I visit a lot of schools to give writing talks and promote my sports mystery novel “Out of Bounds,” and sometimes kids are amazed when I tell them that I did research on the book. They think of fiction as coming totally from your imagination, like fantasy. Why would you need to do research?
But I write realistic fiction, which needs to present a storyline that’s believable. I want the reader to think the story I’m telling can actually happen, and in fact, similar scandals to the one in “Out of Bounds” have occurred, including one in Madison, Conn. Having been a sportswriter for most of my life, I know sports and journalism well. However, there were things I didn’t know that I needed to research. One was police policies for the particular crime that’s committed in the book. I needed to know what the penalties would be and how the police investigation would be carried out. To learn more about that, I contacted Det. Robert Kozlowsky of the Shelton (Conn.) Police Department, and he was quite helpful in explaining how an investigation would go down. Another thing I had to learn is how high school newspapers are run these days, since some of the scenes in “Out of Bounds” take place in a school newsroom. I paid a visit to teacher Carolyn Finley, who graciously allowed me to observe her class putting the Gael Winds together at Shelton High. I not only soaked in the nuts-and-bolts of the process, I observed the different personalities of the students, which helped me form characters in the book. Both Det. Kozlowsky and Mrs. Finley were invaluable resources in writing “Out of Bounds,” which is why they are acknowledged in the front of the book. Research isn’t the sole domain of nonfiction writers. Often fiction writers need to do it too. I’m convinced that accurate research helped make “Out of Bounds” a national finalist in the Readers’ Favorite Awards.
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