To me, one of the most fun things about writing (or, at least, planning to write) longer fiction is the worldbuilding. You get to research lots of obscure stuff that would be totally useless in real life - but oh-so fun and mind-enriching to learn about.
Since a character in the fantasy world I'm building is a fae that can sense and manipulate mushrooms, I've embarked on a journey of learning whatever I can about all kinds of fungi to figure out how her magic feels. Or maybe this is just an excuse to learn about these mystical creatures that seem to connect the natural world.
As a med student, while I was thinking about where to start, this title popped into my head: How to Poison with Mushrooms: An Intro to Fungal Toxicology. Why this, instead of How to Heal with Mushrooms? Um... I do mean to look into medicinal mushrooms later on, but the basics of the death cap poison mechanism were explained in a molecular biology lecture, and the topic stuck somewhere in a corner of my mind, waiting to be explored further.
In this first article of what begs to be a series (oh no 😃), especially since Vocal did approve it (it was a fingers-crossed when I hit submit), I go into different kinds of mushroom toxins, a theory of why some mushrooms are poisonous, why people still get poisoned by them, and the world's top 1 deadliest mushroom, along with her sisters-in-poison.
So down the dark rabbit hole we go.
#IswearImawriter