Authors generally love to do research. (Secret: It’s a good excuse for procrastinating—don’t tell anyone!). I’m no exception. That doesn’t mean I enjoy researching every single subject. I might look up some information on guns, for example, which don’t interest me much, but I don’t want to make any errors about how they work because people who do know become incensed if a writer gets something wrong. Many times I simply become vague. She pulled out her gun—not she pulled out her [brand of gun] [name of gun] and inserted [type of bullets] into the [cylinder/chamber/magazine/whatever], screwed on the silencer [make sure type of gun allows for this] and pulled the [safety/hammer/whatever] . . . Well, you get the idea.

But when something does interest me, I can get lost in the details.

Take wardrobe trunks, for example. Also called steamer trunks. They could be huge—as big as a telephone booth. They were great for keeping clothing in good shape because you could hang it up. Drawers kept other things organized. You didn’t have to unpack—just open up the trunk, and there was everything you needed.

Only problem—you wouldn’t be able to put it in an overhead bin, or check it at the airport. It took at least two men to carry it around.

But they could be the perfect solution for someone who likes to be super organized, like Tina Shaw, my protagonist in her professional organizer series. In Cluttered Attic Secrets

an old wardrobe trunk plays a small part in the story. Researching them, I found out they could have ironing boards:

https://shard2.1stdibs.us.com/archivesE/upload/9390/02_13/IMG_1254/IMG_1254_l.jpg
or
http://bit.ly/1hiGWtZ

Fold down desks:

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/e0/96/eb/e096ebb9f1e553582a9abb248343a5ad.jpg
or
http://bit.ly/1N907jP

And be as big as telephone booths:

http://www.thisoldtrunk.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=2&products_id=179
or
http://bit.ly/1Made7l

Isn’t the internet great? I could find all this information in a matter of minutes. What have you been researching lately?