In writing Sobel’s Skin, the first of the Isobel the Bear-Eater series, I’ve spent a fair amount of time on research. I have a youtube playlist of “Isobel the Bear-Eater – references” , plus a Pinterest board. Many are cultural references, but some of the most helpful are the sounds of nature. It’s a little odd, to be writing things down on paper [er, screen] and needing to know what they sound like. Fortunately, for things I haven’t encountered myself or which I can’t remember well, there’s always the youtubes.*

Sound of a raven, for instance. If you’ve ever lived anywhere with these too-smart birds, though, you’ll know this is only a short sample of their vocabulary.

Sounds of ice reverberating and “singing” – a very unique cold weather sound!

And then there’s the fox.

This time he held his arm out to meet it. Sharp teeth caught in the leather of his sleeve and he took a half step backwards with the impact. At the same time, with his free arm, he grasped the fox’s body. “Now!” he cried, and another boy darted forward to jab his knife into one of the animal’s eyes while Amskalin kept it from escaping.
The fox yelped, but the blade was long and its brain fatally pierced. Amskalin held its spasming body in a tight embrace. As death stilled its struggles, Sobel saw that there were two foxes. One was limp in Amskalin’s arms. The other slipped free to the ground and slipped between the legs of the boys panting in the flickering torchlight. It paused to look at Sobel with its one remaining eye, and twitched its head one last time before it disappeared.

This is not the last of the fox, which returns and shadows Sobel, and I really needed to know what kind of noises foxes make. The only time I saw a fox out in the wild, it was curious, but silent. Youtube came through for me again with this offering:

But this week the internet brought me this viral song from Norway.

 

It’s gratifying to know that others are pondering what I’m pondering.

 

 

 

*Last summer I discovered indie author Lindsay Buroker through her perma-free first e-book, Emperor’s Edge. One of the several things about that I loved was how realistic the fight scenes were. As someone who practices martial arts, I got real excited when her protagonist started applying joint locks. I started trying to work out which martial art Lindsay trains in, and, since she’s super responsive to her fans on social media, I asked her on twitter. How did she get the fights so right?

Although she admitted to having taken a few karate classes, her answer was YouTube.

Oh, of course!

It’s the same place that I turn to when I’m not sure how to do something. Funky knitting stitch? YouTube. How to disassemble my netbook to rehabilitate its monitor? YouTube. Can’t get Adobe Illustrator to do that cool thing I want? YouTube.

It makes total sense that writers would turn to the same place for research.