The Irish rover…
I’ve been lucky enough in my life to see a bit of the world. Some settings from those travels find their way into my stories, of course. For example, our last major trip was a riverboat cruise down the Danube. My novel Death on the Danube, the third book in the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series (see the ad below), was based on that trip (sans murders!). The novella “Fascist Tango,” found in the third volume of Pasodobles in a Quantum Stringscape, a free PDF download, features places visited during much earlier travel around South America (the first volume is available on Amazon), and what Vladimir Kalinin flying into Bogotá in Soldiers of God was seen by me several times returning from the US to Colombia where I lived for many years.
My knowledge of the EU is second only to the US and South America. I’ve never lived in Europe, although I’ve spent a lot of time there as a conference participant, guest scientist, or tourist. The EU includes the Irish Republic, and we enjoyed a lengthy land tour there (basically the reverse of Esther Brookstone and Bastiann van Coevorden’s at the beginning of Intolerance). On that tour, I met my collaborator A. B. Carolan at Blarney Castle [wink, wink]; he lives in Donegal and has a cameo in my novel Intolerance, Book Seven in the “Esther Brookstone” series (also a free PDF download).
With Google, Google Earth, along with travel websites, none of that matters much anymore. Authors can stay in the comfort of their homes and travel around the world with their laptops to make their storytelling seem more real. While real travel might help with some settings, virtual travel can provide just as much local color for readers who want to travel along.
Whether from real travels or virtual ones on a laptop, authors have to be careful. For example, suppose the principal character checks into hotel X in city Y. The author must remain neutral about X or, even better, compliment the hotel and its service to protect them legally as well as not upset those readers who have visited X and thought it was a damn good hotel!
With Death on the Danube, I was very careful to have Esther and Bastiann praise their honeymoon cruise on the riverboat, even though Bastiann has to run a murder investigation aboard the ship (don’t expect that on your riverboat tour!). In fact, I could imagine the cruise ship company, Amawaterways, using the novel in some way for advertising the services they offer (they probably don’t, though). That cruise for us was truly entertaining, educational, and interesting, and I hope I conveyed that well in the novel.
Some travelers diss tours. Both our Danube and Irish tours provided me with a lot of information I can still use in future stories. To refresh my memory or to visit places virtually, I can sit in front of my laptop and tour those places again and the rest of the world too. Modern authors never had it so good. Of course, whether real or virtual, your settings have to seem real. That’s true of all fiction.
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Death on the Danube. Take a tour down the Danube with Esther Brookstone and new hubby Bastiann van Coevorden. This novel, Book Three in the series, is a tour de force in many ways, not just for the Danube tour. A strange passenger on their riverboat cruise is murdered, and Interpol agent Bastiann takes charge of the murder investigation. A twenty-first version of Christie’s Death on the Nile, this mystery/thriller has a lot more relation to current events and modern assassins in today’s world than the genre-setting Dame Agatha could ever have imagined. The ebook version is available wherever quality ebooks are sold, and the print version wherever you might find it (Amazon, B&N, or your local bookstore by request).
Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!
