I’ve become a bit flabby in the midsection lately. Perhaps the eggnog and chocolate truffles from Christmas are asserting themselves. It could also be an unsightly side effect of being a writer.

It wasn’t always this way.

If you have read my bio, you might recall that I was a construction worker for many years. I was quite svelte and a good twenty pounds lighter then. Lugging lumber and scampering up and down ladders is a fantastic daily workout. But my knees and back weren’t up to the punishment.

I switched to a tamer profession when the economy turned bad in 2008.

A strenuous day as a writer would involve standing at the printer for a half an hour while a manuscript is spit out or hauling an old computer monitor off to the e-waste recycling center, except when it comes to research.

A day or two of research is quite a workout for me. Not the poking around on the Internet type of research but the physical trekking to a place such as a desert canyon or an interesting street corner.

All eight of my novels to date have required some sort of investigation of this type. Usually it involves studying a location that is important to the story or inconspicuously watching people go about their activities.

My upcoming novel "On the Back of the Beast" has three men who deal with some difficult situations on a mountaintop. I realized that it was essential that I should tromp around in just such a place to be able to accurately convey what the characters were experiencing: to smell the smells, to stare across the craggy terrain, to hike over the boulders and avoid rattlesnakes.

Fortunately in Northern California there are plenty of peaks nearby. I packed up a spiral bound notebook, a camera and a light lunch in anticipation of a daylong excursion.

I spent most of a lovely spring day gathering what I needed at Mount Diablo State Park. I was quite tired and sore afterwards. Several days later I wove those impressions into the story.

I’m currently working on a novel about urban homelessness. This has demanded several trips to San Francisco to wander around Civic Center Plaza and stroll 2 or 3 miles down Market Street.

Big cities have an all-encompassing, and at times, oppressive nature. The edginess, the constant activity and noise are what urban dwellers experience regularly. There is a weird randomness in cities: a street musician might be crooning away at a recently discarded piano or a taiko drum group could be practicing in a neighborhood park. Recently I have seen both of these oddities in San Francisco.

My new science fiction novel "The Ripple in Space-Time" has two pivotal chapters that take place in East Africa. I wasn’t able to travel to Kenya and Tanzania to do fresh research for the book but I did spend three weeks there in 1991. I made use of those experiences when I wrote the book, particularly what it is like to be out in the bush of Maasai Mara or in the highlands near the border with Uganda.

Several upcoming novels involve space travel. Floating around in low Earth orbit would be an especially exciting workout for a flabby old author.

I’ll start packing...