blood magic and other things writers might google

Writing a fictional novel means you get to make everything up, right? Well, mostly. But research is a big part of writing, bigger than I'd ever expected it to be before I started. You have to get the details right if you want the story and characters to have any credibility. When I open a book, I'm ready to believe the narrator's description of events and the world-building, but it's hard to ignore the blatantly impossible and ridiculous. Of course, if the author gives me a reason to accept the blatantly impossible as actually possible (maybe the story takes place in an alternate world where everyone is born with magical powers), I can accept that too.

DAUGHTER OF THE MOON is urban fantasy and so anything out of the ordinary which happens in the real world needs to be explained. And that's where research comes in - adding in the details which maintain plausibility.

Google and Wikipedia have been my go-to sources for research while writing DAUGHTER OF THE MOON and her sequel and I thought I'd take a look back at some of the more interesting things I've googled. Things like:

alchemy transmutation circle, Persephone mythology, conditions which mimic a vampire attack, committing suicide by drowning, porphyria, stages of death, lunar cycles, bus routes from L.A to Montreal, anticoagulants in mosquitoes, blood magic

Last night I watched an episode of Law and Order where a woman's google search history was used as evidence she'd committed a crime. But what if she was really just a writer? What's the strangest thing you've googled lately?