***Welcome Susan Shay who's taking today to share research on psychics and cowboys! Hey, I write paranormals, and I'm Texan. This is an excellent combination, Ms. Shay. Rodeo's are just about the only live sport I can sit through.  Otherwise, I'm known for reading research books and scrawling notes for wips while my husband spectates.  And I used to ride my friend's barrel horse. Note, those of us who haven't rode a horse well-versed in running the barrels, just clutch the pommel. The horse knows what to do!!! I'm certain you'll enjoy Ms. Shay's approach to research as much as I did. ~Skhye 

The research I did for my book, BLIND SIGHT, was just plain enjoyable. I couldn't get enough of it. (Researchaholics Anonymous, please call me.) The book is set in the Hill Country of Texas, down around Austin. I've been through Austin and visited San Antonio once, but I found the best research source to be my friend and fellow author, Margaret E. Reid.  Meg hails from Austin, so she was able to give me invaluable input for the feel of the countryside.

In BLIND SIGHT, a touch psychic sees through the eyes of a murderer who visits the bookstore where she works. The first thing I did was to go online to find what I could about touch psychics. The Internet is a great place to do research on just about any subject, as long as you're very careful about the websites you visit. Touch psychics was an easy one.

Another way I did research was to watch several movies. I know movies aren't necessarily factual, but I find them to be a great place to observe emotions and reactions. And catch onto the specific dialogue used by any group of people. The best movie I watched was Vibes. Made in 1988, it starred Jeff Goldblum, Cyndi Lauper and Peter Falk. The movie is about several different kinds of psychics, hired to find a lost treasure. Jeff Goldblum is a touch psychic, and really caught my attention in the movie when he helped his girl friend fold her laundry, touched her clean panties and "saw" her having an affair with another man. (It was hilarious, too.) He later touched a key and "saw" the man who used it. In BLIND SIGHT, my heroine, Cassie, picks up a cup and "sees" a dead girl's body, being pushed off a cliff. Later, she touches a chess piece and sees another murder.

Of course, there was other research that was just as difficult. Most of the book is set in an independent bookstore with a coffee shop that serves a chocolate/caramel/coffee concoction, so naturally I had to do my time, hanging around bookstores and drinking something similar. Did I mention BLIND SIGHT was a joy to research? Much of what I wrote about my psychic was part of the world I set up, which came from my mind rather than research. I had Cassie channeling the killer's dreams, which once she thought about it, meant the killer had to live in very close proximity to her.

Cassie tells Keegan how she became a psychic when she was 13 years old. This story came from my childhood. A cousin of mine, running across some flat boulders , slipped on the dusty surface and fell down between them, was knocked out. I started crying hysterically and told my parents, "Roger's gone! He's under a rock." Even at the time, I had no memory of the event after I heard Roger's Tarzan yell. I didn't see him fall, didn't even know where he'd been, but I was able to tell them where he was. Thus my only brush with being psychic. (In the book, Cassie falls, has something wondrous happen to her, and is psychic when she finds her way out.) Throughout the book, Cassie tells Keegan that everyone is a psychic if they'll open up and let themselves be.  (After all, I was!)

All my books aren't quite as easy to research as BLIND SIGHT. I recently finished a novella with a rodeo setting. My heroine is a barrel racer and my hero a bull rider. To get the real lingo, I joined an online loop of barrel racers. They were more than happy to share their expertise with me. Then I found a member of my writers' group who'd barrel raced when she was younger. Again, I went online to learn about saddles used by the women.

I'm a rodeo lover, and saw a barrel racer's horse go down during a race one time, which inspired this story. But memory isn't as good as being able to watch it over and over, so I Youtubed it. It was a great place to see bull riders in slow motion, too. 

I'm currently working on a book set in the Four Corners area of Colorado. While I've visited there many times, it's been several years. So some of my writer friends suggested books to purchase that help with the flora, fauna and feel of the area. But even better than that, when I mentioned this upcoming book in a workshop I gave, I received an email from another writer who'd not only been to that area in the past year, he and his wife had worked on a archeological dig. Just what I needed! So to be very honest, my best avenue when doing research is people. Especially writers. Most I know are very happy to share their knowledge, and if they don't know, they're glad to tell you where to go for whatever you need.

And the cost? Just pay it forward.

http://www.susanshay.net

http://the-twisted-sisters.com

Blind Sight

And don't forget to check out...

To School a Cowboy

***Thanks, Susan! I'm ready to read these tales!!! ~Skhye

***Well, Hywela Lyn came through with her research on Norse myth and Scandinavia for us! ~Skhye

The amazingly talented Skhye was kind enough to ask me back on her wonderful Blog to talk about some of the research I did for my recently released book ‘Children Of The Mist, the sequel to my debut novel ‘Starquest’.  Thanks Skhye.  Well, you see, it’s like this:

When I began writing ‘Starquest’ the only research I thought I would need to do would be in the area of space physics. star drives, and the like.  Niflheim was merely the home planet of two fairly minor characters.  However, they were telepaths and I needed a justification for this ‘mind reading’ ability. 

I’m a great believer in having a ‘rationale’.  I’m not one of those people who think because it’s ‘fantasy’ and there are dragons, the dragons should be there just ‘because it’s fantasy’ (for the record there aren’t any dragons in either book, although I’ve nothing against dragons, in fact I love ‘em).  But - if dragons are in a story, I want to know how they evolved and what their function is, their reason for being.  The same thing applies to telepaths.

So I decided that the planet had originally been colonised by settlers from Earth.  When the early pioneers settled on this new world, at first finding it very inhospitable, cold and  misty, many parts covered in ice and snow for much of the year, they had to have something special to enable them to survive when scattered across the planet.  They renounced the technology of Earth, with all its problems, but how would they deal with life in such a hostile environment with no means to communicate across miles of unsettled territory?  The answer was simple.  The colonists would include individuals who each had some extra sensory ability.  Over time they would develop and increase these skills until telepathy became their usual form of communication and telekinesis was commonplace.  I’m not sure when I first knew that the settlers had called their new planet Nifheim, but as the Norse ‘land of cold and mist, it seemed fitting..  As a teenager I devoured the books of H Rider Haggard, including his Viking saga ‘Eric Brighteyes’ and the romance and  adventure of the Norselands stayed in my imagination.  I decided the settlers would name their settlements and the main features of their planet after the Norse gods, or names derived from places in Scandinavian mythology.   They would also draw on this mythology when naming their descendents.  Thus many of the characters in ‘Children Of The Mist’ have names borrowed from the gods of  Norse legends.  I tried to make the characters fit their names as far as possible, without making it seem too contrived. . (Vidarh, for instance, is named after Vidarh ‘the valiant’.)   None of the myths and legends of Niflheim actually appear in either of my books, but I needed to read as much as I could about them, to ensure the names fitted and to absorb the atmosphere to help me build my imaginary world. These are just a few of the websites I used.

http://www.godchecker.com/pantheon/norse-mythology.php

http://www.niflheim.com/home.htm

http://www.cybersamurai.net/mythology/nordic_gods/N/Niflheim.htm

http://www.northernshamanism.org/nine/niflheim.html  

I wish I could direct you to more sources,  but my research for these two books was somewhat scattered and covered many different books and websites.  I even checked out the Macdonald encyclopedia of horses, just one of my dozens and dozens of horse reference books in my collection) to ensure that my generically engineered ponies fit the general breed specifications for the Fjord (Westlands) pony which to me would be the logical foundation stock for the ponies of Niflheim, who play their own part in the story. 

Thanks so much for having me here Skhye, I’m feel very honoured to have been invited again, and to be among so many great authors featured on your Blog.

If anyone would like to find out more about my books please visit my Blog or my ‘Starquest’ ‘My Space’.

***Thanks, Lyn! I'm the same way about how/why something came to be like dragons! These are excellent resources, espically Godchecker.com. It's one of my favorite places. The voice cracks me up! Thanks so much for sharing. ~Skhye