It's official: With plane tickets and rental car secured, I'm heading out to Dearborn at the end of February. I've also put together a preliminary list of questions I'll need to answer (eg, where would my characters live? Where would they set up shop? Where's the most likely place for them to get into a car accident?) between now and the end of my trip.
I've also started ransacking the NYPL for books on Michigan and Dearborn so I can arrive with a sense of history and geography.
This being my first trip to the area, I hope to do so as a tourist more than as if I lived there, ie, I'll walk and drive around a lot to get a feel for how the area is laid out; will look into local museums and venues. At the same time, I'll be looking at the area through the eyes of my characters. Hopefully I'll meet some locals and talk to them about area to get a better feel for what's going on on the ground.
On the other side, I've been reading books in Alexander McCall Smith's The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, a series which takes place in Botswana. The books have given me a better feel for the language, geography and diet of the country. The first book in this series has been made into a movie featuring Jill Scott to debut sometime later this year.
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2 comments:
Jill Scott? Sweet! Formidable lady.
Good luck with the fact-finding trip. If you run into the real Slim Shady, please ask him for me if he's kindly stand up.
"He'd," rather.
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