S. W. Raine

Project Elementals 2 is the second part of the Elementals trilogy. And just like with The Elemental’s Guardian, I’ve been doing lots of novel research during my editing phase to make the “urban” part of the contemporary/urban fantasy as realistic as possible.

In book 2, Ferenc and crew travel away from Florida and go international. Since I’ve personally never traveled to Russia, Iran, or any of the other places they visit, I needed to do a lot of novel research. Here are three of the many things I’ve looked up:

Travel Visas:

The first time I’d ever heard of a travel visa was in 2011, when my friend from the UK was coming to visit. Being originally from Canada, the only thing I ever needed to enter the US was my passport (and, later, my green card—which is a different kind of visa). So when she mentioned she triple-checked if she needed one and was good to go, I was a little curious.

A passport is for identity verification. A visa is a permit into certain countries that needs to be preapproved before you travel.

We don’t need a travel visa to go back and forth between Canada and the States, and we didn’t need one back in 2014 when we went to England and Ireland. So I thought nothing of it when I wrote—and rewrote—part 2.

While editing, I did some novel research on if Ferenc, Olivia, and Dormouse needed visas to enter Russia and Iran. The verdict: They need a visa to enter Russia, but they don’t need one for Iran if they’ll be there for 15 days or less. I also looked up if Moses and Kamran needed any to travel to Russia, as they’re Iranian citizens. They do. Anya, who is a Russian citizen, needs one to enter Finland, Norway, and any other country under the Schengen agreement, as do Moses and Kamran.

And of course I had to look up what the Schengen agreement was: an accord between 27 European countries to have no border control at their mutual borders. Pretty wild, right?

Siberian Wilderness:

Ever since the very first draft of book 2 back in 2013, Anya had secluded herself some place far away from civilization. And since book 2 takes place a few months after The Elemental’s Guardian, Ferenc and crew needed to fetch her in the middle of winter.

I know Yakutsk in Siberia is the coldest city on Earth, and Oymyakon, a Siberian village, is the coldest permanently inhabited settlement on Earth. I don’t remember when or how I found those out, but my intention then was to get the crew to experience the extreme cold.

Unfortunately, my knowledge of wilderness is severely lacking, and I had them literally drive right up to the cave entrance.

Thank goodness for the show Expedition Unknown! We’d been binging the show from season 1, and the moment the episode at the Dyatlov Pass aired in season 7, I knew I needed to do major changes to how—and where—Ferenc and crew find Anya.

Here, my novel research included everything I needed to know about the Ural mountains, the temperature of caves, and where to build fires inside them. Thanks to the episode, I decided I didn’t need the characters to experience the extreme cold, as they were already experiencing the harshness of being exposed to the elements.

Driving in Other Countries:

Ferenc driving in Florida year-round is one thing, but having him driving in a different country in the middle of winter is a whole other experience.

Thankfully, Russia, Finland, and Norway drive on the right-side of the road like in Canada and the US. But one thing my novel research led me to that I didn’t know is that Norwegian driving is pretty slow… and strict.

I also looked up the view because that’s pretty important when driving long stretches. Apparently, driving through Finland is boring. If it’s anything like driving along Highway 401 in Ontario, then I can relate to the experience.

And the other thing I needed to keep in mind was how much of it they’d be able to see during the day. Finland has limited daylight during the winter, and depending on where they are in Norway, the most they’d get to see of the landscape during the day would be in a midnight-blue twilight hue. Thank goodness Norway has some of the best northern lights!

Doing novel research on travel visas, the Siberian wilderness, and driving in other countries adds to your reading experience. I can’t wait to share more of my research with you!

If you’d like to see the research I did for The Elemental’s Guardian, you can find them here: part 1 and part 2.

Raine