I rather hate it. Especially when it deals with laws and emotional repercussions. I've been putzing with one of my novels again, about a man who was abused by his mom and step-dad until he was 12, when he ran and ended up in the hospital for six days after a particularly bad beating.
It's 18 years later, and I don't know if his parents would still be in prison for that, or if they would have been released, since they also had a full-blown meth lab in the basement at the time of their arrest.
I don't know what kinds of mental and emotional effects this would have on him.
And I don't know anything about prisons and how they work. Does the "you've got a visitor" thing really happen? I can't imagine they would allow last minute visitation by anyone other than lawyers/legal representation. And I've seen it a couple of ways in movies/TV, where they're put in a big room with tables and no barriers between them, or at a bank of little desks with a pane of glass between them, and phones to speak, or the little ticket booth vent to speak through. Could it go either way? I just don't know.
So... it's off to world wide web, where, with any luck, I'll find the information I need to know, to make this novel the best I can. Because I want the best I can to be better than the best I thought I could do.
