Award Winning Author, Eileen Dreyer

HIS BRAIN HER BRAIN

One of the most interesting subjects for study is the human brain. I did this research for a speech I've given titled HIS BRAIN\HER BRAIN. It's the biological difference between a man's brain and a woman, which explains a lot of behavior(including why men can't find the butter in the refrigerator). Enjoy the powerpoint. If you have any questions, contact me. Download Powerpoint

RESEARCH for ROMANCE

DRAKE'S RAKES

~LONDON~

In the spring of 2010 I took a trip to England and Ireland. All right. I'll be honest. I would have gone no matter what. But this time I got a chance to research my new series, Drake's Rakes(why yes, that is the cover to the first book, BARELY A LADY, my July release).

What did I do in England? I walked. To be specific, I walked Mayfair and St. James. I had a backpack and my computer, my camera, a notebook and a cache of coins with which to buy myself a gin and tonic at select pubs, and I set off to walk the streets my characters walked. I peeked in windows and counted doors, I read all those cute blue plaques that denoted what famous historical person resided or visited or spoke of what building, and I sat on a sidewalk with my gin and tonic when I couldn't squeeze my way through all the London marathoners who were sidling up to the pubs(of course I picked the day that every public park was closed so people could limp and frown past with numbers pasted to their backs). I even rode a double decker so I could look down on the city my characters walked. And then when I was finished in London, I did the same thing in the Cotswolds(well, except for the double-decker. Precious few of those in Stow-in-the-Wold).

It's how I research. Oh, I read the books. I studied the colored plates and maps and the details of uniforms and pelisses and high perch phaetons. But if I really want to understand my characters' universe, I need to see it and hear it and smell it myself. If I want my heroine, Olivia Grace to walk Curzon Street, I need to walk it so I can see how it meanders uphill toward Hyde Park. I need to walk into Berry Brothers where the famous scale still resides that held Brummel and Poodle Byng. I need to know how to get to St. George's and what it feels like to sit in the park at the center of Grosvenor Square. What was it like to stroll up St. James(and you really do stroll UP St. James)?

I need to meander over the gentle hills of the Cotswolds and see how the buildings really do glow that buttery yellow in Burford and Bourton-on-the-Water. I need to sit in the pubs where centuries of people have sat, where the fires warmed the rooms and the floors soaked up the spills. It's like when I sit there I can actually hear what went on, and pass it on into my own books.

You see, I'm a global learner. Information just doesn't connect unless I can take it in through all of my senses. And if I'm quiet, I can hear the voices of the people who have been there before me, I can smell the fire that warmed the rooms and smell the ale that spilled on the wood floor. I can see the teams of horses swinging through the archway out onto the street and feel the shock of cold air as the door opens on the handsome loner, who is pulling off his driving gloves and removing his curly beaver hat as he steps into the crowded room.

But that book hasn't happened yet. Right now it's summer and Waterloo looms. I just wish I'd had the chance to walk the battlefield before I wrote about it. But I don't get always get the chance to do my favorite research. Which I why I took advantage of it when I could and spent time in England. I'll take any help in making my stories and characters more real. Even if I have to suffer through a wonderful trip to England in the spring. Stay tuned, though. For my next books, NEVER A GENTLEMAN and EVER THE TEMPTRESS, I journeyed to India. You definitely don't want to miss that research.

Burlington Arcade

Burton-on-the-Water

The Snooty Fox, Tetbury

St. James Square

RESEARCH for SUSPENSE

Click here for my New Orleans Update!

Research for SINNERS AND SAINTS

So, let's see. For Head Games I went to Death Investigator School. For With a Vengeance I went to SWAT camp. Do you get the idea that research is getting to be almost as much fun as the book itself? Well, it sure was in New Orleans. Not that I didn't work hard. I drove and walked over that entire city and beyond, crossing the Pontchartain Causeway—all 26 miles of it—at least three times.

Doing very serious research at Jean Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop with forensic friends Gretchen Grisbaum, Gwen Haugen and Kathy Diebold. I wish I could remember the piano player's name.

By the time I finished, I knew more about the city than one of the ex-homicide detectives who took me around. I sat in dark bars and climbed around cemeteries and drove one rainy day through the Garden District with Rexanne Becnel and , who were gracious enough to tell me the social side of New Orleans("Where did you go to high school?").

I had my palm read at least five times in Jackson Square (why do I always get the "you're in a time of change" reading? You'd think at least one of those people would have promised that I was going to be rich and successful soon). I went to an autopsy and toured the real Charity hospital ER and morgue, where JFK was filmed. I listened to cops and coroners and forensic nurse liaisons tell stories. I ate and I ate and I ate. And then one night after I'd spent time at a bar out by Lake Ponchartrain, my friend Dr. Karen Ross and I took a cab back to town. And since my lead male character—the lovely James Guidry—is, in fact, a cab driver—and none of my other contacts down there seemed to know any—I asked this cabbie if he'd mind telling me about his job. It was 2:00AM at the time, and the streets were pretty quiet. My cabbie's name was Cristophe, and he was handsome and smooth and very interesting. And the best part was, as we were traversing that sleeping city, he turned to me and said, "Ya know, I can't possibly tell you everything I need to. How 'bout I take you to my favorite restaurant, and we'll watch the sun come up?"

And we did just that. I took my notes on the paper place mat in the little all night restaurant in the Fauberg Merigny, and Cristophe told me about his life and his beliefs and his background. He even explained about the saints on his dashboard, who weren't quite saints after all...which, of course, appears in the book.

Yeah, New Orleans is like that. Everybody had a story, and every story was fascinating.

And that doesn't even tell you about the research I did into fertility clinics or hurricanes (want to know about the Saffir-Simpson Scale, and why the west coast of Africa is so important?) And voodoo (DON'T get people started on that. Believe me.). And the ongoing research I do on forensic nursing and forensics. But that's another page for another time....