Last week I was busy researching and writing about Komodo dragons. Writing a mixture of fiction and non-fiction books makes my job even more interesting. As well as being interesting, the research for non-fiction books can also give me ideas and information that I can use in my fiction.
One of the tricky things about doing research is know when to stop. It's never enough to simply do your research in one place - you really do have to read several books and magazine articles, and watch more than one documentary. You also have to do your best to make sure that the information that you find is the most up to date that there is... it is amazing what 'facts' change as we discover more out our planet and the things that live here.
In the wild, Komodo dragons only live on five small Indonesian islands. It would have been nice to go and visit the island of Komodo to see the dragons for myself - but that wasn't likely to happen. Lucky, there are Komodo dragons at Chester Zoo where we are members, so I was able to get a close look at the dragons for myself.
I've just finished working on my little book about these very large lizards (the largest alive in the world today) and have sent it off to my editor. I hope she likes it. I will let you know how it goes.
Over the weekend Vicky and I went walking in the woods, visited a secret cave where a notorious highwayman once lived and more... I'll tell you about that tomorrow.
