I think I last wrote about research back when I was just beginning to work on Unholy Alliance. But I wouldn't want you to think that was the last time I went hunting the wonderful details that can make a fictional world real. Here are a few places I've visited in the past couple of weeks (not counting Chicago where I was visiting family over Thanksgiving!) I'll leave you to guess what mayhem I've conjured from them...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coppice (A lot is written about the flaws of Wikipedia - not entirely correct info, amateurish, incomplete, unreliable - but it is a great jumping off point and often leads to other links.)
http://www.hobbithouseinc.com/personal/woodpics/#letterI
http://www.cidpusa.org/blood_letting.htm
http://www.medicalantiques.com/medical/Scarifications_and_Bleeder_Medical_Antiques.htm
http://www.naturesongs.com/birds.html
http://babelfish.yahoo.com/
http://www.archives.nd.edu/cgi-bin/lookdown.pl
http://paulcarlisle.net/mooncalendar/
Complete Mediterranean Wildlife Photoguide (Sterry)
English Through the Ages (Brohaugh)
And, as always, my treasured Roget - not an imitation thesaurus or word finder or synonym finder, but the real Roget's Thesaurus, where you can look up words by their semantics and find that word that's on the tip of your tongue but just won't come.
Enjoy!
And here are two more I just had to add
http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art7783.asp
and
http://smallfarms.typepad.com/small_farms/2006/04/freerange_pigs_.html Who can resist an article called Free Range Pigs?
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Treasure Hunts
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3 comments:
Can't imagine what you're up to :-)
I too do my share of reserching when writing, but I'm usually disappointed with the Net - although I suspect this is because I'm not a very good searcher (you found such incredible information, instead!). I usually prefer books :-)
Sarah
I thik it depends on what you're looking for. If you want original source material, which is very important, or "da in the life of" kind of background info, the net is not the right place. These things that I'm looking for tend to be "detail" information - tidbits that generate two adjectives or a sentence. They inject "feel" or help me describe something more accurately.
I have my books, too. I would have a hard time replacing my Mediterranean wildlife book with internet info - just because I need to browse a lot of info to pick out what I need. The same with clothing - I've had a hard time finding good clothing info on the internet. I end up with almost entirely Society for Creative Anachronism sites, which are fine for their purpose, but not for mine.
Justa wanted to say: MERRY CHRISTMAS to everyone reading :-)
Sarah
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