Friday 15 April 2016

Randomness Friday



April Kelley and I are starting something different, instead of blog swapping we will be answering questions along with sharing bits of our research into 2nd BonyDee Press challenge; click name for rules

Please, after reading below, go and check out April’s Post

Research: When, How, Why

In fairness I’m not sure what this question means either. It’s why I’ve not got a true question just a rambling of words that all match up.

So research.

In all honesty I generally don’t research anything. I haven’t had much that needs research to have to research… did that make sense? No. yeah well it’s true. A lot of my books are completely made up world or the ‘research’ is about what I’ve read in my life or seen.

There’s only been two times I’ve gone ‘researching’ the first was when I was writing the Moonlit Wolves series. I set it in a setting that was so close to me, and I wanted to actually see the place (wasn’t the best thing I did, and yet…it helped greatly).

Anyway, researching a place, this can be tricky or easy. For me easy as it’s about an hour, hour and a half away from where I live and so one Sunday avo we decided to take a family car trip. It’s something the partner and I use to do when we were dating, but hadn’t really since having the kids. Anyway. We decided to go and have a look and, yeah, I got some good thoughts on what the area really looks like even if I’ve taken some liberties.

The other one I researched was Love Without Knowing It, which deals with prostate cancer. I went onto the Movember site; I read all the medical facts about it. Then the stories. While researching the facts I went into other links and looked up words of things that I didn’t know which led me to learn a lot and helped me write the story. learnt things I didn’t know, and though many people don’t seem to know that much about prostate cancer (which was actually the thing that surprised me most), I had heard and I did know a bit. So it was interesting to learn more.

I also made sure I kept the links and went back to the stories over and over as I wrote the book and I think that helped flavour the story even though he was much younger.

To round this all up, I don’t really have a problem with research but I don’t really like doing it either. I tend to…get bored easily. I know with this new series, research is needed, big time, and I also know that I’ll end up doing all the research first, for all the books, before I even start writing. or at least enough that all I might need is fact checking when I get right down to writing it. as you have to let the story flow. You can’t predict everything.

SHAMELESS PROMOTING