Very true about foreign writers, although if they are serious I would hope they'd at least look at a map. Actually, I probably expect the foreign writers would do more research than our home-grown ones. Americans seem abysmally ignorant of just about everything.

When I was writing Ashes of Tulsa I was going about my merry way when it hit me that I might actually want to look up Tulsa on the map so I knew what the hell I was talking about. Luckily I found some kind of nature park outside the city that was perfect for half of the setting and small towns are plentiful in the Midwest so I just made that up.

Recently I was playing around on Google maps (why oh why do they keep changing it?) and was looking around Colorado Springs. It was interesting to see how long the road from the entrance to Cheyenne Mountain to the highway is. And it's pretty far outside of the main part of town. That's why I never gave details when describing any of that. They would leave the mountain and at some unspecified later time would be driving around town or arrive at home. That way I couldn't screw things up.