Posts Tagged ‘research’
What To Do With The X In The Corner
Do you search the web for bits of information? I’m constantly doing it for work. Take today. One of my characters had too much to drink last night and woke up with a hangover. What to do? I’ve never been hungover myself. I’ve been tipsy, and know what that’s like, like I’m not in full…
Read MoreI’m incubating …
Incubating. What does that mean, someone recently asked. This person had first asked if I was taking a break, now that my new book is finished and in production. Lord, no, I said. Writing is what I do. It’s what I think about when I’m up the creek without a paddle – e.g., in the…
Read MoreWhen books mirror life
I have a childhood friend, living far away now, who swears she knows what’s going on in my life from my newest book. She is certainly right where Blueprints is concerned. During the early months of the writing, in real life I was gutting and redoing the bathroom off my bedroom – totally fitting when…
Read MoreMockingbirds
Just finished my next book! I’ve been working on this baby for more than a year, and that doesn’t count the months before I started the actual writing, when I focused on research. This book – no title yet – demanded a lot of research. I had to learn about the tools a carpenter would…
Read MoreWhere SWEET SALT AIR came from
Most of my books are inspired by things I read about in the newspaper. The inspiration for Sweet Salt Air was much more personal. I have three sons, all of whom have recently had children, and when each of those babies was born, its umbilical cord blood was harvested, frozen, and stored. The premise is…
Read MoreNaming the characters in my next book
You’ve heard of Dennis Lehane, right? Since he’s a home town boy, my local press is all over him. So I wasn’t surprised to hear tv reports that his dog, Tessa (yup, that’s her pictured above), had disappeared on Christmas Eve and that he was offering to name a character in his next book after…
Read MoreHow to research a novel
In theory, since a novel is make-believe, the idea of doing research is oxymoronic. Isn’t it? No. I don’t think so either. I’ve always done research. Part of the appeal of my books is that readers buy into the story, so it has to be real. It used to be that real came from the…
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