Welcome Author Susan Vaughan

Please join me in welcoming terrific author (and very nice lady!) Susan Vaughan to the convertible today. Susan has written for Silhouette Romantic Suspense and has a full length romantic suspense novel published with The Wild Rose Press. Her newest release PRIMAL OBSESSION won the More than Magic Award and has been getting rave reviews!

RESEARCH CAN BE RISKY

Most research for my books is virtual, that is, on the Internet. But often it means taking risks, emotional risks to interview people face to face and other, unanticipated risks. For example, my current release, PRIMAL OBSESSION, required me to venture on a six-day canoe-and-camping trip in northern Maine. Risky for this nature wimp, exhausting and beautiful but not dangerous.
After that I never thought my research in Washington, D.C. would also be risky. Ahem. Having the Romance Writers of America conference there afforded me the perfect opportunity to do research for the current project, which is set there. I rode the Metrorail, the subway, to determine how my hero will lose his bad-guy tail on the way to Crystal City, Virginia. At that Crystal City stop, I checked out what he'd see and smell and hear when he exited.




Then I went to the National Museum of Natural History to continue my research, the most important part because that's where the Janet Annenberg Hooker Hall of Geology, Gems, and Mineral houses, well, gems and minerals, including the Hope Diamond and various other famous pieces of jewelry. In my current project, there's a robbery, not of the Hope but of the crown jewels of a fictional country on loan for exhibit. I'd made an appointment with the security manager to run my scenario by him to see if it could work the way I have the robbery set up. When I arrived, he was still at lunch, so I hustled up to take pictures of the scene of the crime. I snapped shots of the Hope Diamond...





...and pictures of the room's cameras and other exhibit cases.



There's my risk, you say. The guards should descend on anyone taking pictures of the cameras. Nope. No burly guards grabbed me because of that.

Finally the security manager was ready for me, not in uniform but in a gray suit with a polyester tie in a color of green that reminded me of what my dog spits up when she eats grass. Sorry. Not an image you want if you've just eaten. I should've left then after that omen. But no, I persevered. I explained--again--what I was there for. I laid out my scenario for him. As I talked, I could see the security chief backing off, widening his stance and his shoulders. Suspicion lowered his eyebrows. He refused to answer any of my questions, wouldn't tell me anything about security for the gem section or anywhere else for that matter. Wouldn't tell me if guards are hired by the entire Smithsonian (they are). Wouldn't tell me how many were employed or might be there overnight. He was insulted and incensed that I wanted to write that two of the guards were paid as accomplices in my robbery. His guards would never cross that line. And finally he wanted my fictional robbery to take place in a fictional museum, not this real one that he felt would be made vulnerable. I tried to change the subject to him, to find out what made him go into security work and what he liked about it. Dead end there, too. I felt like Katie Couric trying to interview Dick Cheney while he's still in his no-interview bunker.

Enough, I gave the man the bookmark for PRIMAL OBSESSION and thanked him. For nothing, but I didn't say that. By then, he was ready to have Homeland Security check me out. Yup, he should've done that two weeks ago when I first phoned him. He'd have saved us both a lot of time. As I stood to leave, his secretary leaned across her desk and asked, "Can I have a bookmark, too?"

Remember that burly guard who didn't show up when I photographed the security camera and the Hope Diamond? He appeared now and the manager had him escort me to the exit. As I walked out, I looked back to see him glaring at me with suspicion and with his hand on his gun.

I was steamed walking out into a D.C. steamy summer day and not a little embarrassed. But now I get to make up my fictional robbery the way I want. Maybe I'll give away museum secrets and maybe I won't. I'll take that risk.

What's the riskiest thing you've done in the name of research or in your daily life? Susan is giving away a copy of PRIMAL OBSESSION to one lucky commenter today. (Print for US, digital for foreign.)