The original post can be found here on Long and Short Reviews.
I will start this post with stating my greatest fear about writing books. I mean, by far, my absolutely biggest, baddest, most terrifying, fear. And it has nothing to do with getting a bad review. Although, gotta admit, that’s right up there. But it isn’t my biggest fear. What gives me nightmares and leaves me in a cold sweat after one of my books is released?
Someone coming up to me or leaving a comment that something I wrote isn’t correct or possible or even remotely feasible.
Terrifying.
So, prior to writing a story, as part of my very involved plotting process, I research everything. And I mean—everything. No detail is too small. As an example, in my last book, Fire and Ice, I even researched pre-1600s Atlantic hurricane seasons.
I know.
It’s bad.
Now that I’ve bared my author’s soul, I’ll give a little insight into the painstaking amount of research I conducted before ever writing the first words of Lucky Secrets. Speaking of which, as a little reward for reading this post, here is the first sentence of the book:
“I recently overheard my golf-crazy dad go on and on about some of his golfing buddies insisting on taking something he disparagingly called a “mulligan” when they hit a crappy shot.”
How’s that for a hook, pun intended. I could go on and explain what a hook is in golf, but there is an adage to trust the reader, so I won’t.
And no, the story has nothing to do with golf. Go figure.
Back to my book research psychosis. When I begin the plotting process for a book, I create a “Research” folder for all the articles, photos, scans, and similar that I come across as I build the plot out in a document I call my “blueprint.” A typical blueprint for one of my books runs around fifty pages. For Lucky Secrets, my research folder contains 169MB of data (97 files) plus there is a second folder containing 60MB of photos I used to help visualize and build out various rooms of the El Sueño mansion where the story is set.
Keeping in mind that a lot of what I research never makes it into the plot, I thought it would be fun to list some of the subjects and articles I researched for Lucky Secrets. Just remember, this is not even close to being the full list of topics, and what I have listed below might not have been woven into the plot. But this will give a taste of where I’ve been during the plotting of the story, and where Lucky Secrets might go.
· Best Instant Cameras
· Cook Islands Trusts and How to Use Them Properly
· The Cook Islands
· The Best Offshore Trust Jurisdictions for Asset Protection
· The Count of St. Germain
· The Man Who Will Not Die
· Casanova and The Marquise D’Urfe
· The First National of Chicago Robbery
· The Bangladesh National Bank Robbery
· The 2014 Moldovan Bank Fraud Scandal
· How to Steal $1 Billion in Three Days
· Chopin’s Etude, Opus 10 Number 4
· Stan Swamy
· The Theft of Caravaggio’s Nativity
· How Dogs Can Smell Deception and Sense Lying
· Professor Khaw Kim Sun
· Italian Olive Oil and the Mafia
· Eddie Tipton
· Swimming Pool Maintenance
· Numerology
· Truly Random Numbers
· Numbers in Egyptian Mythology
· License Plates
· Fortune Cookies
· Mortgage Fraud Schemes
· Insider Trading
· Arbitrage
· Plane Autopilot Basics
· Money Laundering Through Casino Gambling
· The Dark Web
· The Bhima-Koregaon Case
· The Steve Fossett Plane Crash
If you can figure out the Lucky Secrets plot from the above list, then you shouldn’t be reading this post but instead be writing mysteries!
A big thank you to Long and Short Reviews and Goddess Fish Promotions for letting me share my book and give a little insight into my author psyche (yikes) and the types of topics I research as I prepare to write a book. Which is pretty much everything, as is evident from the above.
And if anybody finds something in Lucky Secrets that is inaccurate—keep it to yourself. Wink.
“Lucky Secrets by B.T. Polcari was an exhilarating read. The plot was fast-moving and filled with relentless action. With so many twists and turns, I could never anticipate what was coming next. […] The events were vividly described […] I was captivated from the very beginning to the conclusion, thanks to the compelling writing style.”
-Alma Boucher of Readers Favorite, 5 Stars