(This is the first of four “themed” posts about research for fantasy novelists.)

I don’t really give “Writing Advice”.

Oh, sure – I have my opinions, and since I’ve managed to produce two novels and a memoir, I have just enough experience and success to think that, perhaps, I do know what I’m doing when I write.

At least, I know what works for me, and being older and crabbier than I was when the first novel got past the first draft, I occasionally do hop onto the soap-box and declaim about stuff writers might want to stop doing, because it’s annoying to read that shit.

But the one thing I have come to realize that what I do know something about is research.

(You would think that having an MA in archaeology from a highly renowned institution, and having some research published and used, I would have known this…