I’ve lost count of my blog tour stops, but I’m at Fresh Fiction today, still working on A SEAL Wolf Christmas, hope to have 20K by this weekend, but I’m a LONG ways from it. I’ve had to do another interview, and guest blog, and those take time! It may look like they’re short and sweet and easy to write, but they’re not. And I had to rewrite my synopsis for A Highland Wolf Christmas for marketing and that took forever. And then I have to constantly drop into the sites where I’m the guest author to comment on commenters’ comments. It’s not enough to just write the blog. It’s important for me to interact with fans and potential fans. That can mean a lot of comments! And a lot of blogs to comment on until the contest runs it’s course at the site. But it’s still important to me. And blog site moderators appreciate it too.

So after I tell the world where I’m at today, I’ve got to get back to writing. A lot of what stops me is research. Is it warm enough to swim in a Montana lake in summer? Well, it’s 74 degrees and it’s getting too hot for their cold weather fish. Did you know that? Huckleberries are great to pick wild up there. We picked blackberries wild in Oregon and currant berries too. How do you make it into berry jam?

Can you hunt in the summer for elk or bear or deer or… no. How warm does it get in the summer? Eighty-two degrees. Hmmm, when it’s 105 here, I think I’ll go up there. It has one of the largest grizzly populations though. And they have several wolf packs. Which is why I picked it for my location. Lots of forests, lakes, rivers, perfect for a werewolf pack.

What do you do to protect yourself from a grizzly attack? What are signs one is in the area? Can you have a cabin on the lake? Some don’t allow homes on lakes, like at some Oklahoma lakes. So I always have to make sure it will work. I have that one of the cabins is in the mountains. Are their mountains that close? Yes. 🙂

I write something, and then have to stop and check to see if it works! 🙂 And I’ll look up homes on the lakes that are for sale and use the pictures to describe the real places in my book. Also, like the scenery from the cabin decks–the sunset, the way the water looks. Scuba diving, the way the water looks beneath the surface. All of it is important to me.

They have black bears and grizzlies up there. This is a black bear at the wildlife reserve in Omaha. They can be difficult to tell apart sometimes from grizzlies and some hunters kill the grizzlies, thinking they are the black bear, that can be just as brown as the grizzly and if the grizzly is younger, can be mistaken for the smaller bear.

They had a bear hunting season in Arkansas. We lived in eastern Oklahoma near the Arkansas border where it was more mountainous and we had a lot of bear sightings. No hunting for bear in Oklahoma so they got smart and began to move into our state. 🙂

Do you have an animal guide? I’ve added that in this story. What draws you to a particular animal? If you visit a zoo or wildlife reserve, what is the animal you most want to see? Do you have a particular animal you admire most? Have you had a sign that indicates that animal is your guide? So if you have an animal guide, what does this indicate? I had to discover this as well. 🙂

I love the research though because it often gives me ideas of where to go with the story. Like about the grizzlies in the area, or the pitchforks in the lake. Or the wolf poachers. Or an old story I read about wolves that led to another pack’s demise, which I will incorporate into this story. That story has bothered me since I read it a couple of years ago in my research, so I decided I would use it in the telling of this story.  I have used several real wolf tales in my werewolf stories.

I can’t remember what this was at the Spring, Texas Botanical Gardens, but I loved the lacy flower like leaves and took a picture of them, and they’re so dramatic.

Hope to get somewhere today on my writing. I have 7,000 words left to go to make my goal.

Isn’t that a beautiful picture? Don’t you wish I knew what it was? I think it was an oak, something. 🙂 You’d think I’d research it and find out…. 🙂  

Terry
“Giving new meaning to the term alpha male!”
www.terryspear.com