Creating believable places in my fiction

The old farmhouse where Megan discovers the antique phone in my novel, “The Time Telephone,” was modeled after a real place. Its interior and exterior are exactly as I remember my great grandparents’ rural Georgia home – the home I used to run through with my cousins, where the front “parlor” was only used for company and the porch had a wooden porch swing. The description of the kitchen with its floral “linoleum rug,” the ice box and round oak table with a Lazy Susan in the middle, is exactl...