I've been doing a lot of research for my Great Martian War novels. Mostly historical research on the great men of the 1907-1915 period. Men like Theodore Roosevelt, Leonard Wood, Thomas Edison, and Nikola Tesla. But since my stories take place in real locations, I've had to do some research on the geography of the areas, too. Google Earth has been a great help and I think I've done a pretty good job so far. One of the battles took place in the Glorietta Pass in New Mexico and one of my readers recently went through the pass and didn't have any complaints about my description.

But just this last week I did make a goof, but fortunately caught it in time before it made it into Book 3. I'm writing about the Battle of Little Rock, Arkansas right now and I have to admit that I had always sort of considered anything west of the Mississippi to be the "Great Plains" and flat as a pancake all the way to the Rockies. But as I was researching the topography around Little Rock (found a great 1918 map) I realized that it wasn't flat there at all! There are substantial ridge lines north of the city and right on the edge of town there's a huge mound of rock that towers 250 feet above the surrounding terrain. Where did that come from? Well, a little research reminded me that there's this thing called the Ozark Mountains around there :) The flat lands are mostly north and west of that region. Oops! Fortunately, the corrections were simple. Saved by the Internet yet again!