The awesome co-hosts for the November 6 posting of the IWSG are Sadira Stone,Patricia Josephine,Lisa Buie-Collard,Erika Beebe, and C. Lee McKenzie!

When I first started writing novels, they were thrillers. Somebody’s dead, somebody did it, and somebody’s going to be next, if somebody else doesn’t stop the killer. Back then, the research was probably creepier than what I’m doing, now.

So… what about those “special” knots the killer uses to tie up his victims? Well, it turns out there’s a reference book for knots.

And how to build a fake cell-phone tower you can keep in your briefcase? Gotcha. (Everybody wave ‘hi’ to my new FBI observers, James and Mark.)

And one of my protagonists had a direct liquid-cooled computer. Damn, I loved that thing. I put a wave machine in it, just for a little added pizzazz. Lights, shadows… it was a trippy little device.

Someday, I’d love to have the money to do build some of those things in real life. Uhm… Anybody have a spare 20 grand lying around?

Now that I’m doing Science Fiction and Fantasy, the research can be even more out there. For the last book, it was firestorms. And an assortment of medical things. (Oooh, hydrostatic skeleton! Now, how’s that going to work into the book?)

The current research is more international relations than anything I’ve done before. It’s more depth, but probably not as weird as some of the other things that’ve come up.

There also seems to be a lot of hiking and camping related stuff this time around. Because, once again, my characters are going to wind up in a tent. On the bright side… this time, they planned it that way.