One of the things I’m enjoying as a writer is how I frequently get surprised by my need to research something. As a reader, I’m familiar with being taken to “whole new worlds,” but it happens often when I write as well.
For example, right now I need to know a few things about Prague and a little town called Osinalice in the Czech Republic. I didn’t know in advance that I’d need to do this; Prague wasn’t in my outline for Hammered, I assure you, but now it’s in the book, just a wee bit, and in subsequent books (may there be many), Prague will figure more prominently.
Thank goodness for the Internet(s). But dang it, now that I’ve looked at Prague a bit, I want to go there. For now I guess I’ll have to live vicariously through my characters.
Perhaps the most research I’ve had to do to date—aside from years of soaking up mythology from this source or that—is on the nature of iron and its use (or misuse) in fantasy as a foil for magic. The most enjoyable research has been discovering which Irish pub in Arizona has the best fish and chips. (The answer: Rúla Búla.) The coolest experience so far has been to present a real-life detective with a death scene in Hexed and ask her how she’d approach it as a case. She came up with questions/things to investigate I didn’t even consider, which illustrated to me how much I would suck at being an evil genius…and also why I’d be awful at writing mysteries.
Prague is my whole new world for today. If anyone’s been there and knows where the spooky parts are, give me a holler.
