X-Rated Research

I am thrilled to have a guest post today on Joe Konrath’s blog, A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing.  Joe has been blogging about writing and publishing for years.  He is also the author of the bestselling Jack Daniels series of thrillers.  My guest post, titled X-Rated Research, is about the importance of research and the role it played in my novel HARDCORE.

Here is an excerpt:

I know, it’s like a bad joke:  You wrote a book about porn?  I bet you did a lot of research!  Well, in my case, that’s true.  I knew I wanted the story to feel authentic, to expose the reader to an unfamiliar milieu, and, like the novels mentioned above, to make the reader feel like the book expanded his or her knowledge.  I spent months consuming nonfiction books, industry newsletters, insider blogs, interviews, documentaries, behind the scenes footage, and other resources.  Was some of this research fun?  Of course.  If you’re writing about a subject that interests you, the research should not be a chore.

And in my experience, the research was critical.  Knowing the real life problems and concerns of people in the industry enabled me to craft believable characters and realistic settings.  It opened my mind to plot twists that otherwise would not have occurred to me.  It helped me to avoid stupid mistakes that might have broken a knowledgeable reader’s suspension of disbelief.  Research impacted just about every aspect of the book, and made it better.

Read the whole blog post here.