Research Rabbit Hole: The Truth About Mosquitos

One of my older baseball novels (being re-released at the end of June) contains a scene that takes place on a deck, overlooking a lake in Cooperstown, New York, early one summer morning.

Back when I wrote it, I failed to do all of my research. Shame on me.I guess I was so concerned with getting the baseball details right that I assumed I knew about the habits of mosquitos. After all, I am a native upstate New Yorker. I know when I get bitten. While the scene in the book is 100 percent fiction, I have done my share of watching the sun rise over a lake. I can’t remember ever being a mosquito’s breakfast.

I am currently working on another book (an origin novella for a new series*), this one set in the Adirondack Mountains. Again, my hero and heroine wake up as dawn lightens the sky. Of course, the hero’s house has a deck overlooking a body of water. My couple enjoy the quiet. The cool morning air. Watching the fading of darkness as it turns to daybreak. Their coffee. Each other.

Being a naturally curious woman, I decided to look up which time of day mosquitos are most active. I couldn’t have my heroine swatting insects while the hero . . .  well, you know.

Mosquitos are most active at dawn and at dusk. Like vampires, these mini-blood suckers avoid daylight, because the sun dehydrates and kills them. My hero isn’t the only life form residing on the edge of a pond in the thick of a forest. People getting naked at five am would be a breakfast buffet.

I may need to rethink that scene.

*Origin Novella, title TBA, featuring a sexy forest ranger and a curvy waitress. More details to follow in my newsletter, which you can sign up for by clicking on the link at the top of this page.

 

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