Weird google searches for your novel research

For a while I was getting targeted ads for chemical storage tanks. Not really looking to purchase, thanks. I just wanted to find out about BLEVEs.

Consequences of incest.
How do nocturnal animals stay awake even though they produce melatonin. (Melatonin is the hormone that aids humans and day animals to sleep at when it's dark).

Whether Haldol would inhibit idiosyncratic alcohol intoxication. Result: couldn't find a damn thing, lol.

Seeing these searches is very comforting to me. I am not alone!

1. How many people would have to be drained so a bath tub could be filled with blood.

2. Late 19th century terms for ladies drawers.

3.African history before the slave trade began.

4.Latin term for excommunication.

5. The effects of heroin and meth use. I wanted my vampires to experience an addiction worse than both combined. VERY depressing reading.

6. Reconstruction Era South. I used it as a setting for a historical romance/magical realism novel.

7. Decapitation and how long does the human mind remain afterwards.

8.Ghouls and legends about them.

9.The real vampire community in both the US and UK.

10. French Revolution era,clothing,aristocracy,etc.

11. African based religions such as Obeah,Vodou,Santeria,etc.

Kitty27 said:

1. How many people would have to be drained so a bath tub could be filled with blood.

2. Late 19th century terms for ladies drawers.

3.African history before the slave trade began.

4.Latin term for excommunication.

5. The effects of heroin and meth use. I wanted my vampires to experience an addiction worse than both combined. VERY depressing reading.

6. Reconstruction Era South. I used it as a setting for a historical romance/magical realism novel.

7. Decapitation and how long does the human mind remain afterwards.

8.Ghouls and legends about them.

9.The real vampire community in both the US and UK.

10. French Revolution era,clothing,aristocracy,etc.

11. African based religions such as Obeah,Vodou,Santeria,etc.

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To me as a historical fiction writer, those don't seem weird at all!

Most of mine are fairly mundane: laudanum; steamboats from Savannah to Darien, Georgia circa 1858; Tallyrand; Vigee-le Brun; la process du collier; Washington City newspapers circa 1854 (got kind of carried away with that since it didn't even show up in my story); farming practices in the Arlington area in the early 1800's; papillote curls; pomade; etc.

Totes normal.

7 is fascinating. Shame it isn't really ethical to research!

Buffysquirrel said:

7 is fascinating. Shame it isn't really ethical to research!

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Buffy,I like you. *crazed mad scientist cackle*

angeliz2k said:

To me as a historical fiction writer, those don't seem weird at all!

Most of mine are fairly mundane: laudanum; steamboats from Savannah to Darien, Georgia circa 1858; Tallyrand; Vigee-le Brun; la process du collier; Washington City newspapers circa 1854 (got kind of carried away with that since it didn't even show up in my story); farming practices in the Arlington area in the early 1800's; papillote curls; pomade; etc.

Totes normal.

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My friend writes historical fiction! Her research is intense. I took notes for her and was tired after an hour. She just kept going. I was like,for the love of Gawd,woman! No one needs to know the exact setting of tableware!

Kitty27 said:

Buffy,I like you. *crazed mad scientist cackle*



My friend writes historical fiction! Her research is intense. I took notes for her and was tired after an hour. She just kept going. I was like,for the love of Gawd,woman! No one needs to know the exact setting of tableware!

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Wait . . . you don't? I think I've been doing this wrong!

And it's hard to step away from the learning-stuff crack. I just can't help but love the feeling of discovery.

Not weird, but a fun one from last weekend was "best way to destroy a mummy." Ended up with a lot of interesting articles about grave robbing and mummy myths.

I had to google "body decomposition".

Hopefully, the FBI will never have to investigate my laptop for any reason, because I'm pretty sure that would fall under "Suspicious". LMAO.

I had to do that when I was trying to figure out how a character could know his brother had been dead longer than people claimed, way back in the fifth century....

angeliz2k said:

Wait . . . you don't? I think I've been doing this wrong!

And it's hard to step away from the learning-stuff crack. I just can't help but love the feeling of discovery.

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LOL! I think she has the same feeling.

Jessica_312 said:

I had to google "body decomposition".

Hopefully, the FBI will never have to investigate my laptop for any reason, because I'm pretty sure that would fall under "Suspicious". LMAO.

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I think we all would either be sent to asylums or questioned thoroughly by law enforcement!

Jessica_312 said:

I had to google "body decomposition".

Hopefully, the FBI will never have to investigate my laptop for any reason, because I'm pretty sure that would fall under "Suspicious". LMAO.

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LOL, during the, er, aforementioned hands-on research, I really worried that some particularly savvy person would pick up on the fact that I was casing the city morgue... because I was. Only it was so I could write a convincing break-in, not really break in.

Also, the books I have on poison and firearm specs have turned some heads. My chemistry prof asked me to bring a choice old book of poisons I found at a library sale- complete with toxicity, treatments, and estimated time of death- so he could show the rest of the class. I got more than one half-joking concerned comment from the other students about what, exactly, I needed that for.

Accebera said:

Not weird, but a fun one from last weekend was "best way to destroy a mummy." Ended up with a lot of interesting articles about grave robbing and mummy myths.

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That actually sounds awesome. I may have to look into that just 'cause.

"Can a 9mm round penetrate a police riot helmet faceplate?"

Yup, that weird noise you can hear is the black helicopter circling above.

ArachnePhobia said:

LOL, during the, er, aforementioned hands-on research, I really worried that some particularly savvy person would pick up on the fact that I was casing the city morgue... because I was. Only it was so I could write a convincing break-in, not really break in.

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LOL. Reminds me of a quote from the show Castle. "There are two kinds of folks who sit around thinking about how to kill people: psychopaths and [mystery] writers." Definitely think this applies

onesecondglance said:

"Can a 9mm round penetrate a police riot helmet faceplate?"

Yup, that weird noise you can hear is the black helicopter circling above.

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haha yup. They just left my neighborhood

Wrist and ankle restraints
Videos: actual sodium amobarbital interviews
Hick town police dept. holding cells
M/M rape
Expensive cigars
Lyrics to The Kinks' Destroyer
How to amputate a foot

I tried to track down whether there was a specific word for a jury-rigged section of wall, mounted on wheels, to be used by a medieval-era army while besieging a city. Didn't have much luck.

Medieval heavy cavalry manuevers. How to use a lance to actually kill people -- not just jousting. Defensive medieval heavy cavalry maneuvers (had much less luck with that.) But I found my way to I, Clausewitz's LJ which is full of interesting stuff.

LBlankenship said:

I tried to track down whether there was a specific word for a jury-rigged section of wall, mounted on wheels, to be used by a medieval-era army while besieging a city. Didn't have much luck.

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That's a mantlet.

Cauterizing a wound and Untreated tetanus.

For strange searches I've done myself, one of them was for how police can tell if a person was already dead before someone started stabbing or shooting them. I already knew that dead people don't bleed but wanted more details...

One thing about Google that increasingly irks me is how often celebrities get into the top search results, and even in the auto-fill.

Seriously, I was looking up the word 'tawny' in image search just to make sure it was the exact colour I had in mind and first off, the bloody thing automatically filled in 'tawny kitaen,' the 80s tabloid train-wreck.
But even 'tawny' alone brought up dozens of photographs of her first before getting to anything else. I ended up adding 'colour' to the search...

Gynn said:

Ha! I spend half my night doing Google searches, it seems. We modern writers have it easy! Imagine doing any sort of research twenty+ years ago. You'd have to go to a library or interview someone.

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Everytime I grumble about research, I think about this. I am glad the internet makes it so much easier. Sometimes though there is too much information and it is all conflicting, so you have to go on and search further to find which is correct.

teeta6404 said:

Everytime I grumble about research, I think about this. I am glad the internet makes it so much easier.

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When revising a novel I wrote, what? ten years ago? I'm constantly amazed by how much more stuff there is on the internet than there was then. I can even look at photographs of a place in London I want to describe instead of trying to remember how it looked last time I was there....

annaspargoryan said:

I've been trying to find out how many SSRIs someone would have to take to cause permanent damage or death.

Surprisingly, Google is not terribly forthcoming with actual figures. There's no tabular data anywhere: "To commit suicide, take 24 Paxil or 52 Prozac and rinse with vodka."

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I'm actually not surprised, since the last thing they would want is some suicidal person looking up 'how to'...

Maybe look up deaths related to those drugs and see if the articles include any numbers. Or perhaps whatever it was that Heath Ledger was taking when he died? Supposedly anti-depressants were a major contributor, if I remember correctly.

Putputt said:

when I did the search I kept thinking, The FBI's gonna come through my door any moment now.

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me too! I look up really dodgy things like that sometimes. My current WIP is set around Washington DC so I've been looking up the various hospitals there, the types of security systems or procedures they might have...

Kitty27 said:

11. African based religions such as Obeah,Vodou,Santeria,etc.

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That's also in my WIP. Looked up all kinds of stuff about Yoruba, then the history of Nigeria and its neighbouring countries and the Oyo Empire and so on. Really fascinating stuff although relatively little wound up in the actual story...

Buffysquirrel said:

When revising a novel I wrote, what? ten years ago? I'm constantly amazed by how much more stuff there is on the internet than there was then. I can even look at photographs of a place in London I want to describe instead of trying to remember how it looked last time I was there....

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Google Streetview is a Godsend. I even looked up a Starbucks in Arlington VA so I could get the layout of the shop and street outside accurately.

I've seen a thread like this in the nano forums and they were using https://www.torproject.org/ this program to mask their ip address. You don't have to do it, but it's an option.

Not really weird, but ... dangerous, maybe?

Ten years ago, I was researching how to make dynamite (for a novel, of course) and stumbled across Jolly Roger's Cookbook, which I think is an underground anarchist's handbook.

It has a wealth of information on, not only bomb making, but all sorts of other kinds of mayhem. There's some scary stuff, but some of it would be really useful for a spy/thriller novel.

It probably wasn't a good idea. This was after 9/11 and the Patriot Act. I may be on some alphabet department's list. I would not Google it today, though.