Yeah! Research! Super fun! Maybe not, but here are my favorite sources for looking stuff up and checking stuff out.

Google books: It’s very useful for finding old, out of print books (that are free!). Also, you can search for keywords, etc, in the text to see if it’s worth reading or even worth buying.

The Colindale Newspaper Library: This is a trek—an hour outside of London, you need a pass, you must check your baggage, and you must be quiet. But it’s awesome. I read actual newspapers from the early 1800’s. They come in giant bound volumes to flip carefully through. It’s just an amazing feeling to touch and smell and read those 200+ year-old papers.

Museums: Especially one’s with gift shops. I LOVE the Regency rooms at the National Portrait Gallery in London.

Amazon: All sorts of good, unusual books delivered.

Colonial Williamsburg: Recreate the days of yore experience! CW is a quaint, fascinating and fun experience. I don’t know of any other place where you can immerse yourself in another world like that. It’s something about the lack of electricity, I think (except for the cash registers in the cute little shops!).

The best experience of all, for me as a writer, was dinner with my family in the tavern at CW. Though it was still a bit light outside, it was rather dark inside. We dined by candlelight. Someone played an old fiddle. We ordered meat pies with venison, and other game meats–an authentic colonial recipe. Footsteps sound different on those old floors.

You could so just imagine a hero and heroine discretely dining in a dark corner, listening to the music, looking out at the last of daylight …