[Writer Post] Greetings From Buffalo NY

Many apologies for dropping off the face of the earth this week. If you follow my social media, you know I’ve been participating in a conference for my Day Job in New York State. I have met so many awesome people and animals. I’ve seen some amazing scenery. Done a lot. Seen a lot. Totally ready to come home. This experience has been incredible, but my Inner Introvert is screaming to be my OUTER Introvert. Totally looking forward to my back wall cube next week.

So, yeah, there’s been no pen review – though I’m bringing home more souvenir and promo pens and a couple of notebooks. There has been a ton of meeting people and an endless supply of food. Buffalo has treated us very, very well. This is going to be this week’s writing post, because what I have learned is amazing details for whatever Doomsday or thriller (romantic or otherwise) book I finally decide to write.

Seriously, that’s been one of the most amazing parts of this Day Job is all the STUFF there is to learn that can benefit me as a fiction writer – no matter what time frame I want to write in. Because even if I project this into a dystopian future or just a future, these are details that are just going to add depth and color and out and out coolness. And those type of details MATTER. They matter SO MUCH. Not to mention those experts you’re trying to portray? Take a tiny step in their shoes – put on the gear (or even half) for just a minute, and I guarantee your respect for them will rise exponentially. See me in a EOD bomb suit jacket? Yeah, that weighed between 20 and 40 pounds and was just HALF THE SUIT. The panel on the sleeve that are some kind of controls? I couldn’t even reach it! And these guys dismantle BOMBS in this suit. SO MUCH RESPECT. I mean I don’t have a whole lot of dexterity to begin with, but add this suit? DUDE.

Writing something with mounted police? Some squads use Quarter Horses that are cutting horses. BRILLIANT! These are smaller, quicker, and if a suspect runs into a crowd? Why not use a smaller, more nimble horse trained to separate cows from a herd. Same concept, different herd. Never thought of it until I met a PD Quarter Horse. Then it seemed incredibly obvious.

It’s a detail. And details matter. They matter so much. These details can adapted to near future or far future or historical – even alien. We’ve all heard the “write what you know” adage, but we can’t all be aliens or jump to the future, but we can take what we know and project. Just like we can take things from history and project it to the future – because as much as we don’t want it to, history repeats.

So take the time to at least attempt accuracy in your details. Develop the relationships (if you can) with some of those experts to ask questions when you’re stuck. And though I can (and do) talk a mile a minute – especially when it comes to my Day Job with the stuff I can (and need to) learn, I really try to do the “Listen twice as much as you talk”.

So right now, there’s so much stuff swirling in my head – and literature I’m bringing home that can be useful research in the future — and OH SO MANY pictures.

Tags: details, getting it right, Niagara Falls, Pierce-Arrow, research, Writing