I’ll admit, I have a pretty strange job. While I work as a professor, my research focuses on sequencing dead people’s DNA. For fun. I love it, and it’s really a great job. It’s a challenge and suits me well (except when it’s driving me crazy, which is about half the time, haha!). I regularly am asked if I’ll write a book that deals with my day-job subject, and my honest answer is that I write to relax from that day-job. Still, sometimes it worms its way into my stories.

Tom, one of the main characters in The Chemistry of Fate, works in laboratory a whole lot like the one where I did a lot of my research. He works with a pretty interesting character, too (thankfully not based on my coworkers!), and he loves the job. I had a lot of fun writing the lab scenes in the book, describing the way some things work and Tom’s activities. Most people see working in a lab like it’s something on CSI, where everything is high-tech and takes twenty minutes for results. That’s not exactly the case J. Still, Tom gets to show off his mad-scientist skills!

There is one event in the book that takes place in the lab that I’m seriously grateful I’ve never experienced in real life. Not to give away too many spoilers, but there’s a massive fire that rips through the lab. In a place that stores all kinds of hazardous chemicals, that’s never a good thing. Whether Tom makes it out alive is something I’ll let you read and find out!

While I doubt I’ll ever write a book based on my research, it was fun getting to describe the way working in a real lab can be. And it’s probably never a good idea to say ‘never’!

How about you—if you write, does it ever make it into your stories?

Meradeth Houston is the author of COLORS LIKE MEMORIES, and THE CHEMISTRY OF FATE. In the real world she does her best to teach students about the awesomeness that is anthropology.  She also sequences dead people's DNA (for fun!). Find out more at Meradethhouston.com