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Research is part of any writing, fiction or nonfiction. If you know you’re going to write about shoemakers in New England in colonial times (just to grab for a topic I know nothing about), you would have a limited topic and your research would need to be “deep”. If you know you’re going to write a novel set in an invented world (SFnal or fantasy), then your research must be broad and had better be deep in some areas.
But no matter whether your topic is narrow or wide, some of the research you do won’t make it into the book…at least, not into a book anyone will want to read. Most of us have read a book that “taught us more about penguins than we really wanted to know,” written by someone who did a lot of research and wanted someone else to share the pain.
I love doing research, and I love finding ways to use my own experience (a primary research source) in the books. The advantage of age plus a habit of learning new things means that I’ve got a good bit of “doing stuff” stored up in my head. And the history degree and the biology degree added considerable formal ballast to the informal study that I now call “research.” But some experiences–though I learned a lot from them–just haven’t found a home in the books, yet. The people in the Paksworld books are familiar with these things–and some readers aren’t–but the experiences haven’t proven themselves plot-worthy enough to be fully described, or amenable to the casual mention and brief description.
I had another one of those yesterday, Saturday. That was “lamb processing” day, and processing, in this case, means going from a live critter to chunks of meat in the freezer and a roast in the oven that became dinner for us and our guests. This isn’t the first critter we’ve processed–the first were chickens–and certainly not the biggest (a very large bull…and we’re not doing THAT again! We need to be younger, stronger, and more of us.) A 131 pound “transitional” lamb (still tastes like lamb, but looks like a grown sheep, though it’s not) is a project that two older, not as strong as we were, people can handle. I learn something new every time we do it.
And you would think, in Paksworld, where people eat meat of various kinds, a slaughter & butchering scene would show up as plotwise somewhere. I know they do it. I even know some of the cultural differences in how, where, when, under what circumstances they do it. Is it that I don’t trust readers to understand that it’s part of the culture? That showing someone walking past where it’s happening would squick too many readers? I don’t know. I know I’ve written….and deleted…such scenes as not leading anywhere–not being plot-worthy.
I’ve seen such scenes in other peoples’ books (and some of them, naming no names, clearly got their information from books or videos, not from doing it themselves.) Others did it very well, titrating the information to their audience (Arthur Ransome, in Picts and Martyrs, one of the Swallows & Amazons groups of books, describing a fairly urban boy dealing with cleaning and skinning a dead rabbit he and his sister were supposed to cook.)
The thing about home meat processing is that it’s work. Even with a chicken–even one chicken, let alone several–there’s some work involved, and when it’s a larger critter you can definitely feel you’ve earned that lamb chop or that beef steak. The artists in the trade–the ones in some of the videos online–have done it enough, and do it often enough, that they’re as accurate as surgeons in cutting exactly where they should. We are, at this stage, intermediate novices at best. We get it done, but slower and more awkwardly than the professionals. Each time we do a little better, but one or two a year isn’t really building expertise. Except that now, when we look at a video, we know what they’re doing, why, and can use their expertise as instruction.
Over at Rancherfriend’s, we have a meat saw (it’s actually ours; we bought it, thinking we’d do most of the processing over there.) Here, we don’t–and since our lamb source moved across the country from near Rancherfriend to near us, it’s easier to do it here than there. This means hand tools, not power tools (no, we’re not moving the extremely heavy, required-truck-with-hoist, meat saw over here.) And that makes it even more relevant experience in terms of Paksworld.
Because we started with less-than-perfect knives for the job, and gradually acquired, one by one, really good ones, I can easily imagine butchers in Paksworld’s cities lusting for dwarf and elf-made blades. A less-than-honest butcher might see a dwarf butcher dismembering a hog, say, and start wondering if what it would cost to hired a Guild thief to “find” one or more–would it be cheaper than trying to buy one off the dwarf? But what kind of vengeance would dwarves take, on anyone stealing their blades or being found with a dwarf-made blade he or she couldn’t prove had been bought legitimately?
Once the critter is carved up into pieces, and gets into the kitchen, it’s all cooking from then on. Fresh lamb loin roast, which is what we had last night because we had company (they weren’t involved in the earlier activities) is amazing.
Another thing about the processing of our own meat is that the connection between the land, the animal, and the food on the table is very clear and present. We don’t raise the lambs ourselves (they come from a few miles away) but we know where they’re raised. They aren’t anonymous lumps in clear plastic. They were somebody’s lamb, that somebody raised, and I personally (certainly not true of everyone who does their own processing) feel they deserve a name, acknowledgment that each is an individual. If they don’t arrive with a name, I give them one. (This was Polly; last spring was Bucky.) It’s not sentimentality–after all I’m about to kill them–but a way of not ducking the fact that they are alive and–after all, I’m about to kill them. It’s mindfulness: staying in the moment and aware of what I’m doing.
Something about killing and cutting up the meat may get into a future book. I never know what will come out of research when. Research I feel is needed for a particular book has already opened a hole for itself (learning to scythe, for Surrender None, for instance, and learning more about counterfeiting, for the new Paks books.) But general life experience, be it singing in a large choir or killing a lamb and turning the carcass into food, just happens as life goes on, and may or may not end up in a book.
Oh–sure as anything, someone will ask this if I don’t answer it: we kill the larger critters (cattle, lambs) with a bullet to the brain. It’s quick and (for a killing shot) not messy. Given a calm critter, one shot is all it takes.
Comment by Daniel Glover — November 14, 2011 @ 7:32 am
We (I use the term loosely since I was but a small part) slaughtered the neighbors coop when they decided they didn’t need several dozen eggs a week anymore. So the whole neighborhood pitched in and had a feed for everyone. I got to run around as a 10 year old and act as a spotter to make sure the headless ones didn’t get in to too much trouble before dying.
Firearms season just finished yesterday. I don’t get out in the field but I know a lot of people that do. Know many more that fish–with 12,000 lakes we have a lot of fisherpeople. All take work for the big jobs. Mmm, hadn’t thought about acquiring a good elven blade for cleaning the fish, one of those nice magical ones for finding all the little bones. What would one of those do in the wrong hands–a bone finding blade, I mean.
Comment by Jenn — November 14, 2011 @ 8:56 am
You are making me homesick. November is when everyone would get together to make sausage. 50% deer and 50% pork. The dog was the happiest waiting for the unwanted chunks to fly out the Quonset door. He actually ended up looking like a dragon on its hoard.
Your right there is something much more “connecting” to meat you have processed your self.
Comment by elizabeth — November 14, 2011 @ 10:19 am
Daniel, that concept of a bone-finding blade…or any magical blade enchanted to find something in particular…brilliant. Shuddery, but brilliant.
Comment by elizabeth — November 14, 2011 @ 10:24 am
Jenn: Love the image of the dog guarding his hoard…the canine dragon. You have read “Dogs in Elk,” right?
The lamb stock is simmering away this morning, meat coming off the neckbones but the bones not yet separated. It smells SO good. I think if I could cook nothing else–if there were some rule you had to pick one thing to cook–for me it would be stock. But I’m glad there’s not that limitation, so I also get to cook the roasts, and make stew and curry and so on…and bread and pies and roast potatoes and creamed spinach and….
Comment by Daniel Glover — November 14, 2011 @ 12:45 pm
Elizabeth,
There’s still a book five waiting to be written.
Comment by Annabel (Mrs Redboots) — November 14, 2011 @ 1:31 pm
Here in the UK you are not allowed to slaughter your own livestock, but you can, of course, butcher the result, and my brother frequently does so – I hope some will end up in my freezer again this Christmas!
My mother, too, has butchered calves that were, for whatever reason, unfit for market – I well remember eating parts of “Little broken-leg” and “Pelly”. Once, she and my brother were butchering a sheep that had failed to lamb, and upon investigation had no organs to enable it to do so. My mother wondered aloud why my brother was marking the plastic bags “FF”, to be told it stood for “Funny Fanny”* (and she was delicious, too).
*It occurs to me that the humour may not translate, as I believe Americans use the term “Fanny” to refer to a different part of the body than British people do.
Comment by Kathleen — November 14, 2011 @ 2:27 pm
Brasing meat – one of my favorite things. I did a big pot of beef short ribs this weekend then used the stock to cook the barley. So good.
Comment by Genko — November 14, 2011 @ 3:53 pm
We use the word “fanny” to mean the derrierre, or butt, or backside, or rear end, whatever you want to call it. What do you use it for?
And Daniel, too funny. I also have a vivid 10-year-old memory of the time my Uncle Ray went out into the country and found a place that was selling chickens for a quarter apiece. Even in those days, that was a terrific deal. We didn’t live in the country, but on the edge of town, with gravel streets, vacant lots, and a huge pipe that we called a sewer pipe — really I suppose it was just a pipe in a ditch under someone’s driveway.
The adults used an axe and a tree stump to kill them, and us kids were highly entertained (at least I was, and I assume the others were) at the resulting antics, chasing them down, and yes, at least one went all the way into that pipe and we had to go in after it to get it out. Then the excitement of dunking them into boiling water, and getting all the feathers off. I was fascinated with the whole thing.
These days I don’t eat meat, except for fish once in a while. But I still remember how to cut up a chicken for frying or roasting.
Comment by elizabeth — November 14, 2011 @ 4:12 pm
Annabel: You may have more access to custom slaughterhouses than we do. There were more in this county when we moved here. The nearest now is 50 miles away, and it’s a custom processing place–they’ll kill it, but then they do the processing. For awhile the nearest was 75 miles away, which was uneconomic for something as small as a lamb, goat, or sheep.
Here, it’s not legal for a licensed slaughterhouse to process anything they haven’t killed. So if you want to process it, you have to kill it, and if you kill it, you have to process it.
What does the law say about an animal that’s injured and in pain? Nameless (the heifer that was our first adventure in processing) broke her leg in a coyote den; Rancherfriend shot her, and then we worked on the meat. I can’t imagine not being able to kill one that’s hurt beyond treatment.
Comment by elizabeth — November 14, 2011 @ 4:17 pm
Daniel: There’s still Book IV waiting to be finished!!!
Comment by pjm — November 14, 2011 @ 6:07 pm
In Australia and the UK a ram does not have a fanny, but a ewe does, in approximately the same area as the US fanny.
On a slightly different track, in Enid Blyton’s Faraway series the three children were Jo, Bessie and Fanny and the visiting boy in the second book was Dick. How times have changed!
BTW the typical researcher (penguin or other) wants everyone to share the joy, and doesn’t understand why everyone else thinks it is pain. I like Maths and I have to remember that not everyone else does.
Peter
Comment by Daniel Glover — November 14, 2011 @ 7:54 pm
Elizabeth,
I know Four isn’t finished. But you are unlikely to rewrite in a bone hunting knife at this late in the process given the time line you are working under. Unless it already fits some part of the plot. Too much rewriting I’d think. But then, I’ve only done a little bit of beta reading in my time. I’m not a quick writer. It’s why I admire authors who can stick to a long term deadline like you do. I never cared to sit and write just to write. Thanks for all your work!
Comment by Wickersham's Conscience — November 14, 2011 @ 10:27 pm
I don’t have much experience with steers, sheep or chickens, but I have filleted thousands – no exaggeration – of fish. Mostly salmon of the five Pacific species, but a lot of halibut, too. Part of my mis-spent youth.
Filleting is a combination of the right tools, keeping the tools in excellent condition and skill. You can’t do it right without all three, only badly. I suppose butchering is much the same. A friend of mine who writes professionally and has filleted a few fish to tells me writing is closely analogous. The right tools, keeping the tools sharp and much practice.
Comment by elizabeth — November 14, 2011 @ 10:42 pm
Peter, your explanation is the most, um, delicate I’ve ever heard. Thank you. I agree about the typical researcher. My mother used to tell me that I always fell into a new topic as if it were the most interesting in the world and then bored everyone with it.
Comment by elizabeth — November 14, 2011 @ 10:44 pm
Wickersham’s Conscience: I tried to fillet a fish…I managed to distribute the bones, or parts of bones, liberally through the flesh. Sigh. I’ve watched people do it on TV, but I think I’ll stick to lambs. Agree on “the right tools, keep them sharp, and practice.”
Comment by Mike D — November 15, 2011 @ 6:08 am
Elizabeth M … . I can’t imagine not being able to kill one that’s hurt beyond treatment.
That’s perfectly OK though most would call a vet or the RSPCA in case it could be saved.
For the rest I suspect lots of research would be needed to work out the legal position – maybe you can’t sell the meat unless certified and inspected ?
I think you can eat roadkill but not sell it.
But you can of course shoot and sell venison and other wild game so ???
Mike D in Walton on Thames
Comment by Jenn — November 15, 2011 @ 7:26 am
Elizabeth,
I am unfamiliar with the book/story “Dogs in Elk” where may I find it?
Peter,
Thank you for the return of the memory of reading “the Faraway Tree” It has been decades. I will have to see if the Library carries those for nostalgia sake.
Comment by iphinome — November 15, 2011 @ 8:51 am
*squirms* I’m clearly in the minority here but one vote for squick. I still haven’t recovered completely from reading The Jungle in highscool.
Comment by elizabeth — November 15, 2011 @ 9:31 am
It’s illegal to sell the meat from home butchery. It’s illegal to sell the meat processed at a licensed processor (the wrapping is stamped with “Not For Sale.”)
Whether it’s legal to collect roadkill depends on the state laws (they vary) and I think the species. In Texas, it’s illegal to collect deer carcasses (too easy to claim your extra venison was roadkill.) In some states you have to get a law enforcement person to witness that it was roadkill. And as far as I know, it’s illegal to sell roadkill.
Hunting laws vary from state to state. In Texas, you cannot sell venison except–if the hunter does not pick up and pay for the game turned in to the processor–the processor can sell it for the cost of processing. We lived on venison for a year or two, because of that little provision in the law and a friendly processor nearby. It was less than half the cost of the cheapest beef. Through a long series of events, the money we saved by eating venison instead of beef for that period led to eventually owning a few cows and eating our own beef. Until the drought, that is.
Comment by elizabeth — November 15, 2011 @ 9:47 am
Dogs in Elk. http://www.salon.com/2005/10/19/posts_of_the_decade/ It was originally posted in 1999, and I remember laughing until I cried, my sides ached, and every time I thought about it for the next WEEK, I collapsed in helpless giggles. Salon reposted it, but it’s missing the final bits, including the immortal “There is not enough almond milk in the world…”
There’s a vegetable version of this that someone did at MIT, with a pumpkin for the elk and cut outs of the dogs in either pumpkin or squash. http://alumni.media.mit.edu/~solan/dogsinelk/ It does have the final punchline.
Comment by NancyNew — November 15, 2011 @ 11:26 am
My spouse hunts, and does our butchering as well–I have a whitetail and a muledeer in the freezer now, with more on the way, as well as a variety of gamebirds.
Note on modern knives for your own kitchen–Cook’s Illustrated tested a variety of 8-inch chef’s knives, and their “Best Buy” came from Victorinox, the company that makes Swiss Army Knives–and they run about $25.00. They tested right up there with the high-end blades. These knives are now the workhorse knives in the CI test kitchen, and I can personally attest to their high quality. WELL worth the nominal investment.
Comment by Annabel (Mrs Redboots) — November 15, 2011 @ 12:49 pm
I actually envy you living on venison! Love the stuff – and I even like deer’s liver, although I don’t much care for other kinds. But venison of any kind doesn’t come my way very often; you can get venison burgers quite easily, but not unminced meat, unless you remember to go to your local farmers’ market the week the game people are there!
Comment by elizabeth — November 15, 2011 @ 12:56 pm
Nancy: I saw that show right AFTER I’d bought some really good knives. My next 8 inch chef’s knife will be a Victorinox, if it’s still got a high grade from Cook’s Country (same group, but the PBS show). Since my current 8″ chef’s knife is the oldest of the “good” knives in service, it may actually need replacement before I die (it’s about 25-30 years old.) However, for a flexible boning knife I’m now a solid fan of Global (Japanese) for flexibility, holding its edge, and ease of cleaning. The old Sabatier boning knife has now been officially retired from all meat processing jobs as ut won’t hold an edge long enough. And it’s quite rigid. (It and a Sabatier chef’s knife were my first. The chef’s knife disappeared during a move–almost certainly stolen.)
Comment by elizabeth — November 15, 2011 @ 1:12 pm
We don’t live on venison now, though. That was in “living very small while going back to school after military service” times. It taught me a lot about cooking venison–I had liked it before on the rare occasions a hunter would share some with my mother–but this gave me my first chance to cut loose and experiment.
Comment by Kevin Steverson — November 15, 2011 @ 9:53 pm
Ma’am,
I remember how my Father and Uncle used to split a whole side of beef from the local meat packinghouse. I would come home on leave to visit and he would always send us back with a cooler full of meat. “Take this one..it say’s fee-let mig-non..whatever that is, dang things aint no bigger than your fist”, he’d say. When you are a Private, a cooler full of meat is a great parting gift.
Comment by elizabeth — November 15, 2011 @ 10:59 pm
When we were just out of the military and both in school (but alternating whose GI bill we used, to eke it out), my mother gave us a flour, shortening, and sugar for Christmas. And once some pork. Food is a fine gift, when you need it.
Comment by Jenn — November 16, 2011 @ 7:23 am
Just read “dogs in elk”. Giggle
Brought back memories. The first set of pound puppies we brought out to the farm to start their new life as farm dogs exercised their new found freedom by dragging every dead thing they found in what must have been a 15 mile radius. Dead deer, turkey, cats (I think they killed those), gophers, muskrat (don’t ever put muskrat carcasses in the burning barrel) and how many times do you tangle with a skunk or porcupine before you learn to leave it alone (apparently once was never enough).
I do miss the dogs.
Comment by Kamil — November 16, 2011 @ 10:44 pm
Here’s the second vote for such things bring out a HUGE squick factor among some readers. *twitch*
I understand if you want to add this into your tale, but for the love of all veggies/vegans everywhere, if possible, please try and keep Plot out of its midst. I’d hate to wander around lost in the weeds, because the plot advanced itself in a section I had to skim over through squinted eyes.
And I realize you may have answered that concern already. See above about skimming and squinting.
Comment by Jenn — November 17, 2011 @ 8:43 am
Kamil
Though I respect your yeggie/vegan sensibilities (and enjoy the dishes my self) I do wonder that you are able to read any of Elizabeth’s books as people are being hacked up regularly (sad hazard of medieval soldiering).
Comment by Kamil — November 17, 2011 @ 7:45 pm
@Jenn. If the books were thismuch gorier than they are, or if the descriptions were thismuch more explicit, I’d not be able to read the books, as I am tender-hearted (and completely squicked by innards and goo) in the extreme. *twitch*
The books, to me, walk that fine line that is say, the difference between “Wanted” and the “Kill Bill” flicks. “Wanted” was gory, oh yes, but the goo was lightning quick and usually followed by even quicker jump-cuts away and so I could watch. Through squinted eyes, to be sure, but I could watch. “Kill Bill” (either volume), on the other hand, practically bathed in the gore, and I had problems even watching the supposedly safe-for-all-audiences previews.
And for some reason, having elves and such gamboling about places all the icky things that happen to humanoids in the books at a safe remove, and I think (although I’m not sure of this bit) that if there were magical cows and pigs as well, I might be less bothered by what happened to their more pedestrian counterparts as well – but I can’t say for sure.
Because I am not at all worried about real people being killed by elves of any sort, or being slowly hacked into their component bits by a Liartian Priest (I so hope I spelled that correctly), but I am worried about real cows and pigs being killed, and I think therein lies the difference in my brain.
Although, and I meant to say this in my earlier post: if you (universal) eat meat, I think you (universal) should have to, at least one time, kill and dismember your own flesh. I was a cheerful omnivore until I moved to the country and realized that the things I’d been consuming had sweet faces, and intelligence living in their eyes, and could feel pain and terror, and did, right before the act that sent them on the way to my dinner plate.
(Caveat: I realize animals killed in environs other than the type of slaughter-houses employed by factory-farms to feed the masses suffer *significantly* less, both in the pain and terror scales, which is why I think people should have to slay their own flesh – but I realize that is completely impractical). I also realize the same could be said for a majority of factory dairies, but thankfully, I can buy locally sourced dairy, from a farm I have visited and seen the care lavished on their cows (I think even Gird would have approved of Mr. Altman and his family and their beloved cows =).
At that point, I realized I would cheerfully starve to death before I would take their lives with my own hand, and it would be the height of moral cowardice for me to allow someone else to continue to do that for me while I hummed, “Lalala, I can’t see you,” over in the corner somewhere, and then hopped in line for a tasty bacon cheeseburger.
And yes, I have read “The Omnivore’s Dilemma”, and I don’t know what to do about that problem either. I’d stop eating all together, if that were a reasonable response; I just haven’t quite figured out how to work that part. =D
If I still lived in the country I’d be able to grow sufficient produce to feed myself without nuking about a zillion bunnies/squirrels/rodents in the process, but I moved, and I can’t seem to get the same mileage out of my back yard. And try as I might, Merlot just doesn’t seem to cover all the basic food groups. xD
Comment by elizabeth — November 18, 2011 @ 12:10 am
Kamil: Almost anything will squick some readers. Writers simply cannot promise not to squick anyone and still write. (Yes, amazingly, some people are squicked by “bunnies & rainbows” types of things.) So while I grant to any reader the right to feel however he or she feels about any particular scene in the books…I can’t be thinking of everyone’s sensitivities (only general large-lumps-of-people sensitivities–and my own of course) when I write. Skimming and squinting are the reader’s choice–though readers should perhaps (no pressure) question how they would react in those situations where skimming and squinting aren’t an option if you’re going to be any use. One reason I show some graphical stuff (hopefully not enough to have the gore porn set wallowing in glee) is that it exists and is too often skimmed over (in my opinion) by writers who have their characters bouncing cheerfully through adventures that would not be that bloodless…or ignoring the suffering that occurs. And in order to alleviate suffering, the person who is on the spot must be willing to see it and endure the squicky bits. This may come from my years as a volunteer on a rural EMS unit. There was a lot of squicky stuff: bad smells, bad sights, bad sounds, the aftermaths of car wrecks, fires, suicide attempts, fights, rapes, etc….but the people had no comfort if someone (who, in those years, was sometimes me) could not overcome the fear, revulsion, nausea (sometimes literal), disgust, etc. and focus on the task at hand.
Moving to your second post: Again, I’m not trying to convert anyone to omnivory (unless you talk to me when I’m wearing the ecologist hat: that’s not an argument for this blog-site.) When writing about war, the temptation is binary: to emphasize either the excitement and glory aspect (the firefights and explosions and their older equivalents) or the fear/horror/pity aspect (military and civilian deaths and injuries, destruction of resources, corruption of governments, etc.) Reality includes both…more of the latter, and much of it accidental. To leave out the fact that peasants are killed for happening to be in the path of an army or a band of brigands feels dishonest. I take the cost of conflict seriously; if readers take it seriously (the ones who weren’t) because they realize Ferrault’s death was not easy…that an infant died when no one intended it…etc…then I’ve conveyed my own awareness of that cost. No cheap grace. If a livestock situation comes up and is plotworthy (I can’t control that–it either will be or won’t be) then I’ll use it. Otherwise not.
Jenn: War is always bloody–it’s not “medieval soldiering” alone (take a look at current combat casualty stats.) I did my hospital training for EMS work in a military hospital that partnered with our EMS because we kept picking up their soldiers. When you see someone’s chest blown away by a weapon, it doesn’t much better whether it was a military or civilian weapon. Prior to the current wars, the main cause of traumatic brain injury was motorcycle accidents–we saw a lot of those.
General note: A gentle reminder to treat one another kindly in this place–what’s intended as a little tease may come across as a snipe.
General limit-setting: This isn’t the place to discuss religious/moral/ethical/philosophical reasons for eating/not eating something. Not scolding anyone who’s done it already, but just to get the discussion headed back towards the books and the writing process itself, the proper subject matter for this blog. And I admit that discussing Saturday’s experience as part of the writing process opened the topic without making it clear what I thought the limit should be. My bad.
Comment by Jenn — November 18, 2011 @ 7:31 am
Elizabeth and Kamil,
I do apologize if my tease was taken for a snipe as that was not the intention. One of my friends refuses to any movies centering on animals because she can’t stand to see them hurt in the film. Kamil reminded me of her and I’m afraid I used the same line I use on her. I truly meant no insult.
Also I used the term for medieval soldiering since that is the genre in you books. I understand blood and gore exist in every place and time and that there is no such thing as cheap grace even unbloody grace. In fact I think that is why I like the Deed so much.
Comment by Iphinome — November 18, 2011 @ 7:51 am
Expectations play a part. In a fantasy/adventure story it isn’t uncommon to come across the, for lack of a better word, realities of fighting with swords. But in a story that sweeps across cities and battlefields, one doesn’t expect a section on processing a sheep. Coming on such unaware increases the squick factor, at least for tender-hearted vegetarian souls such as Kamil and myself. In Remnant Population I’d have been prepared. Checking this blog, I wasn’t.
That isn’t to say the content of the books need be predictable to generate sales. When Brun was captured the first time I read rules of Engagement my heart was racing. You hit the balance there between fear factor and grisly detail for that type of story. The original blog post above though was enough to be off putting to at least a few of us lurking around here.