I belong to an online writer’s group where I can post research questions. For my own entertainment, I made a list of the things I’ve asked about in the last two years. Some of these are for works that are out now (e.g. Turning Darkness Into Light, The Endless Knot, “Vīs Dēlendī”); others are for works I have written but not yet sold; others are for back-burner projects.

Some are more about soliciting suggestions of things of a certain type:

• Mythological thefts (for the good of humankind)
• Perfume blends
• Near Eastern tales and myths
• Folksongs
• Archaeology-based plots
• Celtic battle music recs
• Slavic music recs
• Card games played with non-numerical decks
• Words that fit a specific pattern

But others were more about getting references or facts:

• Scholarship in antiquity
• 1930s British university structure
• Life on a Saturnian-type moon
• Bronze forging and casting
• Probabilities for a card game
• Ancient Roman magic
• Length of the lunar day and orbital mechanics considerations for launch
• Historical Chinese cuisine
• Jewish religious law and literary genres
• Short-term cons to build trust
• Treasonous activities
• Social models of friendship
• Charting a horoscope
• Basics of lunar landing
• Lunar calendar based around two moons
• Moons and tidal mechanics
• Punishments for Buddhist monks
• Tattoos
• Latin gerunds [I wanted somebody to check my grammar]
• Putting gold inside clay
• Fire scenario: starting it, dealing with it, and fighting it
• Russian-to-English grammatical quirks
• Cuneiform

. . . apparently I’ve been thinking about moons a lot lately? Oddly, though, those questions are for three completely unrelated projects. Anyway, it’s an amusing cross-section of some of the things I’ve been researching over the last two years, and I’d say it’s a fair snapshot of what my fiction is like in general!