As an author, you don’t have to be someone who writes historical books to find yourself hip deep in research. So, when Read Around the Rainbow decided to pick Weird Internet Research as this month’s topic, I was totally on board.

I’ve written stories in a rather wide range of subjects. From romance in my hometown and art crime mysteries, to supernatural and paranormal. And that has left me with a very weird internet search history.

Sketchy might be a better description.

My internet searches are so bad at times, that I’ve gotten into the habit of yelling out to my husband things like… I’m researching poisons that can be mistaken as a heart attack and just a heads up, I’m reading about ways to dispose of a body. That way, if he ever decides to look at my search history, he won’t think I’m planning to off him.

That is rule one for How Not to Go to Jail. Rule two is not to commit a crime. Lesson over! LOL

When you first start, no matter how big a planner you are, I don’t think you ever truly know where a story is going to take you. So often, a story has a mind of its own. And then, you realize there is something—some odd, obscure, something—that you suddenly must know. Because accuracy is key! At least in your mind.

And then, suddenly you know how to escape from duck tape or make a homemade silencer.

A while back—it feels like a million years ago now—Ofelia Gränd (aka Holly Day) and I worked on a number of collaborations. We released Buried Desires in 2015, Buried Desires 2 in 2016, and—what ended up being our last installment—Buried Desires 3 (with author Neptune Flowers) in 2018. It was my brainchild, and originally started out to be a double feature of paranormal romance, but Ofelia went horror/darker humor with it, and I went more…if 1930s Gothic horror and slapstick had a baby.

Like I said, no matter how big a planner you are! LOL And you can still see remnants of those collaborations in the virtual office we keep, and spend time in most every day, with quick reference to things like, Useful stuff when you have a dead body.

Useful stuff when you have a dead body has come in handy many times!

The Buried Desires collections are no longer available, though the individual stores are, but if you don’t mind a little horror, I can’t recommend Ofelia’s Deadly Sugar and The Snowflake enough. The woman is brilliant!

Besides a lot of research on body decomposition, art history, art forgery methods, and learning how to pick a lock, I’ve also read a lot about poison. I mean, an alarming amount. And quite honestly, I just find it fascinating!

As Findley said in Findley Black and the Ghosts of Printer’s Devil, …if I was going to off someone, I’d use poison too. There’s more of a charm to it.

There really is!

Make sure to check the other Read Around the Rainbow posts today to find out about some of the internet research rabbit holes everyone else has fallen down. It’s sure to be a good time!