Ooh! Have a wonderful time, Michael. Let us know how all things go.

Roland, there is always going to be some folks who decides to send a negative review. Happens to everyone. You are in good company.

Karen, that's a great point to bring up. Recognizing the truth in fiction. Profound.

I'm going to a Native American reservation for research in a few weeks.This could not have come at a better time.Thanks so much for sharing your knowledge.

Sounds familiar. As an equestrian journalist, I noted this problem as well. When my debut novel, set against the horse world, was written, I still had to do some careful research. This paid off, maybe not in sales, at least in all the positive reviews I received, except for one, which said I knew nothing about horses. Since then, I have erred on the side of spending a lot of time down rabbit holes. I just have to learn not to write detailed descriptions of the warrens.

Some of my novels required quite a bit of research, including interviewing people. I feel so much better if one can recognize the truths in my fiction.

This is so true. I've read books where it seemed like the author tried to jam every bit of detail from their research into the story, when most of it didn't fit the story or characters. Ugh.

A writer friend once ask me about that after he'd spent a month doing in-depth research on something for one of his historical fiction novels. He was really struggling with how much of the details he'd learned to add to the story. I asked him one question that clarified it for him - "What does your character care about?" He realized he was looking at the situation from HIS perspective instead of HERS, and she wouldn't care one iota about all the minutiae he'd drafted out. What he ended up with was perfect for his story, and left out about 99% of the details he had on hand. LOL

Thank you, Matthew!

We are fortunate to live at a time when it is easy to pull up a browser and find far-flung destinations and learn about distant lifestyles and cultures.