post is here.

And I say I write 'fantasy'.

While were in The Netherlands for holidays in July, we visited Muiderslot, a castle which was integral to the Waterline Defense of the country back in the days when armies tended to invade on foot and on horseback. I've been telling my husband that there's a new story cooking in the back of my head (I can feel it), and Muiderslot will be there somehow.

Muiderslot from the garden.

For a fantastic podcast on how writers use iages in their writing, check out The Creative Penn podcast with Nancy Hendrikson. The best part is that she justifies my addiction to Pinterest.