Stephen asked L.E. Modesitt Jr.:

As a long time fan, especially of the Recluce novels, I have often wondered about your methods. My most pressing question: Just how much time you spend researching a character's occupation (metal working, wood working, etc) before putting pen to paper?

L.E. Modesitt Jr. Sometimes, I "cheat." That is, I tend to write about what I know. Although my father was an attorney, one of his spare-time loves was wood-working. I also tried it, and discovered that while I really wanted to be good at it, I was much better at other things -- although I did make a passable cherry wood cradle for my daughters which has been since also used for their offspring. I write about space pilots because I was a helicopter search and rescue pilot, and because I spent a time dealing with military issues as a Congressional staffer. The environmental consultants come from my background in that field, and, obviously, the political understanding comes from nearly 20 years in the political arena in Washington, D.C. Sometimes, I've had to write about matters I didn't know well enough. Researching metal working added several months to writing The Magic Engineer. Getting all the calculations and science at least in the right ball park for Solar Express also added several months to writing that book.

Some of the research is just part of my daily routine. As my wife has noted, the mail carrier's truck is always lighter after he leaves our house. Between the two of us [and I also read some of her music periodicals], we subscribe to and read something like 30 periodicals every month and some of them are weeklies, like New Scientist, Science, Aviation Week, and the Economist.

Because of all that, it's hard to give a number to exactly how much time goes into research -- except that, over my lifetime, it's been a lot, and it continues that way.

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