Oh, the places you will see!

By Rick Blechta

Being pretty well house-bound by government decree here in Ontario, my mind slipped sideways the other day, thinking of all the places to which I’ve travelled for research purposes since I began writing novels.

These places include various places in the UK, Vienna, Paris and the northwest of France, and Italy, where we were forced to visit Rome, Florence, Tuscany, and Venice.

When I first began writing, I never considered the need for “on location” research. It really is indispensable if you want verismo in your story.

Never having travelled much, I didn’t understand how incredibly joyous is can be. You will meet wonderful people, have unexpected adventures and learn arcane things that will add wonderful layers of information to your plot — if used judiciously.

Another truth I soon discovered came at tax time. These research trips could be written off as long as I could prove to the Canada Revenue Agency that I was legitimately working on a novel.

Since many of the jaunts were to countries where English wasn’t spoken, it was indispensable to have a translator to do the job properly. Fortunately my darling wife is a polyglot. She speaks French, German, and learned to speak Italian well enough for our trip to Italy that she was able to haggle in Italian with a gondolier in Venice one night.

I could always count on her to gain access to a number of places I wouldn’t have been able to manage, using her language skills leavened with a dash of charm.

Best of all, as long as I paid her something — we settled on $25 a day, plus room, board, and travel expenses — she was technically my employee so her costs could also be written off.

The real payoff, however, was all the little details I unearthed, things I never would have thought of had I not visited those locations, and it’s those details, casually tossed into my writing, that help readers feel as if they’re actually “present” in the story they’re reading. I’ve had those comments a lot for which I’m really grateful.

I miss those days (as does my wife!) and I will have to make a trip to Washington, DC if I’m to finish the novel on which I’m working, and I’m sure some wonderful unexpected tidbits will come out of my research trip to that great city.

I can’t wait!

Places Remembered

I've been thinking about setting -- particularly in the wake of the fire at Notre Dame. I was in Paris for the second time a few years ago. That time around I was traveling with my aunt and we were visiting her son and his family. We traveled from the house they had bought in Normandy to Paris. At the time I was looking ahead, scouting out the setting for a future book in my Lizzie Stuart series. I was already planning to send Lizzie and John Quinn to France on their honeymoon.

Lizzie, my history nerd, would walk through Paris with guidebook in hand. How could she not have gone to Notre Dame? Undoubtedly a scene would have happened there. Maybe she would have seen someone or heard something. Maybe had a glimpse of another character I already know will appear in that book.

That book isn't the next in the series, but the one after. I've been debating France, but it is the destination I've always had in mind if Lizzie and Quinn make it to the altar. I've also recently considered Ireland because of Quinn's family ties. But if they should go to Paris, I need to make a choice. The series is in the recent past. The honeymoon would happen during the first week of January 2005. So what about Notre Dame?  How does one handle a setting that has changed in an event that was deeply emotional for many people?

This gets to the larger question of recovering the past. As my fellow Type-Mers have discussed, setting is important. I, too, spend time in the field, exploring the places where my books and short stories are set. It is disconcerting to discover how much real-life settings change. This is less of an issue writing in the recent past or near future. Enough is there to have a sense of how it once looked or will look in an imagined future. But when the setting has only a marker and the surrounding area has changed, one is left only with photos.

I need to go to the site of the 1939 New York World's Fair. Knowing how little remains from the fair, I haven't rushed to make the pilgrimage. But I will eventually. Standing there, with map and photo book, I hope I will be able to get the "lay of the land".

And if  Lizzie goes to Notre Dame in 2005, I'll need to figure out how to treat the tragedy of the fire with respect while being true to what she would have seen and commented on.

Time and Setting

"Well, let me catch you up. It's now later the same afternoon. . ."

That's what Blanche on The Golden Girls says when Dorothy mentions it's been years since she read a certain slow-moving, long-running comic strip. Time hasn't moved quite as slowly in my Lizzie Stuart series. But it now four year later in a series that began in 2000. The series is now set in 2004.

The first challenge I'm facing is that I've forgotten the details. I'm about to write a book in which Lizzie Stuart and John Quinn, my sleuthing couple, fly off to Santa Fe to spend Thanksgiving with his relatives. This will be the first time Lizzie meets her future in-laws. Only thing, I've forgotten the bits and pieces of their lives from earlier books. I know Quinn's half-sister owns an art gallery. I don't know if I gave her husband an occupation. I don't remember if I mentioned the ages of their children. I know Quinn's mother and step-father are coming from Oklahoma. I don't remember what the illness was that had the step-father hospitalized in the third book. All those pesky little details that I've forgotten. And I haven't been keeping a series "bible" with information about the minor characters because my editor did that so well. But I won't have the same editor or publisher for this new book. I am going to have to go back and look for these details.

Actually, I may re-read the earlier books. I have never done that – read all of the books in the series. I was afraid of an encounter with passages that would make me cringe. But much has changed in both Lizzie's life and my own since we began sixteen years ago. At this moment in her life when she is only two months away from her wedding day at the age of forty, we should look back at how she got there. Since she is not going to do that in the midst of the awful situation that I'm about to put her in, I should do it for her.

Also, re-reading could help me with the warm-up exercise that I always have to do with a new book. I've been writing about another character, Hannah McCabe, for the past few years. During those years, I wrote one short story about Lizzie. I was thrilled when that story was published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, but I didn't immediately return to the series. A reader asked if the short story was a set-up for the next book. I said "no". But as I began writing the new book, it occurs to me that one of the characters in the short story was in Paris during World War II, and Lizzie and Quinn are supposed to go to Paris on their honeymoon. The short story was complete in itself. A passing episode in Lizzie's life as the director of the Institute for the Study of Southern Crime and Justice, but there is that tantalizing mention of Paris. Who knows what . . . but getting back to the book I'm working on now. First, Lizzie has to meet her future in-laws.

I've never been to Santa Fe. Reminding myself that research trips are tax-deductible, I'm going to New Mexico later this month. A whirlwind three-day trip to try to imagine what Lizzie would have seen when she was there in November 2004. Last night I had dinner with a wonderful woman whose son lives in Santa Fe. She brought along a magazine, a map, and tips about "must sees" in downtown Santa Fe. While we were talking about where Quinn's sister and her family might live, she texted her son for more information. The pal who is coming along with me on my research trip had her travel guide to Santa Fe on hand and we discussed short trips Lizzie and Quinn might take – keeping in mind that they need to spend time with his family because that's why they are there. Thanksgiving dinner, football, conversations – except Lizzie is distracted by that missing woman back home in Gallagher, Virginia. . . the woman that she last saw changing a tire on the side of the road.

Because I'm description-challenged I need to go to the place I'm trying to describe. Yes, even if that means going to Santa Fe in this book and to Paris for the next. Those of the hardships of being a writer. But I hope that going to Santa Fe will allow me to see the city through Lizzie's eyes. She is a first-person narrator. Reading a guidebook and watching YouTube videos will not suffice. I will read books about Santa Fe history because Lizzie is a crime historian and she will read those books. I'll do research on art and culture in Santa Fe because Lizzie will want to be able to have an informed conversation with her future sister-in-law, the art gallery owner.

As I gear up for my trip to Santa Fe, I'm reading Mary Buckham's A Writer's Guide to Active Setting: How to Enhance Your Fiction with More Descriptive, Dynamic Settings (2015). I plucked this book off the shelf at a local bookstore. I brought it home and put it on top of a pile of other books that I hoped to read at some future date. Last week when I was thinking about Santa Fe and what I needed to know, I happened to spot Buckham's book. Buckham emphasizes the importance of getting inside your character's head when it comes to describing the setting. Whether it's a city street or her own bedroom, what a character focuses on should reflect both personality and mental state. Buckham analyzes passages from well-known writers to demonstrate how to use setting to strengthen depiction of character.

Lizzie once complained about New Orleans – didn't love the place and couldn't get into it – but she was there to find her long-lost mother and things were not going well. I want to go deeper with my settings, make every description work harder. That means I need to get out of my author's head when I visit Santa Fe for the first time and get into Lizzie's. I hadn't intended to write those earlier scenes in the book yet – the before-the-trip scenes when she encounters the woman who is later missing – but it seems I must. When we arrive in Santa Fe, Lizzie needs to be worried and anxious . . . and we need to be back in 2004.