I think one of the most powerful and game-changing ‘inventions’ of my lifetime has been the creation of the internet. Unfettered access to endless information was never as easy at the local library, a place that was once the frequent haunt of many of us. As a writer I have used it to my advantage and find ever-increasing ways to utilize it as I plod onward in the creation of my stories.

Useful for fact-checking and learning about things I know little about, yes. One of my biggest fears is writing about things I am barely conversant on (much of the weaponry that Brianna uses, for example). I don’t want my readers to be insulted by my trying to ‘pull one over on them’. I once read a self-published book that was pretty good except the author did not understand how a motorcycle functioned; she wrote that the rider accelerated using a pedal, when in fact all modern bikes require a twist of the handlebar grip. Such a glaring error made me wonder what other simple facts had been ignored and sullied the book for me. I strive for accuracy to the best of my ability in the details out of respect for the reader as much as I do to avoid personal embarrassment.

More recently I have begun using the internet as a tool for more than just technical details. I’ve found it immensely useful for things such as setting and characters. I play around on Facebook with picking actors I feel would be good castings for my characters but I never write with any of these people in mind. My characters visual appearances are generated much the same as their personalities; murky at the beginning but slowly coming into focus as I begin to work with them. Sometimes the physical appearance is pretty clear, but other times I struggle to see their ‘face’. I have searched online images on occasion to find ‘inspiration’; never copying a face exactly but using elements to generate a complete, clear picture of the blurry person in my head. A character I just created, Vic Birtoni, was ‘drawn’ this way. I needed to start writing him and I knew what kind of person he was in his head but was not getting a clear vision of his face. Combining several images courtesy of Google helped me flesh out (pun intended) who he was so that I could begin writing about his with clarity.

Using images for characters is limited to ‘inspiration’; as I said, I do not ‘copy’ verbatim some random stranger’s appearance to make my character. When it comes to setting, however, I can and do directly translate what I find into the story. Though I have been to Vineland and Millville, New Jersey multiple times, some of what I needed for locations in Brianna’s Reprisal had to be ‘found’. I didn’t want to just make up locations as it might be possible such places could not/did not exist in ‘real’ Vineland. Readers who knew the area might know this and therefore the entire story would lose credibility. I therefore added to my knowledge of the area by using Google maps and street view to get a lay of the land if you will. Though my warehouse building, power line road and house by the lake are fictitious, such buildings and locations do exist in Vineland (as do many of the street names). This adds authenticity for anyone who knows the area while (hopefully) painting a richer picture of what that area is like for the reader who has never been there.

In an upcoming Brianna book I have envisioned a scene where our heroine goes to Ukraine. I’ve never been to Ukraine nor did I have much of any idea what anything in that country looks like. Incredibly, Google has extensive street views of the country and I have been able to get a real ‘feel’ for what it is like and can now paint a reasonably accurate picture of it when needed. In the past I’d have relied on travel books and their limited photographs, most of which will depict only the areas that tourists would likely go to and not the local neighborhoods where my characters do the things they do. My characters can now travel the globe and be depicted doing so with a reasonable level of realism. Such a boon to the writer trapped in his winter domicile!

Nothing can replace feet-on-the-ground personal immersion into a place and I’m still rather reluctant to write about places I have never visited but at least these days I don’t have to worry that my ‘guesstimation’ about a locale will be glaringly wrong to my valued readers.