You know you're a writer when...
...you put your life on the line to check the underside of a bridge.
The story I'm sticking to: GoogleEarth has become my bestest friend, I tell you, since I started on my newest WIP--a dark, paranormal romance novella for a new market that's sprung up--because I'm using a real city and real locations for the first time ever (in our dimension, at least). I've always world-built up to this point, for maximum writing pleasure. ALWAYS. I love creating my own fantasy locales. But Atlanta and the 'burbs are perfect for this story, so there you go.
Even if you've lived somewhere for a long time, GoogleEarthing and checking everything out from above the tree line puts what you think you've seen in a whole new perspective. Talk about convenient, inspiring, and fun--in minutes I had found a vast wooded area in Vinings for a fictional house, a dark lair, plotted escape routes and picked an important bridge without even driving down the street. That was LAST week, though. Today, since I was out mailing a fantasy manuscript, I wanted to scope that bridge out in person because I needed to see how it was made underneath (a character is going to use it to stage their suicide) and to check the depth of the river there--you know, the better to float bodies away with? Two or three feet of water won't cut it.
The closest I could get to said bridge was the cute little shopping center next to it. So I parked, climbed up to the street and got myself to the thing though there's no sidewalk and cars were whizzing by like Paces Ferry Road was the freaking Autobahn. The pedestrian bridge that runs parallel to the main bridge would have been the perfect place to see everything I needed to, but alas, it was barracaded off. Closed for repairs. So. There I was on hands and knees, getting as close to both bridges as I could without going on either, at the edge of this cliff that went straight down, with this thick forest on one side of me that you could easily imagine some hockey-masked guy with a machete coming out of.
Now, we have wasps and hornets and yellow jackets down here in the Dirty South that will KILL you. One of those pissed-off suckers came out of the woods, saw this huge target apparently (my bent-over arse), and called his cronies. They have absolutely no stealth capabilities whatsoever, so I heard them coming and took off. Picture that, if you will. Me running down the side of the road, dodging gopher holes, frantically scribbling notes down on a pad, with this swarm behind me.
I escaped the Attack of the Killer Bees. I got my info. And I am a writer. :)
____________________
Haven's Grace
1,178 / 15,000
(7.9%)
The story I'm sticking to: GoogleEarth has become my bestest friend, I tell you, since I started on my newest WIP--a dark, paranormal romance novella for a new market that's sprung up--because I'm using a real city and real locations for the first time ever (in our dimension, at least). I've always world-built up to this point, for maximum writing pleasure. ALWAYS. I love creating my own fantasy locales. But Atlanta and the 'burbs are perfect for this story, so there you go.
Even if you've lived somewhere for a long time, GoogleEarthing and checking everything out from above the tree line puts what you think you've seen in a whole new perspective. Talk about convenient, inspiring, and fun--in minutes I had found a vast wooded area in Vinings for a fictional house, a dark lair, plotted escape routes and picked an important bridge without even driving down the street. That was LAST week, though. Today, since I was out mailing a fantasy manuscript, I wanted to scope that bridge out in person because I needed to see how it was made underneath (a character is going to use it to stage their suicide) and to check the depth of the river there--you know, the better to float bodies away with? Two or three feet of water won't cut it.
The closest I could get to said bridge was the cute little shopping center next to it. So I parked, climbed up to the street and got myself to the thing though there's no sidewalk and cars were whizzing by like Paces Ferry Road was the freaking Autobahn. The pedestrian bridge that runs parallel to the main bridge would have been the perfect place to see everything I needed to, but alas, it was barracaded off. Closed for repairs. So. There I was on hands and knees, getting as close to both bridges as I could without going on either, at the edge of this cliff that went straight down, with this thick forest on one side of me that you could easily imagine some hockey-masked guy with a machete coming out of.
Now, we have wasps and hornets and yellow jackets down here in the Dirty South that will KILL you. One of those pissed-off suckers came out of the woods, saw this huge target apparently (my bent-over arse), and called his cronies. They have absolutely no stealth capabilities whatsoever, so I heard them coming and took off. Picture that, if you will. Me running down the side of the road, dodging gopher holes, frantically scribbling notes down on a pad, with this swarm behind me.
I escaped the Attack of the Killer Bees. I got my info. And I am a writer. :)
____________________
Haven's Grace
1,178 / 15,000
(7.9%)