by Donna
Mystery writers probably do a lot more research then most fiction writers. I'm never sure how much we're driven by our own desire for accuracy and how much by the fact that we'll hear from our readers if we get it wrong.
In fact, sometimes we even hear from them when we get it right.
In the draft of Six Geese a-Slaying (my Christmas Meg Langslow book, which will be out around Halloween this year), I mention in passing a two-hundred pound sheep. One of my friends who reads the books in manuscript and helps immensely in uncovering typos, grammatical errors, plot inconsistencies and whatever, wrote in the margin "that's a HUGE sheep!"
Well, yes. But I had already established in Owls Well That Ends Well that Meg and Michael's neighbor doesn't just raise sheep. He raises Lincoln sheep, which run larger than your average sheep--rams range from 250 to 350 pounds, and ewes from 200 to 250 pounds, according to Oklahoma State University's very helpful page about Lincolns. So the sheep in question is about as small as a Lincoln can get without being considered a runt.
But . . . if one reader knows the size of an ordinary sheep, others will, too. So I went back and doublechecked that early on, I mention that these are Lincoln sheep.
I've also had a couple of readers write in about the term chaise longue. A couple to tell me that I needed to spell check, because it should be spelled chaise lounge--well, no; although the language may be changing, my dictionary still lists the original French spelling as the primary one. So since I had to defend my spelling to them, I had to laugh when another reader emailed me to compliment me by saying "And you don't seem to be getting careless, as many authors who write series do (or maybe it's their editors who do). In fact, you've fixed one error from Peacocks: Meg now knows how to spell chaise longue, and since she's evidently been practicing her French a bit, maybe she even pronounces it correctly, unlike most Americans!"
You win some, you lose some.
Sometimes when you fix one thing, you break another. A reader wrote to inform me:
You probably have heard from many readers by now. Your latest mystery is, as usual, a good read. However, I am bothered by authors who do not check on basic facts. Great horned owls are not endangered or rare. It damages Meg's father's credibility and he seems like a sharp guy.
I can't remember if I ever wrote her to explain that yes, I know great horned owls (Bubo virginianus) aren't endangered. I was originally going to use another owl that was endangered, but then my research indicated it was unlikely to be found in Virginia, so I condensed the owls into just the barn owl you see on the cover and the great horned owl who makes a cameo appearance later. And alas, not until after the book came out did I realize I hadn't changed the reference to the owl being endangered.
I had a reader email me to say:
I did not understand a reference that was made in the "Delete All Suspects" book, page 45: The old man wore glasses with remarkably thick lenses - rather like what Tim's grandfather had worn after his cataract surgery. I had cataract surgery, as did many friends and relatives. Some wore thick glasses BEFORE surgery, but no one wore them AFTER surgery. Could this be what was meant?
As I told the reader, my first reaction was to kick myself in the head and say, "Did I blow it again???" But then I realized that I was basing Tim's memory of his grandfather on my memory of my grandfather, Jay Straney Andrews. He died in 1983 (at the age of 94, while vacuuming the house--I hope I inherited his healthy genes!), so it's been a while, but I never remember him as wearing anything other than the very, very thick lenses, and yet I know he had his cataracts operated on.
So I did some research and found that before the 1970s, patients who had cataracts removed would wear very, very thick glasses, called cataract glasses, which had to take the place of the original lens in focusing the eyes. In the 1970s, implanting a replacement lens (intraocular lens) became common. Grandpa Andrews probably had his surgery in the 1960s, so he probably just continued to wear the cataract glasses even though intraocular lenses became available; or maybe they couldn't go back and put the intraocular lenses in someone who'd had cataract surgery so long ago.
Tim's a bit younger than I am, so it would be more probable for his grandfather to be younger and to have had the much better modern surgery, with intraocular lens implanted. So I supposed that Tim's father and grandfather both married late, and his grandfather's cataracts developed early and were operated on before the intraocular lenses became common, and through necessity or stubbornness, he was still wearing thick cataract glasses when Tim was a child. Which would probably be in the 80s.
So in this case, the reader and I were both right. I like it when it works out that way.
I like it even better when I avoid the problems to begin with. When I started working on the book that comes out in a few weeks, Cockatiels at Seven, I thought of the title first and decided to justify it by having a subplot involving the smuggling of tropical birds.
Only one problem. No one bothers to smuggle cockatiels. They're legal to import and breed so well in captivity that there's no real need to import. Oops!
But at least I found that out and fixed it before the book came out. How? You'll have to read the book. Available July 8.
I expect to start getting questions about errors around July 10 or 11.
