The Myths of Write What You Know
I grew up in Los Angeles, and just devoured any books on Hollywood. It was fascinating to read the behind the scenes of how John Chambers put the makeup on the actors for The Planet of the Apes. I read Daily Variety every day at the college library, and the local gossip columns published in the newspapers. The internet’s largely made some of it go away, but we had columns where people could write in and ask, “What happened to X?” and find out.
So I gravitated into what I’m working on now, a mystery set in Hollywood in 1947. If you didn’t catch that, it was right after World War II, so I got veterans in there, too. I’m mostly research fashion of the times, types of cars, popular colors. I’ve had to do geography as well, since I only saw the mountains. I didn’t know what they were called. 
