Before I sent my most recent book off to my trusty beta readers, I had a bunch of fact and detail-checking to do, things I hadn’t wanted to stop writing to look up or couldn’t look up once I was at the retreat. My rough drafts are always littered with square brackets around things like [last name] or [car type] to remind me to fill them in later. Some of the things I looked up for the current book:

-universities and community colleges in New York City
-different types of alcoholic drinks
-skiing locations near Boston
-how to release the safety on a pistol
-when the third Lord of the Rings movie came out
-the procedures that usually follow an arrest

Yet another reason I am so grateful to have the internet at my fingertips!