Down the Research Rabbit Hole

Research is often a necessary component when one writes novels that are not set in the present or recent past.

The fun, educational, and, quite frankly, time-suck problem with that research is that I get pulled into one rabbit hole after another, with trails that go bounding away into areas that have little (or nothing) to do with the novel.

Furthermore, it can take an immense amount of research just to find the information I need simply to make one paragraph (or even one sentence) factually accuate.

But, I think (and hope), such research does add to the storehouse of my general knowlesge, keeps the reader firmly set into the novel's world and, maybe, makes me a tinge smarter too.

Here are some of the topics I researched during my last week-long retreat for the second book in the BryonySeries Limbo series, Call of the Siren:

* How boats look bobbing on a lake in a torrential storm

* Photos of a late nineteenth century newsroom and press room

* New cars in 1914 and their cost when new

* Types of beer produced and sold in Michigan in 1914 and what type of bottle caps were used

* The history of carryout

* The history of motels

* The history of fast food

* Lodgings for travelers at the turn of the twentieth century

* How unmarried couples could legallyl travel together in 1914

* Various floorplans for saltboxes

* World War I

* The Spanish Flu

* Suffragism

* Tourism in the early twentiesh century

* Value of the dollar in the 1920s

* Cost of opening a small restaurant in the 1920s

* Prenatal care and childbirth in 1935

* Early twentieth century breast cancer treatment

* Wakes/funerals in the early twentieth century in the United States