The Magic Box

First, you should know that I’ve been writing my Guardian series for quite a while now. There’s been quite a bit of evolution over the years – constant rewrites, rule changes, and plot shifts – but the heart of the story all began a very, very long time ago when I was a young teenager. 

This matters because a lot of things have changed over the years since I started writing – in trends and strategies, but most notably in technology. 

Of course, this evolution had plenty of applications – in note-taking on my phone or in writing on my tablet instead of a laptop or a paper notebook (that one was Huge!). However, the advancement I want to discuss today is research capabilities. One particular example of this took place back near-ish the beginning. 

In my world of Eris there are shifters, and quite a few variety of them – wolf, bear, alligator, eagle, etc. – and like everything else in life, there are rules about them.  One of those rules is that most shifters can bite a human to create a new one or go about it in the old-fashioned way (ask your parents). Back when I first started writing, I had this ridiculous idea that bird and alligator shifters who went about making new shifters in the “old fashioned way” would lay eggs,  meaning that you could tell a bitten shifter and a born shifter by the presence, or lack of, a bellybutton (that they’d have one if they were human before and not if they were born out of an egg). At that time though,  the internet hadn’t yet hit its stride, and since I didn’t think the Encyclopedia Britannica would mention bird bellybuttons in their entries, my terrific friend Brent and I went to the zoo to ask a zoo keeper about it. We figured you’d need a degree in zoology, or veterinary science to be a zookeeper, so they must know if lizards and birds have bellybuttons. They did not, and the whole day was mainly a bust, besides spending the day at the zoo with one of my best friends. 

Things are so much easier now. I’ve since come to learn, from the internet, that reptiles and birds actually do have something like a belly-button, where the embryo was connected to the food sack inside the egg through an umbilical-like chord. I can type “contents of a medieval first aid kit” into Google, and find this fascinating article about how people used to stuff their wounds with spider webs to close them, use bog moss as feminine hygiene products, and use snail slime to treat cuts. Amazing! Today’s writer’s no longer have to slog through hours and hours of reading, only to come to a dead end, or consult with teachers or professors who may have learned their information year and years back, and since then there’s been new research. Of course since the internet was created by people it’s flawed. There are competing ideas and theories, conspiracy theorists shouting from their keyboards, and even fake news, but there are also legitimate sites out there, and brilliant lectures on places like YouTube from real life experts like astrophysicists. The truth is out there and easier to find than ever, just always make sure to check your sources. 

It truly is a magic box.