If I were to do a series of blog posts about American-specific information for non-US authors, and/or Southern-specific information for non-Southern authors… would you be interested?
I see a lot of questions on various mailing lists and boards about how things are done here (“here” meaning both the US and the South), everything from slang to sports to schools. There are resources to investigate a lot of those questions, but sometimes there’s no substitute for first-hand experience.
I also see things in stories set in the US sometimes that just don’t fit. Not long ago, we had a discussion on a mailing list about the Canadian practice of taking off shoes when coming into someone’s home. I had no idea that was common north of the border; it isn’t common at all here. Now I don’t wonder when I see it in stories based in Canada, but I read a US-based story by a Canadian author recently that included it with no explanation (and no, the characters involved weren’t Canadian). It was a relatively small thing, not enough to throw me out of the story, but it only happened in one scene. Had it been throughout, it could’ve become problematic.
Back to my question: if I were to dive into the fray with this, what kinds of things would you want to see covered? 🙂
shaeconnorwrites 