The small matter of research

Sometimes people ask me how much research I do for any particular project, so I thought I'd show you.

I am currently in the final stages of completing my first gamebook for Warhammer 40K, Herald of Oblivion. I know this universe pretty well, but I don't have an eidetic memory, so it's more a case of I know where to look for the information I need in the first place.

I used all of the books and magazines in the photograph above during the process of writing and re-writing Draft One of Herald of Oblivion, and that doesn't include the odd bits of info I checked online or which I was confident enough to put in without checking, or the things I checked from other sources altogether.

So, as you can see, even for a fictional book about a fictional universe there's a fair bit of research to be done. And there are probably still going to be things that the editors pick up on the first read through that will need altering.