Online Research...aka Chicken Feet & Black Holes
Docter's House of Books & Meanderings June 27, 2025
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Good morning, my Favorite VIP Readers!
Online research. It’s a wondrous, frightening, empowering, and enervating thing. All authors, at one time or another, have to dip their toes into that black hole to find the information they need to flesh out their characters and stories. For those who never go anywhere—cough, cough—the internet is our vehicle of choice. Necessity?
The old card catalogues and encyclopedias are so “last year.” Last century? Whatever!
If you have read any of my books, I can point to specific things I had to learn to write them. Breeding canaries…Anthony & Cleopatra in SATIN PLEASURES. Large dog breeds…the Mastiff, Buckwheat, in KILLING SECRETS. Gangs and gang violence…COP ON HER DOORSTEP. Stalking…in the next Thorne’s Thorns release, SHADOW PURSUIT. Chocolatiers…in the next True Love in Uniform release, COP IN THE CANDY SHOPPE. The list goes on and on. The point is that I’ve jumped down the black hole with every book I’ve written.
The internet is both a blessing and a curse. You can find out anything you want with a couple of keystrokes. Well, maybe not just a couple. The curse is that you can jump in and never come out the other side. Some writers can hit a site or two and get everything they want. Every time.
Me? Not so much.
It takes time to figure out exactly what I want and need to know, so I know where to look for it. I can stumble around the internet as well as the next clueless girl! I often find what I want and then discover it wasn’t exactly what I wanted for the character after all. I get pulled down another hole and another and…well, you get the picture.
I can spend hours researching. It’s not entirely a curse, though. I usually find something much better whenever I’ve been pulled off, which makes my characters more believable. More sympathetic. More real.
So what does this have to do with chicken feet? Since we started raising them—chickens, not feet—my most recent “deep dive” research projects have been about keeping our flock happy and healthy. We’ve been experiencing some serious Heat Indexes the past few weeks, and I’ve been cooking…with air conditioning. It got me to thinking about KFC. That won’t do! Since we don’t want deep-fried chickens, I went into research mode. This is what I posted on Facebook on Tuesday:
It only took me an hour, well, closer to two once I got sidetracked by clickbait and learning about solar systems, to get what I needed. I should have been writing.
As I said when I started this meandering, online research is a blessing…and a curse. I wonder what I’ll learn tomorrow when I look up rose variations in the Colorado Rockies…for SHADOW PURSUIT. If I don’t return, you’ll know where my path lies. Don’t come after me. It’s a trap!
This Week’s Killer Book Bench & Killer Fixin’s Blogs
Monday: #Polyamory #Romance TAMING THEIR DARKSTARR, Agents of STARR Military Romance by M.A. Destiny https://wp.me/p4pimt-9Rc
Wednesday: #Domestic #Thriller THE FINAL EPISODE by Lori Roy https://wp.me/p4pimt-9QZ
Friday Fixin’s: #Black #African #American #Romance The Divorcétante, The Divatantes Book 1 by Mia Heintzelman #Recipe VANILLA FRENCH BEIGNETS https://wp.me/p4pimt-9R5
One last word…
Thanks for your continued support. If you would like to ask a question about me or my writing, please feel free to email me at kldocter@yahoo.com. If you are curious about something, perhaps others here are too. I’m an open book!
See you next Friday.
Happy Reading!
Karen
That was a fun read.....the black hole thingy oh so true!
Maybe, I need an hourglass.