Part 1

Fact 1: Panthers are not a species but rather leopards (among others) who have the genes for dark pigmentation. If you look closely at the fur of a panther, you can see the characteristic leopard rosettes below it.

Fact 2: Leopards don’t like water but are good swimmers. Jaguars by contrast like the water, even to the extent of living by rivers.

Fact 3: There is some controversy over whether big cats do or don’t purr. After listening to the experts and reading a ton of research material, I decided to take artistic license and go with purring. After all, changelings aren’t exactly like their wild counterparts. They’re human and animal in one. And humans can purr if you stroke them just right 🙂

[Edited to Add] A reader emailed me to say that she had indeed heard big cats purr, so there you go!

Fact 4: The VIP Folder, a.k.a. the Series Bible, refers to the folder I have full of stuff about the Psy/Changeling series. I need this because my world has certain rules that have to be followed, as well as a large cast of characters I need to get right. When I began Visions of Heat, it became obvious that I needed this bible. I kept having to flick through StS to check things.

At the simplest level, the bible involves keeping physical descriptions of the characters. I need to know who has what color hair and eyes, their height and any defining characteristics – for example, Lucas’s facial markings. (Not that I would ever forget those!)

This stops me making goofs or helps me pick them up when I do. For example in Slave to Sensation, Rina’s hair color changed from blonde to brunette, a mistake I picked up during one of the final edits.

However that’s not all I have. I have tree diagrams that show the links between characters, both in terms of blood or in terms of Pack/the PsyNet. And, because timing is important in my world, I also have a timeline with people’s birthdates and other major events. Events change characters and I need to remember each event, each shift, each point of growth.

All this sounds very organized and technical, and to some extent, it is. I need the information easily accessible and simple. But I don’t write the book constantly referring to it. I tend to write my drafts fairly loosely in terms of internal consistency, checking only major factors that might affect the plot. It’s during the later edits that I go through and make sure the tiny details are right.

The bible is by no means complete, it’s a work in progress – for example, when I write Hawke’s story, I’m going to have to go through every book before his and note the passages where he’s mentioned, because he’s such a strong presence throughout the series – but it’s very, very useful. I would recommend doing the extra work to any author writing a series. It will save you time a thousand times over. You might still make mistakes (we’re only human after all) but a comprehensive bible helps lower the chances of that happening.

Part II

Readers often ask me what kind of research I do. I thought it might be fun to share a few pieces of the research I did for Stroke of Enticement, my novella in “The Magical Christmas Cat” because I ended up with some fun questions to answer.

Because SoE is a novella, it didn’t require much research in comparison to a full-length book, but it’s funny the things that come up. Here are some things I had to check before the final draft.

Q: What is a male swan called?

A: A cob. I actually didn’t end up using this info, but it’s gone into the research file (a.k.a. my brain) for later retrieval.

Q: What do you call a male deer?

A: Buck, bull or stag. Now you know.

Q: I know there are giant boulders in Yosemite. I saw them. But how did they get there (I didn’t need this info, but I just found it interesting.)

A: These are called “glacial erratic boulders” and as the name suggests, they were carried to their location by slow moving glaciers.

Little questions like this come up all the time in manuscripts. Thank goodness for the Internet, libraries and the beautiful, wonderful people who answer my questions – sometimes when they don’t know me at all!