Research... going the extra mile?

How far should research for a new book go? If I was writing non-fiction, then research would be at the core of the book: every sentence must be historically true, characters must be genuine and their words must be theirs, and theirs alone. 

But with fiction, you can make everything up, right? Wrong! All books need a level of investigation if you aren't to find yourself at the mercy of a sharp-eyed editor, not to mention readers! And if, like me, you specialise in historical fiction, then it's crucial to make sure that the backdrop to your made-up characters is authentic.  

So... writing fiction is a dance between your imagination and the reality on the ground. You may dream up the plot and the characters, but then you must guide them through the world as it was in the past - often before you, the author, were alive. 

Traditional research involves libraries, museums, records, archives, newspapers, diaries, newsreels and the like. But possibly the most interesting aspect is when you have the privilege of meeting people who were living at the time the book is set, and can give an insight - and often personal experience - from that era. So... I have met a man who worked on the railway at the time that Thebo, Ada's three-year-old grandson in The Housemaid's Daughter, travels alone from Johannesburg to Cradock after his mother has died. I've talked to retired naval personnel who served in Simon's Town, setting for The Girl from Simon's Bay, and knew of the ships that are at the heart of the book. For The Fire Portrait, I recalled my father's memories of serving in North Africa during the Second World War (the heat, the flies) to animate Julian's descriptions in the book. And then there were people I spoke to about living in small, rural communities in the Karoo... 

Landscape and nature tend to outlast human memory, so I like to think that the setting I chose for Aloe Glen, the fictional hamlet at the centre of The Fire Portrait, is close to what Frances McDonald would have encountered in the 1930s.
I could write about it as I saw it... and Frances could paint it.
Rare bulbs, stone plants, quiver trees, a pink armoured aloe...