I have the time in Papeete, Tahiti on my computer. Seriously. You know why? Because the parents of the heroine in the proposal my agent is shopping around are in Tahiti during the book.
Weird, huh?
But I do stuff like this all the time while I'm writing. When I was working on The Power of Two, I was checking into whether or not Americans can travel to Vietnam because Cai, the heroine, was a quarter Vietnamese. I developed a fascination with Japan when I was writing my Japanese-American heroines in Through a Crimson Veil and Shards of Crimson.
I pick up the way my characters talk. If one of them has a favorite word, even one I rarely if ever used before writing their story, I end up with that word as a regular part of my vocabulary. I've started listening to the same music my heroes listen to. I never liked hard, edgy music, but now I have a large collection of metal. My taste in music has always been eclectic, but thanks to my guys, it's become even stranger. :-/
And it just keeps on. If I see something while I'm browsing online that one of my characters would love, I have a hell of a time stopping myself from buying it. Why? I have no idea. A lot of this is stuff I would never have a use for myself. Sometimes I can't stop myself from buying it. The wind chime in Eternal Nights? Yeah, I own one of them now. Thanks, Kendall. At least it's pretty and I have it hanging in my bedroom, but still...
And my interest in a lot of these things have waned. I no longer think about traveling to Vietnam or have my fascination with Japanese culture. (I nearly took a class on their tea service.) Maybe the books/characters were long enough in the past that it's faded or maybe my new characters and their interests have pushed the others aside. I don't know.
What I do know is that I have heroes interested in motorcycles. Thank goodness I live in Minnesota and am scared of the things because otherwise I have this feeling I'd be pricing Harley-Davidsons. ;-)
