Writing What You Want to Learn: The Joy of Real-World Research When Crafting a Novel

I have never believed in the adage Write What You Know. How boring is that? Frankly, my life’s just not that interesting. Instead, I prefer to write what I want to learn.

Case in point, I travelled to Yorkshire, England to do location research for Tea with Jam and Dread, the newest Tea by the Sea mystery. I’ve been to London several times but never to Yorkshire. In earlier books in the series it was mentioned that the grandmother character, Rose Campbell, had been a kitchen maid at a grand manor house near Halifax in her youth before marrying a visiting American, and moving to his country.

When I decided I wanted to take Rose back to Thornecroft Castle House, which is now a hotel, for the hundredth birthday celebrations of Elizabeth, the Dowager Countess of Frockmorton, I knew right away I’d have to make the trip myself before I could take my characters there.

These days you can do an enormous amount of research on the internet. Examine historical records, check up on the weather and the climate, study other people’s tourist photos, follow the layout of roads and streets on maps and zoom in at the level of an individual house or pan out to see the spread of the coastline.

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