TotM: Research
I still have time! The month isn't over yet! (I, er, was out of town when the Topic of the Month got posted, and it took my brain a little while to wake up and notice that other people were posting about research for a reason.)
So, how far would I go for research?
My answer: I should have gone farther, dammit, but it was raining and I hadn't explicitly asked the guy whether I could climb the ladder, and I had neither the time nor the cardiovascular endurance to go down three-hundred-odd stairs and then back up them again if he said I could stick my head out the trapdoor.
It was a Saturday morning early this month, and I'd been let into the Monument to the Great Fire of London before business hours so I could crawl around its basement chamber for the next Onyx Court book. I hadn't thought to ask the lady from Tower Bridge Authority whether I could also go up past the observation platform; a stupid oversight on my part. But when I mentioned that, the fellow who let me in early promptly handed me a key and told me to close the gate behind me (I think he expected me to be up there longer, i.e. past the opening time, when tourists might start appearing). So I climbed 311 steps to the observation balcony (for the second time that week), wrestled with the gate (which had a very old-fashioned key that didn't want to turn), got it open, closed it behind me, and climbed about thirty steps more, until I was squeezed into the conical room at the top, facing a ladder and a trapdoor above.
And I didn't climb the ladder. Dammit.
I really regret that. Nevermind that it was raining, and I had no idea whether opening that trapdoor would mean soaking the rungs of the ladder I would then have to climb back down. When I got to the bottom, the guy told me he would have let me do it, and if I didn't have a train to catch (and it wasn't three hundred and forty or so steps back up), I would have taken him up on that. As it stands, I'll have to make do with the fact that the relevant scene will probably be written from the pov of the guy standing in the basement, so it's okay that I didn't fully explore the top.
It's okay. Really.
(And if I keep telling myself that, maybe I'll believe it.)
Normally my research, of course, is far more sedate. There's a three-shelf bookcase behind me that's the physical proof of how I write the Onyx Court books, and bibliographies on my site; I spent six years in graduate school, so hitting the library is kind of my first instinct. But I do go to London every year for these novels, to see first-hand some of the sites and objects that date to the appropriate period, which sometimes lands me in such places as the Monument basement, or the Vale of the White Horse, or the roof of Hampton Court Palace.
The best part is, it's all tax-deductible. Kind of sucks to calculate around April, but these are all business expenses, my friends. ^_^ I totally need to write books set in places like, oh, the Caribbean, or Egypt, or all the other destinations I want to visit . . . .
So, how far would I go for research?
My answer: I should have gone farther, dammit, but it was raining and I hadn't explicitly asked the guy whether I could climb the ladder, and I had neither the time nor the cardiovascular endurance to go down three-hundred-odd stairs and then back up them again if he said I could stick my head out the trapdoor.
It was a Saturday morning early this month, and I'd been let into the Monument to the Great Fire of London before business hours so I could crawl around its basement chamber for the next Onyx Court book. I hadn't thought to ask the lady from Tower Bridge Authority whether I could also go up past the observation platform; a stupid oversight on my part. But when I mentioned that, the fellow who let me in early promptly handed me a key and told me to close the gate behind me (I think he expected me to be up there longer, i.e. past the opening time, when tourists might start appearing). So I climbed 311 steps to the observation balcony (for the second time that week), wrestled with the gate (which had a very old-fashioned key that didn't want to turn), got it open, closed it behind me, and climbed about thirty steps more, until I was squeezed into the conical room at the top, facing a ladder and a trapdoor above.
And I didn't climb the ladder. Dammit.
I really regret that. Nevermind that it was raining, and I had no idea whether opening that trapdoor would mean soaking the rungs of the ladder I would then have to climb back down. When I got to the bottom, the guy told me he would have let me do it, and if I didn't have a train to catch (and it wasn't three hundred and forty or so steps back up), I would have taken him up on that. As it stands, I'll have to make do with the fact that the relevant scene will probably be written from the pov of the guy standing in the basement, so it's okay that I didn't fully explore the top.
It's okay. Really.
(And if I keep telling myself that, maybe I'll believe it.)
Normally my research, of course, is far more sedate. There's a three-shelf bookcase behind me that's the physical proof of how I write the Onyx Court books, and bibliographies on my site; I spent six years in graduate school, so hitting the library is kind of my first instinct. But I do go to London every year for these novels, to see first-hand some of the sites and objects that date to the appropriate period, which sometimes lands me in such places as the Monument basement, or the Vale of the White Horse, or the roof of Hampton Court Palace.
The best part is, it's all tax-deductible. Kind of sucks to calculate around April, but these are all business expenses, my friends. ^_^ I totally need to write books set in places like, oh, the Caribbean, or Egypt, or all the other destinations I want to visit . . . .