Researching For a Fantasy Novel

I am writing a book for NaNo that requires a lot of info about a Native American religion. For me, I need Inca and Olmec. I have Googled my fingers off and came up empty. I Googled, I Yahooed, I Dogpiled, I Ask.comed, I just went through every search engin I coulf ind, and for the last two weeks I've been going crazy coming up with nothing. I went to book stores, I went to three differant local libraies.... I was beginning to think I was never going to get any answers... until today.

Today I hit paydirt big time.

Today I went to the library, a big library, one that supplies books for 5 differant colleges... a big, big library... and there I told a librarian my frustrations, my endless searching, and getting no where, than I told her what it was I was looking for and why I needed it, and OMG! In less than an hour I had 13 volumns on Inca and Olmec relgions! I couldn't believe it! Of course this is a 4-story library with 2 million books, a university library and not my town's small local library, but still, it was a complete godsend and I am so glad I went there.

The lesson here: Google and the internet may be great, but they sure can't bet going to the library and doing some die-hard research. If you are having the same problems I had, you might want to do what I did and head to the library and talk to a librarian. If the library doesn't have what you need, they can most likely get it for you through inter-library-loan, usually with in 48 hours, you well have what you need in your hands.

I found some great books at the library today, and there are these bird-gods and were-jaguars in Olmec and Inca mythology that are exactly the type of thing I was looking for.

In my story, the tribe is basicly a mix of the "lost tribes" from the central America region, only now a thousand years later, they have migrated to the deep unexplored regions of the Amazon Jungle and they have evolved into a total differant tribe that blends the religons of the old tribes.

I'm having so much fun reading these books I got out... I might end up writing a whole series based on this stuff!