To the general institution of the Federal Bureau of Investigation,

I am a writer. Not a famous one, or even a published one, so you probably don't know my name (or maybe you do), but I do write the occasional short story and agonize over the Great American Novel just like every other writer out there. Why does this matter, you might ask?

This matters because I sincerely hope you do not think I'm a criminal - or that I'm considering becoming a criminal. I don't think I can pay off my student loans from prison, I hope that's reason enough.

It has come to my attention, after a week long bender of watching James Spader baffle the government on NBC's "The Blacklist," that you probably have an algorithm tracking everything anyone has ever Googled. I distinctly remember watching Spader's character explain that the CIA flagged certain books within library systems as books that could do harm in the wrong hands, and I'm fairly certain that I had a minor heart attack.

What if the person who checks those flagged books out is a writer? What if there's a writer on an international blacklist because of their research?

And so, dear people of the Bureau, I would like to come clean ahead of time. Just in case I end up with my hands on one of those books - although if I do go off the deep end sometime in the distant future, and you can be sure I'm not just a cranky old writer lady, I give you my full permission to haul my butt into interrogation.

This weird little hobby of mine has led me to foolishly Google a handful of strange - and frankly rather alarming phrases, all in the name of research for a scene I'll probably never write. (That seems to be the way things work. Cosmic retribution, perhaps?)

It may make you feel slightly better that of late, the searches have been pretty tame. Length of Russian military service. Closed cities in Soviet Russia, which, if you get a chance, are basically the coolest things in the world if you're into espionage - and let's face it, you're the FBI, so of course you are. How to survive the apocalypse. What would happen if all the power in the world went out at once.

Several months ago, as I was attempting to figure out how an entire village could be blown to pieces, and what would be at the center of that explosion, I had an epiphany that predates my "The Blacklist" epiphany. I actually began to type the word "bomb" into the Google search bar before I stopped with my fingers still on the keys and said to myself, "Maybe that isn't a good thing to look up on a search engine that's probably logging my every move."

I decided, then and there, that setting fire to a barrel of gunpowder would have to be good enough. Not hitting enter on that word may have been the smartest decision of my life.

I feel that it is necessary for you to understand, however, that research is a procrastinating writer's bread and butter. Every word has to sound exactly right, every scene has to weave together perfectly, and every detail has to be correct. A Californian, for example, would never call a corner store a bodega. A writer born and raised in New York who's telling a story about a Californian woman needs to know that. A writer with no psychopathic tendencies needs to understand the mentality of a serial killer.

There are, of course, real psychopaths out there, and you're doing fabulous work making sure they get caught with your fancy algorithms that log Google searches. I would just like you to know that while you might see that I've Googled an inordinate amount of phrases with the word "blood" in it, I (as a writer) have discovered the delightful fact that blood bounces when it hits snow.