It’s always fun to set stories in your hometown, because you can use locations you know intimately and that familiarity can add an extra authenticity to your writing. You don’t have to imagine a setting because you can visit it and walk around in it. You can see the stage on which your characters will play out their scenes.

However, doing so can also cause problems. You can fall into the trap of assuming too much knowledge on behalf of your readers. If you set a story against a local landmark and they’ve never visited it, they might not get the significance you assume it’s bringing to your story. They might miss the details you take for granted. In your mind’s eye, you might be constructing the most dramatic scene you’ve ever imagined – but if the reader doesn’t know enough about the locale to picture it in their own mind, if you’re not describing it properly, all your hard work will be wasted. You have to take a step back and ensure you’re being fair to them, that you’re avoiding in-jokes and describing the scene the same way you would if you were describing one on Mars or Jupiter, and not letting your familiarity with the scene blind you to the reader’s needs.

On the other hand, it can be just as difficult to set stories in exotic or imaginary locales. You still have the same duty to describe the scene vividly, whether it’s Buenos Aires, Tokyo or the dark side of Moon.

One thing I’ve always enjoyed about the SF genre is the way it can transport you to some other time or place and fire your imagination so you feel you’ve been there and experienced something above and beyond your everyday routine. What you have to do as a writer is make sure you treat your local environment the same way – because it may well be exotic and mysterious to some of your readers.

For instance, I recently co-wrote a short story with another writer, set in Paris, a city I’ve visited only twice in my life, but one in which the other writer has lived for many years. While she felt at home writing about the streets and boulevards, I had to use Google Earth to obtain detailed aerial photographs of the locations and routes we were using in the story, to give me the insight I needed to produce credible descriptions of the scenery the characters found themselves passing through.

Most writers need a day job to keep them financially afloat. But the advent of social media sites has changed the way we look for work. Below are a few things I have learned during my search for a new job:

1. Before a job interview, you can look your interviewer(s) up on LinkedIn, MySpace and Facebook to get an idea of their professional background, their likes and dislikes, etc.
2. They’ll be checking you out too, so make sure you set your privacy settings on Facebook, so that only your friends can see your embarrassing pictures.
3. Unless you protect your feed, *anyone* can read what you write on Twitter. So use some common sense and don’t post anything that could offend or discourage a potential employer.
4. LinkedIn is very useful as an online CV but beware how much personal information you put there. Don’t make yourself vulnerable to identity thieves.
5. Beware when signing up to multiple email job alerts that the same vacancy may be advertised by several compteting agencies, and you may therefore end up unwittingly applying for the same role two or three times.

Are you an author with a day job? How do you balance work and writing? Do you take an undemanding job in order to save your energy for writing, or do you look for stimulating work to give you ideas and experiences to write about?