Planes and Trains

There have been books with a lot of travel details. Dracula had the last-act chase. The (intended) final Sherlock Holmes case had a bit of a chase, too. Verne's Around the World... is almost nothing but extensive detail on how exactly you get from Point A to Point B. The World's Worst Books also have lengthly descriptions of characters plodding from Point A to Point B, although they are overshadowed by the same characters making long telephone calls to explain how they got from Point A to Point B.

What I'm leading up to, though, is how different it is today to be writing them.

I'm writing a modern work, which means I can basically use up-to-date schedules, reviews, pictures, and even real-time tracking. I currently have open the Lufthansa reservations page, a page that reviews the Business Class (and only) lounge they maintain at Athens International, and a FlightTracker page showing the exact route of a past flight, right down to how many minutes were spent taxiing.

I also have open pages showing the weather, time of sunset, and lunar phase for the exact date used in the novel (October of last year, if you are wondering).

One could far too easily slip into the mistake of a published, official Tomb Raider novel (reviewed elsewhere on this blog) that descended into an almost stop-by-stop description of a journey through the London Tube. The trick is, as always, to find the details that stick. The places outside of mere numbers like the exact time of sunset or number of seats in an Airbus320 "sharklet" variation, to the places where flesh meets metal; where a human being reacts to the thing. That's why travel books and blogs and reviews are so useful.

And even better is having boots on the ground. Or unlaced shoes in the mere 30" of the so-called "Business Class" of the Lufthansa flight from ATH to FRA.