David Stewart asked David O. Stewart:

How much research goes into your historical novels, like THE BABE RUTH DECEPTION?

David O. Stewart I need to know as much as possible about any true historical figures in the book -- such as Babe Ruth, or the gambling kingpin Arnold Rothstein who fixed the 1919 World Series -- so I read widely about those figures. And for any actual event that I will portray, I research deeply. For this book, that included the Babe's baseball games, the Black Sox scandal, the terrorist bombing of Wall Street. I also like to go to the places I'm writing about. Though the world has changed a lot in the 95 years since the events in the book, I still can get a feel for what the feel of the location is, which includes its slope, the views around it, and so on. I'll use Google images to find photos of what it looked like before.

But there's another layer of research, which involves getting a feel for the language of the times. I try to read some novels and newspaper stories from the era, or listen to recordings of people speaking if I can find them. I can pick up slang that was in use at the time and try to figure out how formally people spoke. For this book, there were a number of recordings of the Babe speaking, and I also found a movie that the Babe made in 1920, which allowed to me see what he looked like and how he moved as a young, world-champion athlete. The details can make all the difference in presenting a compelling portrait of a character.

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