Hey There and Happy Sunday! For those of you who don’t know, I am currently working on my next novel. It’s a trilogy called The Broken Halo Series. I am working on Book 1 “The Awakening” and so far, it’s going very well. This is my first book series and I am nervous about it but happy at the same time. I have a good feeling about this story and have felt this way since I began. This is the first novel I have written in recent years that didn’t make me want to give up on it so that’s a very good sign. One of the things that I enjoy about starting a new novel is the research. But the one thing that can take all of the fun out of it is the time it takes to gather all the information that’s needed. Somehow, I managed to develop my own way of doing this and I want to share it with you because it has cut my research time down considerably.

When I first began writing novels, I didn’t do any research at all; but I was new to it and didn’t really know how important it was. And when I first began doing research it seemed to take days and I found myself getting lost in endless amounts of information. Some I needed and some I didn’t, and it took away some of my motivation for writing the novel because I had to wait until I finished doing my research before, I could begin. By that time, I had lost some of my excitement for the story. After doing this with my first couple of novels, I decided that I was going to save myself all of this time researching when I could be writing the book.

With my last novel Evil Has No Color, I began writing the novel first and whenever I had to write about something that I didn’t have any knowledge of, then I would stop and research the topic. It allowed me to stay focused on the topic I needed to know more about such as a certain time period, or the kind of cars people drove back then, the way people dressed, the music people listened to, etc. Sometimes I used Evernote to store all of my research and keep it organized but do you know how often I actually went back to view that information and use it? Zero. I get so lost in a story that I forget all about those findings that I researched. It was better for me to do the research as I went along because that way, I would remember to actually use the information. This method may not work for everyone since all writers have their own way of doing things, but this is what works best for me. This also limits the amount of information you will have cluttering up your hard drive which could amount to a lot, especially if you are one of those people who absolutely loves doing research.

I must admit, you can learn a lot about many different things doing research which is one of its great advantages so even though it seems boring at times or time-consuming, please however you desire to do your research…do it. Your novel will undoubtedly have things in it that you may not have all the facts about, and accuracy is essential in writing a good novel. One of the worst things that readers hate to find in a good book is information that’s not accurate. It’s right up there with typos and bad grammar and can ruin the joy of reading the book altogether.

I’ll keep you posted on how the new novel series is coming. Have a great week everyone.

Until next time…