Resource for writers of thrillers and murder mysteries: The writer’s medical and forensics lab, maintained by Dr. D.P. Lyle. You can submit simple forensics or medical questions and get his answers. Just reading his answers to previous questions is fascinating.

But don’t submit a list of questions as long as I did; I’m embarrassed to tell you how many. You’ll get a (very polite) note back saying that he charges for in-depth advising of that level. It’s $100 per hour with an upfront estimate before he begins. Very reasonable, but beyond my budget at the moment, unfortunately.

The site is well worth checking out, though!

In the meantime I am hopeful I’ll find an expert online who’ll be intrigued enough to answer some (or — maybe all?) of my questions for no charge. I posted a question at the Forensics and Crime Discussion Board, but I don’t know if anyone will be interested in responding on a fictional case. After all, I’m not a published author (yet!) and they’re not friends who already know I’m a decent person; for all they know, I’m some internet gore hound. So I’m hopeful but not overly optimistic. It feels kind of weird to ask people I don’t know this kind of thing, too. I’m just hoping I will get a nibble so I can e-mail back and forth with someone privately. Keep your fingers crossed for me! UPDATE: I wrote this last night and this morning I got a response. *Squee* I am trying not to gush. I sent him my questions this morning and am keeping my fingers crossed that he doesn’t mind getting 19 questions. (I am so greedy.) What a cool way to start the day, with high hopes like this. [Update: Although I would have been happy to get an answer to any one of my zillion questions, I found that the sheer volume of my data wish list was too much; I got back a cordial note offering to quote me a rate for providing a response of that magnitude.]

My best hope is that someone who offered to help me in the past is still available. She’s a published author with her own medical expertise, and I’ve sent her an e-mail asking if she’s still interested in my zillions of crime-scene questions. If she is still free, I would be thrilled. *Holding my breath*

Technorati Tags: forensics, book research

Gee, you abandon a blog for two months and the old brain is too dusty to even think of good excuses for being gone so long. Let’s just blame business travel, the start of the school year, and too many items on the to-do list lately. Sometimes I think my older daughter’s not the only one in the family with ADD. But I’m back.

Sorry to say that I abandoned the  ”Seventy Days of Sweat” writing challenge in the meantime. I was a fool to think I’d be able to keep up blogging and writing while on a weeklong business trip and then a week at Disney with the family. I came back with blisters on my heels and dust on my computer.

But hey, this summer I did figure out why my computer kept inexplicably shutting itself off. My stupid screensaver. No more inexplicable shutdowns since deleting that program. Sheesh. I’ve been cursing this problem for more than a year, convinced my motherboard was going out.

In writing news, I haven’t written a lick on my murder mystery since late July/early August. *grimace* More than just a lack of dedication to keeping butt-in-chair, I’m suffering from a point of view crisis. I’m writing a story that has a really despicable bad guy in it. The person who offs him has a really good reason for doing so and is the most interesting person so far in the book. But if I get inside this killer’s head, it won’t be a murder mystery anymore; the reader will KNOW who did it.

So I’ve been standing off to the side, frowning at my story for a couple of months now.

Time for action. I’ll start writing again tomorrow morning even if I have to start from scratch. *shudder.*

Technorati Tags: not writing,  POV