lishmcbride
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A Question About Research
🕑 Added 2020-05-01 22:52:18 +0000 UTCMel asked, "Do you have a bookshelf of mythical creatures with images and descriptions?"
It was on the Q&A thread, but I thought I would give this one it's own space. First, Mel is my poor, abused copy editor. Mel has to look up and try to fact check and copy edit all of my weird beasties. I have been reading mythology-type books since I was in kindergarten, and though I'm no expert, I have a pretty solid base. It also means I collect a lot of weird reference books.
This is a picture of two shelves of (mostly) reference books. This is not all of them. My bookshelves needs to be reorganized because they are all out of order again, but this is a good sampling.
When I need a new creature, I often flip through these. I start with some of the more basic encyclopedia style. When I find one that I like, I do more research in more in-depth books or websites to get a better grasp of whether it will work or not or how I want to use it. I've spent years putting together this assortment, often found in used bookshops. I have a whole stack of werewolf myth books that aren't included in this.
Anyway, I thought it might be fun to show you a few of my reference books. (New chapter will be up soon.)
-Lish
Comments
The nice thing about "A Dictionary of Angels" is that is it a great source of names with hidden connotations. If you lie that sort of thing.
This is probably showing only half of my research book collection. I don't really have any on angels, though, because I don't really use them in my fiction.
