Research Smut

What, you don't love research as much as I do? And here I thought this would be the most exciting post of the week.

Because Protect Me is about a female bodyguard, I had to do a lot of data gathering. I knew a small amount about personal security because of my dad, whose life has been a lot more exciting than mine. But executive protection (aka bodyguard-ing) and dealing with the threat of violence every day was by no means my area of expertise, so...

You may notice that three of these are by Rory Miller. Look, he writes good stuff! I'm not a fangirl or anything...

Books

I

also

own

Aha. Ahahahaha... Okay shut up.

But seriously, Rory Miller is that rare person with both experience and enough writing talent to convey the things he's learned effectively. If you're at all interested in personal security, violence theory, or the practicalities of dealing with violence, I can't recommend Meditations on Violence highly enough. I've fobbed it off on all my family and friends, if that tells you anything. He has a blog (here's an entry on martial arts/violence misinformation) that's on the flow-of-consciousness side, but in his case, that's still worth reading. I'd just read one of his books first so you have a framework for it.

A fantastic online resource I found was the blog Zen Traveler, about a guy who's both a bodyguard and a Buddhist. Unfortunately the site is closed - I actually emailed to thank him for the info on the site and he graciously replied telling me that he'd moved on from the blog, but would be happy to answer any questions - but the info is no less worth reading now than it was a year ago.

Another day, another novel... This might give you a clue about the book I'm working on now.

NO WAIT COME BACK WHERE
ARE YOU GOING

So, anybody out there got any good research stories for me? Are you researching anything interesting? Hit me! It's not like my nonfiction list is full to bursting already...

Surviving the (Romantic) Suspense #3: The Freeze

As a romantic suspense author, I spend a lot of time writing about ladies in peril. And by that token, I have to get them back out of it. So I'm going to use one day a week to talk about self defense and protecting yourself in various ways.

When you are attacked, you will freeze.

This is true no matter your level of skill or experience. If somebody attacks you when you weren't expecting it, your brain will stop for a moment and struggle to figure out what's going on. It's called the OODA loop:

Observe
Orient
Decide
Act

You can get stuck on any one of these, but many people who are completely inexperienced with combat freeze up on Observe or Orient. Remember, your brain isn't working the way it usually does when you're attacked. It's very easy to seize up on "There is a person hitting me" or "Why is this person hitting me?"

Professionals are able to train themselves to go directly from Observe to Act. They see a punch coming at them, and that's their "go" button (something we'll talk about later). But unless you plan on becoming a violence professional of some kind (and unfortunately, even then, it's not an exact science - police officers and martial arts experts who have only ever trained, and never experienced real violence, often freeze up too in a real scenario) the best thing you can do is to be aware that the freeze exists.

Why does that help? Well, most people don't even realize that this will happen to them. That means that they don't have the opportunity to remind themselves, "I'm frozen. I need to act. I need to do something." Don't underestimate how helpful doing anything can be in a fight, particularly against someone who has perceived you as easy prey. Many criminals will back down if you show that you're willing to put up any fight at all. So repeat it to yourself and save it somewhere in the back of your mind: You will freeze. Break the freeze. Do something.