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One of the most fascinating parts of writing fiction for me is hunting and gathering my research materials. There's a certain heft of materials that makes me feel ready to begin, a particular quantity of stuff spread around my office that signals the time to begin writing.

My husband calls this "clutter".

I call it "research".

I know other authors who work in monastic conditions, reading and making notes off site, then returning to a pristine desk to write. They need the clarity to focus. I need the chaos to create. They can work anywhere, while I need to return to my mess to hear my characters speak.

There's a particular order to my hunting and gathering - it's not random after all these years. First are the maps. I love maps, big maps, and will usually buy a big folding one of the area in question. I snag a few travel guides to that area, heavily post-it note and bookmark them, and grab some articles from online.

Dragonfire is interesting in this because the heroes have a backstory, often in a different location from the site of the book. It's usually also at a different point in time. Quinn, in Kiss of Fire, was strongly affected by an incident during the Albigensian crusade. Donovan, in Kiss of Fury, had a memory of his father joining the pirates in Tortuga. Erik, in Kiss of Fate, recalls his Viking roots, his time in early medieval England, and his lost love in the 18th century. (Erik required a lot of maps - I'm bracing myself for the other older Pyr, like Rafferty, who will probably give me a world tour.)

Next I hit my husband's collection of National Geographic magazines, picking ones that provide the best visuals for the story, either in terms of location or culture or trade. Next come the books from my own collection that fit the specific time or area - my social history books often get a workout, or those illustrated encyclopedias of jewellery, clothing, weaponry, whatever suits the story in question.

The carpet is usually obscured by this point, but I'm not done. The library books pile up around the perimeter, first the ones from the public library, then the exotic visitors from the university library. By the time, the writing is going well, my office is knee-deep in research materials, scribbled notes and call numbers. It's impossible to cross the room and the dog gets quite disgruntled with me - she likes to sleep in my office while I work, but on many days, she has to sleep in the hall. I'm lucky that she's not one to march through everything and make a place for herself, despite what's on the floor.

Right now, I'm in the middle of Dragonfire #4 and my office floor is just the way I like it to be. I have materials on Roman mines and cattle breeding, on heritage varieties of livestock and horse farms in Ireland. There are maps and magazines, books on dragon mythology, a book on alchemy, one on minerals and another on jewellery, a volume on Chinese lacquer and a biography of Paracelsus, plus my own reference book about the Pyr and a whole lot more. It's perfect.

Just don't walk in there or disturb a thing.

What about you? Do you work in very neat conditions, with everything filed as it should be? Or are you a chaos-queen like me? Any particular reasons why you work the way you do?

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