Yes, it’s the first Wednesday in May, and that means it’s IWSG day.
The co-hosts for the May posting of the IWSG are; Nancy Gideon, Tamara Narayan, Liesbet @ Roaming About, Michelle Wallace, and Feather Stone!. Do stop by and visit their blogs to say hi.
The IWSG was founded by Alex J Cavanaugh, where writers can blog about their hopes, dreams and fears. If you want to join this merry band of writers Click here to add your name to the list.
I didn’t have a hope of posting in April, I was just about treading water through the Easter holidays. (Riding the wave, but pleease don’t ask me to think about anything!)
Then I got back from a girl’s weekend in Bucharest at 1am this morning, so please ignore the matchsticks propping up my eyelids, while I tell you about the weird places that research can take you.
There was the time I wanted to work out what the elapsed time difference might be if someone travelled between two points in space by FTL (Faster than light travel – but you knew that, didn’t you?), versus if they travelled at ‘normal’ speed.
After several websites, scribbled calculations, accidentally downloading a virus (well, no-one does that on purpose, do they?) and my head threatening to explode, it dawned on me that I’d been reading sci-fi for years without bothering to check up on anyone else’s specifications. What was good enough for McCaffrey and Heinlein ought to be good enough for me too.
(And nobody has ever picked me up on it either).
Similarly I tried to look up the max warp speed recently, and found such truly geeky sites that even I was scared off. (I think I just used ‘faster’ instead).
And then, for Quiet Neighbours I wanted to check how soon headstones could be erected on graves. (At least six months). I stumbled across a discussion thread on ownership of grave plots and how often through remarriages and wills, people can wind up not being allowed to be buried in their family plot, or to look after their parent’s graves, whilst ownership ends up with someone completely unrelated.
So, research; – tread carefully, you never know where you might end up!
Books should be read...
Angela Wooldridge 
I’ve never verified anything I’ve read in fiction. When it comes to writing fiction, I think we should worry about experts calling us out for screwing up the facts. I suppose the fall out would be losing our readership one reader at a time.
Anna from elements of emaginette
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I never verify anything either. If makes sense and reasonable for the story world I don’t care as long as I get a good story that takes me away to some place else. Great post.
‘ Juneta @ Writer’s Gambit
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There is nothing quite like death and a will to re-ignite a war with the living. Buried hatchets and grievances raise themselves like a crazy character in a Stephen King novel., For a real eye opener, hit probate court on a busy day.
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When I was visiting my dad’s town where he grew up, we drove near the cemetery where he has a plot for him and my mom. Just the thought of it gave me the shivers.
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I write science fiction and know that readers of that genre often verify. Fortunately, I like research though i often fall down a rabbit hole and don’t emerge for hours…days.
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Hope you’ve had a chance to catch up on sleep.
My last book required faster than light travel. I did calculate how far they could go in X amount of time and the names of the measurements, but I didn’t bother with the how.
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