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I’m writing this blog first thing, rather than going to my desk for writing, because I’m still tempted. Tempted to do what?

To write a scene that I know would be cool, but doesn’t work with real world physics, or explosives. I’ve tried to use modern explosives for the last two, or is it three books? Maybe three? Two Anita, and this Merry, so three. But, my lack of understanding of explosives keeps making me choreograph scenes that don’t work. Now, some people think that because I’m writing about fairies, and princesses, and magic, that I can’t mess with physics any way I like, but no. My rule is that the more fantastic a thing you want your readers to believe, the more real your real-life stuff has to be. Because the moment the reader catches you out in something they know about, you’ve lost them. If they know you’re wrong on your guns, or cars, or bombs, then they won’t believe immortal warriors, vampires, and werewolves. You’ve got to make sure your reality is as real as you can make it. Make the ground your reader is standing on so real, that when they look up and see fluttering fairies, they don’t hesitate to believe.

Now, we have a explosives expert that’s been helping answer questions, but this particular problem is not about explosives, so much as the place I’ve set the scene just doesn’t have the room. It’s a real road, and a real place, and there just isn’t enough space. But my expert is in another part of the world, and time zones being what they are, I called Charles yesterday. He gets a lot of these kinds of calls from me. But for this one, he’s been off to parts of the world where they really do this stuff, so I knew that though not a explosives expert, he could give me a general thumbs up, or thumbs down, or send me to a book or web site so I could check. He told me what I feared, that the kill zone for a blast like this is too big. There’s no way to get out of the way, where I put Merry and the gang. Explosives are very impressive in that scary kind of way. The more research I do, the more I understand why there is so many innocent people killed with every bomb. The blast radius on most of this stuff is just too large. Even a shaped charge is a chancy thing, unless you don’t give a damn who else you kill.

So, I must give up this really cool idea, and find another way for the bad guys to try and kill Merry and her men. I think I actually understand explosives so little, I’ll have to do more research before I can even begin to put them in a book. Usually, I can fudge things until I do my research, but every once in awhile I find something so out of my experience, that I need my experts to explain to me in very small words, before I can even begin to understand how to use something in my books.

Strangely, the last thing that I started to research and put in a book that the research changed completely how I would have written it, was the bondage and submission stuff. If I hadn’t gone out and talked to people, visited events and some clubs, I would have gotten it wrong, like most books and movies get it wrong. Hmm, bombs and BDSM; what other writer would have that as her two most challenging research topics?

Okay, I think I can go to work now and not use the nifty idea that won’t work. But it would have been really, really cool if explosives worked less well, and were a lot less energy out put. Real world physics, you can’t change them just because it would cool in your fiction.