growing up writing

A lot of what I read online about writing stories focuses on churning out novels every few months and that the best form of marketing is writing more books.

It’s an interesting thought and one that I ponder as I pack for my latest research trip. In this age of frenetic writing should I just stay at home and google the information I need? Worse, youtube it?

Is the idea of the research trip, of hitting the road and walking in the steps of my characters, a quaint overhang of a bygone era?

I’m at the historic Malanda Hotel on the Atherton Tablelands in Far North Queensland where my heroine meets her betrothed (he is but a short term hero as I kill him off eventually).

The occasion is the arrival of the railway in 1911.

As I stand in the echoing emptiness of what was once the  ballroom of the hotel I know that the decision to throw the kids and a tent in the car and head north to the Tablelands was the right one.

i can already see my heroine dancing in the arms of her handsome beau, hear the swish of her crinoline frock as she sways in time to some inner waltz tune and feel the breeze drifting in from the balcony and hinting of the descent of another crisp Tablelands night – a night my heroine will always remember as the night she lost the only man she had ever truly loved.

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