Category: Blog

I think I’ve confessed here before that one thing I love about writing is doing the background research.

Sometimes my reason for enjoying the research is obvious, such as the many times I’ve–tragically, I know–found myself needing to know something about men’s underwear. No, seriously. My husband’s a confirmed boxer-briefs-from-Target kind of guy, so if I want my guys to wear anything more exotic than that, I can’t rely on Hubby as an information resource. I’ve visited the Andrew Christian website enough times that their ads keep appearing on websites I visit. Again, tragic.

But not all my enjoyable research involves nearly-naked men. Sometimes I like the challenge of it. For my novella The Pillar, which will come out in August, I needed to know how much a male slave would have cost in 15th century Bosnia. I never found a definitive answer to that one. But I did find out the cost of a slave in Venice during the same timeframe, and I found out the name of the currency used in Bosnia  then, and I even was able to do a currency conversion to arrive at an approximation that’s close enough, I think.

So now I’m writing a story set in rural Oregon in the 1880s. I’m only about 5000 words in, but here are the things I’ve looked up so far:

• How to load and shoot a shotgun from that era– I’m still searching for good info on this
• What color would a wolf’s eyes glow in lantern light at night?
• What were the most popular boy names in the USA circa 1860?
• Were there possums in Oregon in the 1880s?– I vaguely remember hearing they were brought west during the Great Depression, and it turns out that’s true. So no possums in my story.
• What year did the transcontinental railroad arrive in Portland?– 1883, in case you wondered too.
• How would a horse be attached to a cart it was going to pull?– Because I know zilch about horses or wagons.
• Where was a tony place to live in New York City in this era?– Fifth Avenue
• What would a fairly wealthy young man have for breakfast in Paris in the 1880s?

Sometimes it’s a miracle I get any writing done at all!

Sometimes when I write, I include little details that possibly nobody but me will ever notice. But they make me happy. Sometimes they help me understand a character better, sometimes they tie things together in ways that satisfy my slightly OCD-ish tendencies. Sometimes they just amuse me.

Here are three of them from Motel. Pool.  They’re a little spoilery, so you might want to skip this if you haven’t read the book.

Ready?

Scroll down just a bit….

Okay.

1. Jack in Motel. Pool. is related to Joseph, one of the main characters in Violet’s Present. Joseph was Jack’s uncle. Jack mentions him briefly to Tag at one point.

2. While Jack waits at the Jasper Motel, he thinks he hears a car crash. What he heard was the accident that killed Officer Mike Broderick several years earlier. (Jasper’s a strange place, where things like that can happen–like when Jack daydreams Tag.) Officer Broderick obliquely refers to that accident the first time he meets Tag.

3. About one-third of the way into the book, a character tells us how it’s going to end. But nobody pays any attention.

Did you notice any of these when you were reading?

4. It’s never mentioned in Brute, but when they were young, Lord Meliach had an unrequited crush on Gray. That helps explain his complicated and perhaps conflicted behavior toward Gray years later.

I like it when characters from different stories cross paths.

5. Jeff and Cleve from Venetian Masks make a cameo appearance in Pilgrimage.

6. Of course, Travis and Drew from Speechless meet the Bones guys, Dylan and Chris, in The Gig. And Travis and Drew will also make brief appearances in the third Bones book, Bone Dry. It’s due out this fall.