Research Can Take You All Over the World and Still Be Affordable

Continuing on my theme of researching, it is important to have a wide variety of people in your critique group. Part of my story takes place in a nursing home as my main character is 105. It is where he lives. He has dementia and believes it is the 1980s. In my first draft, I had the nursing staff act a certain way toward him that makes it easier for them to take care of him. A member of my critique group, a registered nurse, told me if the nursing staff acted this way, they would be fired. She also said my character would probably be in a mental facility, not a nursing home. She did provide me a beautiful alternative, which is home care. The rules are different for home nursing care as opposed to institutional care. In my revised draft, I made the change where my main character can receive home care with the nursing staff acting in a certain way.

In another scene, I have my main character, in a flashback, drinking whiskey straight from the bottle. In order to set the mood, I wrote sunlight pierced the bottle and the dark brown liquid swirled as he picked up the bottle. When that scene was reviewed, I learned dark brown whiskey is actually rancid whiskey and undrinkable. This bit of research included purchasing a 1950s style, brown glass whiskey bottle from Etsy and borrowing a co-worker’s current whiskey bottle. I poured his whiskey into my old bottle and set it in the sunlight. Brown whiskey in a brown glass bottle is clear when the sunlight pierces it.

My third scene to research took a while, even though it involves only one question. Part of my story takes place in Amsterdam in the 1940s after World War II. I used Google Maps to zoom in on the city to see where things were. The Mata Hari restaurant popped up very close to a street intersection I use in my story. Earlier in my story, I used Mata Hari as a Halloween costume and believe the restaurant would be a perfect tie-in. I just had to know was it there in the 1940s. To obtain this answer, I went to Facebook and the Mata Hari restaurant page where I posted my question. About four months later I received my response. The restaurant is a recent addition to the Amsterdam. I had to take it out of my story.

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What I’m Reading – Many readers I know like to inquire what their favorite author is reading. At the end of each blog post, I’ll let you know what I’m reading. I may not be a published author yet, but I hope my choice of reading material inspires you to read. I’m still reading Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes. According to my Kindle, I’ve made it through 85% of this tome and it is entertaining.