The Winner of Leslie Karst's MURDER, LOCAL STYLE is Brenda Gaskell! Brenda, please send an email to julia at julia spencer - fleming dot com (remember the hyphen!) and I'll connect you to Leslie.
JENN McKINLAY: Writing brings an author to some seriously strange places. Over the course of sixty plus books in different genres, I’ve done deep dives into everything from how certain poisons work, naturally, to the inner workings of beauty pageants, dog shows, Elvis impersonators, and NFL football teams. I’ve studied conditions like dyslexia and anxiety and interviewed professionals about narcissism and obsessive compulsive disorder. And I’ve done boots on the ground research for settings from Arizona to New England to Italy (a hardship, I know). If you ask me what my favorite research was to date, I’d have to say going to the top of the Eiffel Tower for a pivotal scene in PARIS IS ALWAYS A GOOD IDEA. Hard to beat, I know.
How about you, Reds? What is your favorite research deep dive and what book did you use it in?
RHYS BOWEN: Every one of my books seems to involve a research deep dive. Exotic places, other times, the royal family, not to mention poisons and blood spatters. I studied the whole training program for secret agents in WWII. I sat inside a Blenheim Bomber and tried on a flight helmet. I have walked every street in lower Manhattan and at this moment I’m becoming an expert in appraising fifteenth century books! I love the way we become accidental experts!
Much of my research involves a trip somewhere. Researching at the antique Correr library in Venice. Learning to make Tuscan pasta. This is definitely the fun part. Eating on a dock beside the Mediterranean is magical.
LUCY BURDETTE: With my Key West series, most of the research has been exploring the undercurrents of the island. I did love my two experiences with the citizens police academy and sheriff’s police academy. There is an almost-deserted island I need to visit for next book, though it scares me a little…
Other than that, Paris, Paris, and Paris!
HALLIE EPHRON: Every book has involved a foray into some topic or place I’d never have imagined myself investigating. I’ve been to a brain bank (donated brains arrive in FedEx boxes and get stored in buckets so they look like oversized cauliflowers taking a bath). I was a tourist in an MRI lab (how to kill someone? Let me count the ways!) The mud flats at low tide in and around Beaufort, South Carolina (not a place you want to get stuck).
I started writing a book about a psych/intern who works nights as an exotic dancer, but realized that research into what that would be like was a bridge too far. Nope, not going there.
JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: My on-site research has consisted of a lot of hiking around places in upstate NY, looking for likely sites to hide a body and buildings and business that catch my eye - I want to make sure the reader absolutely feels like they are right there in Washington County.
When I wanted to describe Clare piloting a helicopter in the southern Adirondacks, I went to my dad. For years, he had the top of the line, most recent version of Microsoft Flight (with different kinds of yokes and controls to match the aircraft he was “flying” and he led me through the entire spin up process and flight plan - the program let me see what Clare would have seen. You can take the man out of the Air Force, but you can’t take the Air Force out of the man, I guess.
I keep saying I’m going to set a novel in someplace warm (Aruba?) or beautiful (Vienna?) but so far, it’s all snow, mud or high heat/high humidity. Sigh.
HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Usually I make stuff up. And as a reporter, I’ve wired myself with hidden cameras (and got caught in a cult once...ahh) and gone undercover and in disguise. Been in prisons and jails and behind the scenes at the airport and courthouse and been with SWAT teams and tear gassed and inside a nuclear reactor. (Oh, and in the FBI Academy, I figured out how to fool the lie detector. They are, truly, STILL mad at me.) I have, though, done a lot of on-line research into the psychology of revenge, and geography of an area, and time zones, and things like “how long to drown in salt water vs. fresh water” and “what are the symptoms of CO poisoning.” That stuff has to be right. Still mostly, I make stuff up.
How about you, Readers, what informational rabbit holes have you fallen into?
Wow . . . such interesting [intriguing] research!
ReplyDeleteThese days, the only informational rabbit holes I tend to stumble around in are those connected to my grandson's favorite topic of discussion: dinosaurs . . . .
My rabbit holes are mostly related to travel
ReplyDeleteplanning. For our first narrow boat trip, did I present our travel partners with an actual binder showing potential canals (complete with how many locks there were), boat hire bases, etc.? Why yes, I did!
Lisa, what part of England did you traverse? I am fascinated by this topic, too. And have you seen the Acorn program Canal Boat Diaries?
DeleteWell, just now the photo of the Eiffel Tower triggered me to investigate a headline I saw the other day about buying a piece of it. Here’s an article with the details which includes a bit of the history you might not know. https://www.timeout.com/news/want-to-own-a-piece-of-the-eiffel-tower-you-can-now-bid-on-it-at-auction-032626
ReplyDeleteI google a lot of random stuff and try to look at multiple sources to find legit information. I never know where I am going to end up. Obscure playing situations in pickleball to find rules that apply is a frequent topic lately. My challenge now is to remember things I have learned for the weekly trivia night we have been going to with friends.
Thanks for the book win, Leslie Karst! I have emailed Julia my info.
For my late 1800s series, I did deep dives on Quaker dress and speech, police procedure of the time, how people cooked, and weapons. For my contemporary books I've checked into the care and feeding of chickens, what a ninety year old corpse would look like, hurricanes on Cape Cod, tiny houses, raising sheep, and more. Plus all the poisons! Botanical, biological, chemical, all commonly available and deadly in different ways.
ReplyDeleteI also did the Citizen's Police Academy in my small city after we moved here, and asked more questions than anyone else! It included a ridealong, a tasing demonstration, a dropby from the canine officer and his canine, a visit to the county correctional facility and to the local courthouse, and so much more.
DeleteAh, rabbit holes. I suppose most of the academic research I do is the result of rabbit holes. It goes like this: you're working in the archive, looking at notary documents, most likely. You find something on an opera singer, and off you go. The most frustrating part is when you find someone important to you that you didn't know would become important to you, about 20 years too late. No way to go back and redo all your work. Like Brenda, I google everything. I love reading historical fiction because it opens up new worlds to me, and the authors have already gone down those rabbit holes. Deborah has opened up several new worlds to me, including the Crystal Palace. A lot of scholars I know consider a project finished once they've published about it. For me, it's never finished I will never lose interest in any of "my people." Once a rabbit hole, always a rabbit hole. Reading about Jane Austen over the last year has been like going down a very deep rabbit hole. There's always more to learn, apparently. Some of the fiction about Jane Austen I've read over the last year has been both illuminating and rewarding. The authors have truly done their work.
ReplyDeleteI’ve done two police ridealongs, one in a town where novel is based, research on oxen teams as part of late 1800s novel, police & fire academies, became a PI, volunteered in a sheriff office, & attended a writers police academy several times.
ReplyDeleteDoing a deep dive into a subject is fun, but it is so much easier to do now than when we had only the library--which was not an insignificant resource to start with. When I was married to a cop in the early 1970's I thought about writing a novel inspired by Joseph Wambaugh's first, The New Centurions, but from the perspective of a cop's wife. Then in 1984, pregnant and wondering about multiple births, I did a lot of research about twins, the difference between fraternal (my husband, both my parents, cousins) and identical. That would be much easier to do now than it was then.
ReplyDeleteFor my book on sewing for profit I sent out 500 questionnaires, and got 230 back, sifted through them, and chose 100 to interview. And coincidentally built a mini database of potential income that could be derived from each specialty.
As a sewing guru I studied fine fabrics, and started teaching a class on luxury fibers like linen, silk, cashmere, alpaca, hemp, and so on. I still have the massive sample book I used to pass around, with samples of just wools, from fine, see-through wool organza to heavy coating. That followed my needlework phase, when I tried all kinds of different hand crafts, from rya rugmaking to hardinger to Battenburg lace. I still have weird supplies from that era.
As I was planning our house, I gathered several books of floor plans and outer features, and haunted Houzz, Pinterest, and other sites for ideas. The same for the garden. If you are ever looking for a book--on herbs, gardening for cut flowers, straw bale gardens, you name it--let me know.
I have more trouble not researching things, maybe!
Wow, some of those rabbit holes look really fun! I'm writing an Earth Day piece for our church e-newsletter about the Critical Energy Infrastructure (CEI hub) in Portland and the danger associated with storing fuel in a multiple hazard zone. I'm keeping it simple until I get the info piece done and then I might follow more threads so I'm prepared to answer questions. Not really a fun rabbit hole.
ReplyDeleteAre we all just going to gloss over the fact that Hank beat the FBI's lie detector test? I mean, how cool is that. Short of James T. Kirk actually winning the Kobayashi Maru test, that's amazing. And the fact that they are still mad at her over it? SWEET!
ReplyDeleteI don't know that I've ever gone done a research rabbit hole. Yes, I've gone looking for things that maybe took longer than the initial 10 second Google search but not to the point where I had reams of data, books and hours lost for something that ended up as one line in an article or anything.
I'm pretty sure I've wasted far more time playing Candy Crush, and there's no way to make that sexy enough to put into a story.
Although, I wouldn't mind writing a series that started each title with "Murder at the...." and then have it filled out with a sports hall of fame. Though I'm sure none of them would appreciate me having a murder occur on their hallowed grounds. But for me, that would be as cool as Jenn's trip to the top of the Eiffel tower. I mean, Murder at the Pro Football Hall of Fame? How would that not be fun? Well, the NFL would probably block me from using any real trademarks of theirs because none of their people would ever commit murder...right? :D
ReplyDeleteHank, you MUST write a book about your experiences working as a reporter!!