Encylopedias Never Told Me This

One of the interesting things about my job is that I pretty much work with different topics with each book. On some levels, that's really fun.

I get to spend a few weeks getting immersed in a topic I probably wouldn't read up on, otherwise. This works for both non-fiction and fiction.

In fiction, I can spend time reading up on whether or not plot points would work when a character is crawling out of an overturned pickup truck, or whether or not two Parisian streets are close enough together that a cancer patient would be able to walk from one to the next without sitting down.

In non-fiction, I get to learn about some cool topics - regardless of whether or not I agree with the author's point of view. I spent 3 weeks last fall researching Global Warming while working on a book by a Climate Change denier. I spent nearly 4 months looking up information surrounding the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

Last year, I spent time researching Nazis, the integration of Ole Miss, sex trafficking, and the metamorphosis process of butterflies. (I'll let you guess which of those were for fiction and which were for non-fiction.)

Most of the time, I kind of wonder what it would look like if someone was trying to track my web searches. I would imagine that some of the topics and sites that I'm on could throw up red flags, but since the topics change fairly often I suspect it would be confusing for someone tracking my usage.

Today, I got to do something different from anything else I've searched. I was trying to figure out what body shape a man who was 6'1" tall and weighed 180 pounds would have. But... you know... when you google something like "What body shape would someone 6'1" and 180 lbs have?" you tend to get... interesting... results.

And yet, still no red flags.

Can't wait to see what I'm looking up next week.