What does your search history say about you as an author?

 Almost every author has some degree of research that they had to do. The research is what gives body and life to your story.

It makes it more interesting and unusual facts with detailed descriptions can captive your reader. You can only get these facts from either physically being at the site of your book, or researching it. And since most of us are tied to one location, research is our best alternative.

I think it’s safe to say most authors tend to write it at odd hours. Often our work or family puts the writing on the back burner which can make the stolen moments we do find to work on our manuscript occur at the oddest hours. This means we may find ourselves working when going to the library  isn’t feasible.

 Thank God for the internet!

We can stay up until two or three in the morning, researching to our hearts content. We can easily wander off into different tangents, from one fact to another, as we researched deeper and deeper into a subject.

But all that research leaves a trail.   There’s been discussion among authors I know about this very subject.  If anybody ever looked into an author’s (especially a mystery writer) line of research, and the sites  we visit, and the questions we ask… well, many of us would be considered a  dangerous  element.

How would somebody who isn’t aware you’re an author react to your research history? Would you cringe when they search your computer’s history? Are you taking in them down a dark tunnel your normal personality would never go? If you’re a mild-mannered person who is looking up all sorts of deadly and evil ways to kill off your characters, will your friends look at you differently? Could you be looking into government espionage and ways to corrupt a government official could bring some unwanted attention from ‘big brother’? Maybe you’re looking into buried Treasures in history of your area and ways to claim it for yourself.

Do you see what I mean? Your research history can land you in a lot of trouble if the wrong person looks at it. But that’s what being an author is all about! We take all our research and off we go. It’s our job to weave a spell and create a story good enough to captivate our readers and have them turning the page.

 So before you judge the history of any author’s computer research, you really ought to read their books. You never know how we might twist facts to work with our plots.