Recycling

Of course one way to justify lengthy story research is to use my findings in more than one story. In researching Seppuku (a comic book that has been accepted by a publisher but is still awaiting an artist to draw the damn thing) I did some reading on Zen and came across a phenomenon called makyo that sometimes occurs during meditation. When shortly afterwards I wrote my novella The Mask Behind the Face which also featured meditation I again made mention of makyo. Two bits of research for the price of one!

However I didn't merely repeat the same bit of information. In Seppuku I emphasised the meditator's sense of bodily distortion whereas in Mask I emphasised the possibility of them encountering "deities" during their meditation.

I don't often get that kind of carry-over with my research but it's nice when it does happen.