Beware that if you will not have visited the location, you will need to be extra diligent in your details.
That said, travel books, travel sites, travel reviews, and if you can actually send off a note to a travel reviewer's blog and get a response it would be invaluable.
I wrote something based in Rome, but I had been there and felt quite comfortable writing about it. Still what clinched being able to use the site was a slim little unique travel volume. Not only were there decent photos but there were descriptions and personal reflections written by everyday artists, writers, scientists, students, etc. Unfortunately, subsequent books on other locations were woefully lacking in the same depth of impressions.
Good luck.
You're absolutely right. I need to make sure my details are very accurate, and to be frank, I'm scared sh*tless. However I'm confident that this is the right decision with this book. I need my characters to be completely out of their element, taken away from familiar places. In a way, I think this actually might be an advantage to me, because since I'll be writing from these characters points of view, they won't know anything about the location. So now it's just the matter of, like you say, getting the right amount of information. Travel agencies and sites will definately be on my list of places to look at, and Google Maps has some great 3D road maps for when my characters are outdoors. Here's hoping it all works out.
I don't know if there are any legal issues concerned with using real buildings as a setting in a work of fiction? Other than that, I don't think anyone would be annoyed or upset by you using "their' building in a book. And you're right, the Nina Tower is an awesome thing to get one's hands on!
One bullet train (in this part of the world they're known as express rails or high speed rails, by the way) runs from the south east of China to Kowloon Island (one of the four islands that make up Hong Kong). Is that the one you're looking for?
Purely out of interest, is there a special reason you decided on Hong Kong?
Thank you for the correction of the rail, I will mark that down in my notes.
As for my choice of Hong Kong, I've always been interested in the Asian culture, and wanted to write a book where it served as the backdrop. After doing some searching online and using Google maps I felt like Hong Kong was the perfect place to do it. It's a gorgeous looking city, with fantastic architecture. My characters need to be in an evasion mode for most of the book, and this needs to be in a place completely new and unknown to them, so I needed someplace that had a different language, both spoken and written. It was just one of those cities that fit perfectly into what I needed.
I'll have to find out about whether I can use Nina Tower. I would love to, but if it's not recommended to use an existing building for story purposes, especially controversial ones, I'll need to create a fictional building. If no one reading this topic knows I'll create a specific topic for that. Thanks again for the info!
