RESEARCH: DC Evenfall vol 2 ch 3, photos and video

I utilize Google streetview a lot in the process of writing stories, so I can accurately describe the area and get an idea of what the character would be going through in various scenes. I tried something new, with recording one of the ‘walks’ Boyd would have gone on. The video below was the third attempt at making this; for some reason, trying to record my screen and using Google streetview simultaneously slowed my computer down immensely and made it kind of jolty.

If you like this, let me know and I can try to do more in the future. Hopefully I can refine it where it won’t take so long to focus each time.

Screenshots I took in different places along that walk:

Evenfall research: safe house examples, ch 37

Google streetview made the editing of the Monterrey arc of Evenfall about a thousand times easier and more accurate. This entry contains minor spoilers for around Evenfall chapter 37 so I’ve put it behind a cut.

Fade research: settings for ch 40 and 42

In 2005-2006 when we first started writing In the Company of Shadows, Sonny and I both found it difficult to properly research locations outside the US. Most of the time I could find country maps with city names, but not always. And finding street maps of individual cities was, at times, nearly impossible. Every used bookstore I visited, I trolled the map and travel area. Once, I bought a huge wall map of Mexico because it had one small box that showed a tiny portion of the streets of Monterrey.

But times change and so does technology.

Google alone made a remarkable difference in our ability to research other cities with the expansion of streetview all over the world. Suddenly, not only could we zoom in and see the street names and layouts, but we could also view what that street looked like, and eventually photographs taken by people were also tied to locations. This gave us the ability to find and describe settings, and to become more accurate in our timing of characters’ movements or travel plans.

And as the internet expanded, we also found it easier to search for more details in other countries. When needed, we were able to locate actual farms or houses for sale, or apartments for rent, or hotel or hostel rooms for booking, in order to more accurately describe the architecture and amenities of the city where the chapters were set.

Below are some screenshots taken during the writing of Fade chapters 40 and 42. These were examples used for the settings. I took to making notes on the screenshot itself to explain why that screenshot in particular was taken. Keep in mind, these are rough locations. This is placed behind a cut for potential spoilers.