Building a Town in my Mind

Every author has to do book research from time to time. Usually this involves surfing the Internet looking for obscure things, like the time the sun sets on September 9 in the state of South Carolina.

Sometimes, though, book research gets me out of the house and out from behind the computer. Just recently, I got to do a little book research for a new series of books that I’m thinking about writing — books that I plan to set in a small, fictitious town in north western Virginia. Last week the D...