Sometimes you find the prize when you’re not looking for it.

John and I were traveling the backroads of eastern North Carolina recently as I researched the setting for my work-in-progress, The Lies We Told. We stopped for an ice cream cone at an out-of-the-way restaurant, and we sat on the restaurant’s tiny porch, licking our yummy cones and chatting about my book. On the bench across from us, an elderly couple nibbled their own cones. Here is where I change a few details, because this is a true story and I don’t want this couple to be recognizable.

I wanted to talk to them, because . . . well, because I nearly always want to talk to strangers. They were dressed in their Sunday best, sitting about two feet from one another, and I wanted to know their story. So I said something profound, like, “Mm. Isn’t this good ice cream?” That was all it took. The woman never made eye contact with me, but I believe the man had been waiting for an invitation.

“We come here mos’ ever Sunday since we was kids,” he said. “They serve up the best fried green ‘maters you ever et.”

I listened to him talk–paying attention to the words he used, the cadence, the music in his voice–with fascination, wishing I could record him. His was the voice I’d been trying to capture for a few of my characters. I felt so lucky to have stumbled across him. 

I asked him questions to keep him talking. He owned a small store not far from where we sat. It was known far and wide as the place to buy a jar of Duke’s mayonnaise or a tin of chewing tobacco. One of the Miss North Carolinas used to toddle around the store when she was a child. And one time, a man rode his horse into the store, swept a female clerk onto the beast’s back, and proposed to her right there. Best of all, the old man told me, the store had a broad front porch and it was the place you’d go to sit and visit with your neighbors. He’d owned it since he was twenty-three. He was now seventy-six, and two months earlier, his store–and its history–had burned to the ground.

He began to cry. Tears ran down his cheeks and his voice cracked over the words, but he continued talking. I knew he wanted me to understand what his store had meant to him. It had been more than just a store; it was his heart and soul, the place where he’d been gathering his neighbors close to him for more than fifty years. Tears came to my own eyes as I listened to him. I stood up and crossed the porch to hug him, feeling helpless, wishing I could make things right for him again.

My heart ached as John and I pulled out of the parking lot and onto the road. I thought about the gift the man had given me by sharing his story. Maybe I gave him one back by listening. I hope so. His wife hadn’t looked at him once while he talked, but who knows what her story is? I think of her husband often, and I know he’ll stay with me for a long, long time, because the music of his voice is in the pages of my book.   

Dang, Shelties are cute, aren’t they? My two furry babies, who are sitting next to me on the sofa as I type this, certainly think so. 

But to the topic of this post. I love research. My favorite teacher in high school, Mrs. Westphal (who seemed about 100 years old to me, but was probably about 60), taught me how exciting it could be to write a  research paper, and it was one of the most valuable things I ever learned.  I still find research to be fun and seductive. Research seductive? Yes indeed! It can suck me in and not let go, which can be a problem when I have a short time in which to write a book. It’s always hard to know when to stop researching and start writing.

In Secrets She Left Behind (and its prequel, Before the Storm), the bulk of my research went into the setting of Topsail Island, which of course, necessitated several grueling trips to the beach. Haha. Second only to the setting, though, was the research I did on missing persons. That took two major forms: I spoke with Kelly Jolkowski, founder of Project Jason, as well as two members of one of the Topsail Island police departments. Kelly, whose own son, Jason, has been missing for 8 long years, helped me understand not only how the search for a person would proceed but also what the family and friends would be going through emotionally as well as how they could help the authorities in the search. Kelly is all about educating and supporting the families of the missing, and she’s an amazing advocate. The police officers gave me the rundown on what would happen from a legal and procedural perspective when my character, Sara, turns up missing. I also needed to know how authorities would deal with Sara’s son, Keith, since he is only 17 when she disappears.  

For my current work-in-progress, The Lies We Told, I spent hours talking and emailing with an EMS medic, Cass Topinka, about how she would treat a couple of medical emergencies. She gave me great details (as well as some necessary information on a stuck ambulance siren!). What I love most is that she told me how it feels to be the person trying to save a life. Speaking of details, though, it’s important for me to use them sparingly. My readers don’t want or need to know how many milligrams of a particular drug a patient would receive. They just need enough detail to make the scene feel real, because what’s really important is the emotional response of my characters to what’s happening. I often wonder if the people who help me with my research feel let down that our hours of conversation are reduced to a couple of sentences in the book. Those hours were invaluable though. They helped me see the scene in my mind and figure out what details would make it feel real.

My characters In Lies are doctors volunteering in an evacuation shelter after a hurricane, and I stumbled across Dr. Hemant Vankawala online. Dr. Vankawala was part of a disaster team after Hurricane Katrina and he has been so generous in telling me about his experiences in the airport in New Orleans, which was turned into an evacuation center. (an aside: Dr. V told me that, during those rare moments he was able to sleep, he slept on the baggage carousel. So when I toured the airport in Wilmington, NC, where my story is set, I wanted to see the carousels where my characters would be sleeping. I’d already written several scenes that included those uncomfortable beds. Imgine my surprise when I discovered the carousels in Wilmington are the steeply slanted variety! Really messed up my scenes. I found another place in the airport to bed down my characters. This is a good reason to view the setting firsthand whenever possible!). Dr. Vankawala told me everything, from how the patients were triaged, to the caloric content of MREs. Plus he read a scene for me. I think he’s the kind of guy who goes over and above the call of duty, and he clearly loves his work.

I’m so grateful to the people who generously help me make a work of fiction feel more real for my readers. That’s why I write looong acknowlegements in most of my books–I want to include everyone who helps me.

Especially Mrs. Westphal.  

I was surfing the web today (okay, I was reading political stuff. I’m addicted), when I saw a picture of two men reading a book. The cover of the book was familiar, and I zoomed in to see that they were reading one of the best friends a novelist could own: Where There is No Doctor. It’s a great book for anyone, actually.

Around 1990, I was working on my second novel, then titled Canopy. Definitely not a super title, but so much better than the one the publisher forced on me, Lovers and Strangers, which had nothing whatsoever to do with the story. Canopy/Lovers and Strangers was about a group of primatologists and their significant others who get stranded in the Amazon when their guide disappears. I can’t begin to describe all the research I put into this book! I read everything I could find on the Amazon and on the little monkeys in my story. I went way overboard as I learned what research is important and what should simply be discarded (the dung beetles, for example). But as I was doing my research, I stumbled across this gem of a book.

Where There is No Doctor was published in the seventies (revised many times by now)  for health workers, teachers, and just plain folk living primarily in Third World Countries. It’s exactly what it says it is–information for the diagnosis and treatment of a variety of injuries and illnesses that occur where there is no doctor. I relied on it heavily as I made my characters suffer in the Amazon, and have turned to it with other characters’ maladies throughout the years.  I’m not ashamed to admit that I turned to it with my own infirmities as well (before Google made life a lot easier.) I didn’t need to worry much about blood flukes or tapeworm, it’s true, but the information on treating infected wounds or toothaches was invaluable.

It may be that the Internet has, for those of us living and writing in a developed country, made this book obsolete, but I’d like to think not. It’s had a permanent place on my bookshelf for eighteen years, and I think I’m going to keep it there.