Meredith Mansfield, Author

As a fantasist, this isn’t something I deal with all the time. Usually, I get to take bits and pieces from all over and fit them together in new and interesting ways, glued together with a little imagination. That’s how my world-building usually works.

I did a bit of research on my very first (now shelved) novel, because the protagonist was a blacksmith. I needed to know at least enough about blacksmithing to not make any really obvious mistakes, like setting the forge out in the open. (Always at least partially enclosed so the smith can see the color of the heated iron he’s working on.)

Now, however, I have two projects on which I need to do a bit of research. One is a current project and the other is a future project.

BLOOD IS THICKER is the sequel to BLOOD WILL TELL. As a paranormal romance/urban fantasy, it’s mostly set in either a world I created out of whole cloth or the world I actually inhabit. However, there’s one element in this story that’s going to force me to do a bit of research into, of all things, geology. That’s because the central conflict of this story revolves around someone’s attempt to import geothermal energy technology to Chimeria without proper safeguards. It’s endangering something very near and dear to the protagonists’ hearts and they have to find a way to fix the problem. Obviously, I’m going to have to know enough about geothermal energy to not make an idiot of myself. Not there yet.

The other project is THE BARD’S GIFT. This one will be an alternate history, so the need for research is pretty obvious. Actually, I don’t need to research any historical figures and I don’t need much more than the broad brush of (then) current events. This story will take place far from the centers where such things are happening. But what I do need to know is the daily-life stuff about these people: What kind of houses did they live in? What did they wear? What did they eat? Who was in charge and why? What would their relationships have been like? Basically, all the stuff I usually get to make up to suit myself.

In this case, there really isn’t a lot of information available on my real target (the original Norse Greenland settlement). But there is information on the next-best surrogate–Iceland of the same time frame. Most of the Greenland settlers came from Iceland, so it’s a reasonable assumption that they at least tried to establish the same way of life.

I got lucky and found a book that is intended to document Icelandic life during the saga age. That’s about as close as I’m likely to get. Will it be enough by itself? Maybe not. But at the least it will point me in the right directions and tell me what further questions I need to ask.

By the way, THE BARD’S GIFT does not actually take place in Greenland (although it will probably start there). It actually takes place in a Norse settlement of Vinland (or possibly Markland) in the New World that never actually happened–at least as far as we know. Of course, it’s a fantasy, so there will be some elements that no Norse explorers would have encountered. Dragons, for example.

It’s amazing how dragons of all different kinds seem to show up in so many of my stories. Couldn’t be those three dragons surrounding one end of my computer desk, could it?