Need to do some research for your novel but don’t have a big budget for the trip? Author Emma Straub shared a simple research trip secret: the Twitter house swap.
During our Morning Media Menu interview today, Straub (pictured, via) shared research tips and talked about revising her upcoming novel, Laura Lamont’s Life in Pictures. West coast readers can catch Straub this week at Skylight Books and Booksmith.
Follow this link to listen to the complete interview. Here’s an excerpt: “I’m doing a house swap. We are here for three weeks and it’s free–that’s the key to everything. [We connected] over Twitter. The woman I’m swapping with is also an author. We’re both doing the same thing. I’m revising my novel; she’s revising her novel. Now we are both doing it at each others’ houses. It’s been a fabulous success so far, but it’s the first time I’ve done this. The last time I came to do research, we stayed in a hotel and that gets really expensive. Twitter is good for lots of reasons, but one of them is making new friends who will let you sleep in their house.”