I’ve been starting to tackle the intricacies of 18th Century costume making. My brain is such that I cannot understand how to read or use patterns, so I’ve been tackling the easy stuff first. I have to make clothes for four people, but I’m starting with the children because it’s harder to get hold of garments that they can borrow. Ailith particularly! So, so far I’ve made a shift for Rose, a petticoat for Rose, a shirt for Ailith (mad amounts of hand sewn reinforcements!) and a pair of sailor’s trousers for Ailith. If I can make Ailith a sailor’s short jacket, that will conceal the lack of waistcoat until I can make one of them too!
This is what I have so far:
Ailith hates breeches with a passion, so she is going to be kitted out as a sailor. She needs a waistcoat and short jacket. Rose needs another petticoat and a short gown, stays and cap. Then I need shift, two petticoats, shortgown and cap and Andrew needs breeches, shirt, waistcoat and coat. But first of all I need to teach myself how to make a short jacket when I have no pattern and wouldn’t understand it if I did. It’s an interesting challenge! However, previous to this I had never made anything that had to be pleated onto a waistband, or buttonholes or trousers with flies, so I’m making progress.
, that’s one of your lovely reproductions pewter buttons on Ailith’s slops there. Thank you! I think she’ll get the rest on her jacket 🙂
Other attempts to be industrious include writing a blog post reviewing ‘Albion: The Origins of the English Imagination’ by Peter Ackroyd here
and another one on The Past as a Series of Blobs on the Macaronis blog here.
The past. From my (admittedly not very extensive) experience of reading historicals and watching historical movies, I get the impression that for many people the past is conveniently grouped into four or five basic blobs which serve as settings for the majority of historical fiction:
You’ve got ‘prehistoric’, inhabited by cavemen who may or may not hunt dinosaurs, live in caves, wear furs and go ‘ug’.
Then – passing over most of the Bronze Age – you have ‘the Romans’. The Romans generally have an Emperor, wear togas and/or armour and wear red-crested helmets. Often they fall in love with slaves/native princes from far flung corners of the empire such as Britannia.
‘Arthurian times’ come somewhere between the Romans and the Medievals. But where exactly – whether it’s one extreme or the other or somewhere in the middle – is up to the writer. This movable era also tends to house most of the ‘Celtic’ period and – passing over the Saxons and early Normans – segues gently into ‘medieval times’.
We can tell when something is set in medieval times because it has downtrodden peasants, evil barons in castles, maidens forced into marriage despite their chastity belts, trailing sleeves, pointy shoes and possibly noble outlaws based on Robin Hood. If a ‘medieval’ story deals with ‘Highlanders’ they will naturally wear kilts and possibly woad too. (‘Braveheart’, I’m looking at you.)
After medieval times comes ‘the Regency’ or possibly ‘the 18th Century’ – these terms are often taken to be synonymous. During the Regency everyone was aristocratic, lived in big houses, dressed like Mr.Darcy, were obsessed with manners and the marriage market and had no visible means of support. Politics were unimportant and the rest of the world (outside Britain) did not exist.
There are also specialized little space/time bubbles for things like ‘the Caribbean pirates’, ‘the Arabian nights’ etc, each of which comes with its variety of things which are ‘known’ to happen in that setting.
To a certain extent this is all a convenient shorthand, and in a reader it does no harm if you have no idea which year the Pope banned shoes with extravagant toes, or which half of the century Catholics were burning Protestants rather than the other way around. But I can’t help feeling that writers should be held to a higher standard.
Why do I feel that? Am I just an anal killjoy who can’t get into the spirit of things? Well… maybe. Maybe it doesn’t matter if your Scotsmen have stolen the Picts’ woad and are wearing kilts that won’t be invented for another two hundred years. Maybe it doesn’t matter that your heroes are blithely saying and thinking things that their society would suppose to be unthinkable. Maybe it doesn’t even matter if their society itself is unaccountably modern in its attitudes. But where does it stop? When the account of the fall of Rome features Visigoths in tanks and Napoleonic horsemen with rocket launchers? When they’re all thwarted because the Romans send out a cute little puppy and they realize that they can’t bear the cruelty of war any more and they want to go grow Afalfa in the Pyrenees?
Actually I might quite like that, particularly when the Saxons turn up in their helicopters, only to be thwarted when the platoon of highly trained attack dinosaurs rally to the defence of the Parthenon. At least it wouldn’t be fooling anyone that it was supposed to be true, like the majority of pseudo-historicals out there.
What we tend to find when we look into the past is that our original picture of, say ‘the 18th Century’ proves to be sometimes accurate in part, for certain circumstances, for certain years and for characters of certain backgrounds. But within this big picture there are innumerable exceptions, changes and details which you didn’t see at first, but which tie you down to a specific date.
Are you before the French revolution – in which case the clothing fashions will be x and not y, your characters will probably believe in the divine right of kings, society will be certain about what can be expected from different classes of men – and therefore relatively relaxed about it? Are you just after the French revolution – in which case fashions will be y and not x, all the young folk and the workers will be filled with a feeling that liberty and a brave new world are just round the corner – and the government will be clamping down hard to stop the same thing happening in Britain? Are you pre or post American Independence – with all the psychological and cultural changes that that entails? Are you early in the century, when boozing, fighting and whoring were seen as normal, healthy activities for gentlemen, or late in the century when people were looking back on their parents’ unrestrained behaviour with moral horror?
Attitudes, clothes and technology can change from year to year, whatever time period you’re writing. Some Romans for example didn’t have an emperor at all – some had the Senate, some had a military dictator, some had a triumvirate and some had an Emperor, and all that change occurred within one lifetime!
So it’s worthwhile for a writer to pick the year first and then research the society in that year rather than saying ‘oh it’s Georgian’ and throwing in facts from the reigns of all three Georges. Not only does it narrow down your research, but it also has the benefit of making your ‘Regency’ (or whatever) that much more real, authentic and therefore unique.
And you can still bring out the Saxons in helicopters for that Fantasy novel you were planning!
The English Imagination
This is by way of a musing on Peter Ackroyd’s book Albion: The Origins of the English imagination.
In which Peter Ackroyd attempts to discover whether there is a national character when it comes to the imagination of the inhabitants of the British Isles, and if so, what it is.
I’m not sure why he calls it ‘the English imagination’ rather than ‘the British imagination’. The second would seem more appropriate, particularly as he claims that the landscape of Britain influences its inhabitants, so that our many waves of immigrants and invaders are gradually assimilated to a similar way of thinking in the same way that they gradually get used to the climate.
One of the many separate strands that Ackroyd thinks he sees in the long history of British thought is a refusal to systematize. We reject, he says, the large structures of logic built on small initial premises, and instead rely on accumulating data, throwing it together in an intellectual jumble sale. Appropriately enough that is exactly what his book is like. It claims to identify some main strands of thought, gives some examples of each, and leaves you to draw your own conclusions.
Though I am English myself, I would have preferred something a little more reasoned out, possibly with an argument and a conclusion. But having said that, a lot of his points are provocative, or at least evocative, and set me thinking.
I don’t think anyone could argue against the idea that our imaginations are full of the weather, for example. Particularly rain, and light, and the movement of clouds across the hills. Nor could anyone seriously argue that we weren’t moved by trees. Look at Tolkien! Look at the design of our cathedrals, or our Christmas carols or tradition of wassailing the orchards.
Other interesting threads in the weave include the typical British embarrassment or reticence, where strong emotions are undercut and the poet/novelist employs a sleight of hand to make himself look less important than he may actually believe he is.
A love of interlace and miniatures, leading to a concentration on surface decoration rather than an interest in depth. I can certainly agree with that in art, but I don’t know how it can coexist with the love of portraiture – the concentration on characterization in literature which he also claims.
What else was there? Oh, interestingly, though I should hardly have thought it was more typical to Britain than to everywhere, there’s a chapter on women’s voices, piety, gossip, and a deep anger at being silenced and dispossessed in every other realm.
The aforementioned lack of system and logic, with an associated attachment to the practical and the useful.
A love of violence, violent effects, grotesquery and bawdy.
A tendency to be fertilized by seeds taken from the continent and then to recast the resulting flowers in our own slightly idiosyncratic mold.
A love of gardens as refuges.
I can’t really argue that any of these things are absent from my conception of Britishness. What I don’t know, of course, is how far any of these things are unique to the Brits. None of them, I would have thought. But perhaps the mixture is characteristic?
However it is, I can recommend the book. I saw many things in it which I recognise as my own interests/method/voice, and many other things I didn’t recognise at all. So the experience was one of mingled self discovery and amused bafflement, both of which were great fun!
Why do women write m/m romance?
This seems to be a perennial question. Answer it once and it dies down like a dandelion only to spring up in three new places in a week’s time. People seem terribly concerned that women should do anything so strange, and they offer explanations which to me seem stranger than the fact itself.
The latest of these concerned commentators surfaced recently on the ERWA ‘Smutters’ column here: http://www.erotica-readers.com/ERA/SL/JR-Turn-ons_and_Squicks.htm
If I’m reading this correctly it seems to conclude (it’s hard to say, because the reasoning is not exactly coherent throughout) that in this author’s opinion women write m/m because they dislike women. If they did not dislike women, she seems to think, then they would naturally want to write about women. They would not want to write a genre which by its very nature excludes the possibility of a woman being one of the two main characters.
This explanation sounds quite convincing until you start asking actual m/m writers why they write what they write. Once you do that, it rapidly becomes clear that the picture is more complicated and that one size very much does not fit all.
So, here is a quick summary of the reasons I personally write m/m, and the reasons I have heard other people give for why they write it.
First of all – why shouldn’t we write m/m?
Why do some people decide to write crime when others decide to write romance? Why do some desperately want to write science fiction, and some can’t imagine doing anything other than horror? What is it that draws some authors to chick lit and some to historicals? I venture to suggest that the same mechanism is in play with the m/m genre. This is simply what some people are wired up to write.
For my part, the stories which have come into my head have been m/m stories from the moment I started writing at age 11. I didn’t choose it – it’s just been the way my mind has always worked.
Surely the question ‘but why do you write m/m of all things?’ indicates more about the questioner’s attitude than the writer’s. Is there something wrong with m/m? Something more peculiar about it than other genres? Something that needs more justification than other genres? I don’t think so.
No one asks a crime writer to become a murderer in order to write about psychopaths, or insists that science fiction writers ought to be alien lifeforms before they can write about other species. Why should a woman not be perfectly capable of, and entitled to write about men?
But still, some reasons:
There are several different reasons I’m aware of for women to want to write m/m, and I’m sure there are other reasons I’m not aware of. This is a short list off the top of my head:
1. One man is sexy, two men doubly so.
Just as many men enjoy the thought of two women together, many women enjoy the thought of two men together. Why not? Men are sexy. If you’re reading a story in which they are both viewpoint characters you have the treat of being able to identify with whichever hero you find it easiest to empathise with and still be able to admire the other one through his eyes.
Rationalizing the appeal of two men together can probably be done, but why should we have to? Too many people have tried to tell women in the past what their sexuality should be. To them I say ‘tough’. I find this sexy. Whatever guilt trip you try to impose on me to try and ‘correct’ this kink, I’m not buying it. Why shouldn’t I write stories celebrating and enjoying something that I find very lovely?
2. M/M relationships are not plagued by the same gender stereotypes as m/f.
If we want to examine what a truly equal relationship feels like – a relationship without any of the inbuilt prejudices and assumptions which have dogged us as women for millennia – m/m is a good place to do that. We don’t have to struggle with or against the reader’s expectations. We don’t have the baggage of centuries to deal with. We can just put that all down and start off at a position of equality that in real life we still haven’t necessarily reached. It’s a refreshing imaginative break from a society that still at times treats us as second class citizens.
3. M/M fiction is edgy and transgressive and it makes the writer feel as though they’re doing something cool.
4. M/M fiction is an attempt to correct an overwhelming preponderance of heterosexual messages in the rest of the media, whether that’s movies, books or TV, and make sure that another segment of the population has romance novels which are relevant to them. The desire to examine and celebrate love is the same whether the love is m/m, f/f or m/f.
5. M/M fiction is a way to write about GBLT relationships without having to fit the story into the more constrained, domestic sphere which history has traditionally allotted to women. In other words, particularly if you’re writing historical fiction, it’s easier to believably add a mixture of action/adventure to m/m fiction than f/f fiction, simply because society made it all but impossible for women to be involved with the ‘outer’ world of politics, war, the professions etc.
6. M/M fiction is selling well, and to market-savvy writers it looks like the up and coming place to be.
I’m sure there are more reasons than this. If you have a different one, why not add it in the comments? J
To the question ‘can m/m fiction ever be motivated by misogyny?’ I’m sure the answer is ‘yes, at times it can’. I would be surprised if there was any genre of fiction where none of the writers were tainted by misogyny, if only because it’s such a staple of our culture that – like other sins – if we say we are without it, we deceive ourselves. But to tar the whole genre with the same brush is both unhelpful and unscholarly. It smacks of having come to the conclusion beforehand and bent the data to fit it.
In my experience, most people write not because they have an agenda but because they have stories to tell. If you have an explanation for why some stories turn up in your head and others don’t – why some are impossible to write and some can’t be stopped – you’re doing a great deal better than I can. Do comment! I’d love to hear it.
We had our first event in costume with the Mannered Mob this weekend. We went down to Gilbert White’s house in Selbourne on Friday night and camped in a field adjoining his extensive back garden in order to be able to start, bright and early, on Saturday morning.
Gilbert White was an 18th Century naturalist, but for some reason the owners of the house decided that they wanted something more interesting to the public than just some servants in the house, and they also asked NFOE to attend. NFOE (New France and Old England) are a reenactment society which specializes in the French and Indian War. So while the house was occupied by the Mannered Mob, portraying servants, a couple of ladies, an English gentleman and a visiting Scottish Lord, the grounds were occupied with French, English and Native American troops. This was bizarre but fun, and we eventually compromised by deciding that we must be somewhere in Canada.
As my family had not got any 18th Century clothes at all, we borrowed what kit we could. Ailith, my possibly transgender, possibly only tomboyish daughter as usual insisted on being a boy and had to be known as David all weekend. She ended up as a hanger on in the British Army camp:
Andrew became Gilbert White’s gardener, and spent most of the weekend either hanging round the kitchen or terrifying small children with a gin-trap (which is like a bear trap, but for rabbits). At one point in the proceedings he got paid to keep silent about a run-away servant girl who had broken her indentures, and managed (later) to also get paid for turning her in. This struck me as highly appropriate behaviour for a mere servant.
He was very fond of the gaiters he’s wearing there, though mainly because they concealed the fact that he was wearing stripy red and black woolen stockings under his breeches.
I discovered the joys of 18th Century clothes too, and learned that when dressing in the morning it’s important to put your shoes on *before* your stays because you can’t buckle them up afterwards. So dressing goes: shift (which you sleep in), stockings + garters, shoes, first petticoat (gathered skirt) then stays on top. Then pockets tied on top of the stays, then a second petticoat, then a kerchief to make sure you’re not showing any cleavage, then a jacket, then an apron/pinafore and a cap on top.
I spent most of my time in the kitchen, where we made some nice 18th Century desserts. (Because we weren’t allowed to light a fire in the hearth, we had to cook stuff which didn’t need heat.) I made cream of preserved peaches – which was a sort of mousse which required whisking for an hour. Then marchpane, which we made from blanched almonds, sugar and rosewater, pounded together for four hours in a pestle and mortar, syllabub, and lemon sherbet. The lemon sherbet also needed grinding for a couple of hours to turn the sugar into a fine powder. Due to health and safety regulations we were not allowed to let the public try any of these, so we ate them all ourselves, and they were all really lovely. Especially the sherbet, which was amazing!
Meanwhile our silk clad upper-class members were in the parlour playing the harpsichord, singing, dancing and playing cards. Rose managed to get herself a cushy job as the Lady’s secretary and also sat in the parlour, writing out various legal documents. As a testament to her middling-sort status, she got to wear a much posher jacket than mine.
With all those layers, not to mention the corset, I expected the clothes to be something of a trial, but in fact they were very easy to wear. The petticoats are very gathered, so they fall quite far away from the legs and don’t encumber you at all from walking. The shoes are excellent. The stays – as long as you don’t do them too tight – are also surprisingly comfortable. They don’t stop you from breathing at all, but they do support the bust and back, give you amazing posture and mean that you move with noticeably more dignity and poise.
I only have this picture of the upper class men, dancing on the lawn, but I can certainly report that wigs are worn unpinned and look very fine, and that an embroidered golden silk waistcoat with a suit of dark green superfine wool, topped with wig and tricorne, is going to turn heads no matter who wears it 🙂
I’ve been reading a book called ‘Albion: The Origins of the English Imagination’, by Peter Ackroyd, in which he examines popular thought and literature in Britain since the Saxons in order to identify common threads. That’s a book which deserves a post of its own, but more on that later. For now, I thought it was interesting that one of the things he said the British were obsessed with was the past.
My father, among other people, has always maintained that the British are obsessed with our past because it was more glorious than our present. He thinks it’s a little pathetic of us, to be frank. So I was amused to have it pointed out to me that whenever you look at British culture, we have always been obsessed with the past.
The first piece of fiction written in English, in fact; the epic poem Beowulf, written down some time in the 8th century, but clearly composed earlier, is set in a past which had already become legendary. The first piece of fiction in English is a historical, in fact 🙂 As a historical novelist, this warms my heart.
However, in a blinding change of tactic, I’m going to use this fact as an excuse to post some pictures of what I did at the weekend. I’m a member of the Saxon re-enactment society, Regia Anglorum who attempt to recreate the society in which Beowulf was first performed.
One of the enormous things we have done over the past ten years has been to buy some pine-infested land in Kent, clear it of the trees and build an Anglo-Saxon longhall on it. This has been done with nothing more than the volunteer, amateur work of the members of our society, who’ve turned their hands to tree clearing, landscaping, post hole digging, carpentry, wattle and daub, lime plastering and roofing with hand cut oak shingles. After about 10 years work, the longhall is almost finished and it looks like this:
At the weekend we were doing various jobs such as fitting the shutters to the windows and putting on the final, blinding white, finishing coat of lime plaster. (Not quite blinding yet because it hasn’t had time to dry yet.)
Inside we’ve begun to furnish it with necessary articles such as lamps:
Meanwhile, outside, we’ve brought our society’s longships into the area because it’s cheaper to dry-dock them here than it is to pay mooring fees. I spent most of my time there taking down and coiling the running and standing rigging, and spreading out the sails to dry before rolling them back up again and lashing them down under a tarpaulin to stay dry.
Oh, there’s also a hive in the corner there – we had heard there was a swarm in the area, so we were trying to catch it. We’ll transfer it to a more appropriate skep if we get it 🙂 And speaking of wildlife, we’re lucky to have managed to buy this land in the centre of a wildlife preserve, full of the kind of animals with which the Saxons would have been very familiar:
(There are wolves too, but I didn’t get a picture of them). Altogether, I like to think it’s a modern triumph of the antiquarian spirit, such as would do both Peter Ackroyd and the Beowulf poet proud 🙂
There’s a great discussion going on here at the ‘Romancing the Blog‘ blog about one of the reasons NY publishers have for being unwilling to risk publishing m/m romance. Namely the idea that the female reader needs a female heroine to identify with. Someone’s also raised the ‘well it won’t sell as romance, but if you package it as erotica it might’ point. That seems to me essentially wrongheaded, as I know a lot of people who would buy romance but wouldn’t go looking for it in erotica.
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The auction at , author of ‘Lieutenant Samuel Blackwood (deceased)’ over on her blog:
She’s also written a fantastic review of my book, ‘Captain’s Surrender’
Says Emma:
‘Beautifully written?’ Nonsense. It’s far better than ‘beautiful’; “Captain’s Surrender” is a great novel, one of the best I’ve read in a long time. Period. There are those wonderful characterisations of Joshua Andrews and Peter Kenyon, the authentic tone and description of the settings, transporting the reader right aboard a ship of the Royal Navy in the 18h century, all those lovingly added details that give the tale a true, authentic ring.
Those facts alone would have already been enough to draw my sleeve in for this book; but on top of that, Alex Beecroft is also one of the few authors who manage to write the reader right into the story. She makes her readers watchers, observers, analysts – she makes them care about her creations. At times this becomes almost uncomfortable; one feels like an intruder, a spy on the lives of Joshua and Peter. How can it be right for us to know their feelings if they are still in the dark? A brilliantly told story; gripping, upsetting, touching, captivating.
You know, I can’t help thinking she underestimates her ability as a reviewer! I’m not sure I can think of any way this could be better!
If you like the sound of ‘Captain’s Surrender’ after that, it’s available HERE in ebook or print from Linden Bay Romance, or HERE by ordering from Amazon.
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I’ve been doing no writing this week. I just couldn’t bring myself to. But I think I’ve figured out that the block was due to me being in the wrong PoV , so I’m in hopes of productivity next week 😉
And I saw Prince Caspian at the weekend. It was OK, I thought, but I loved the ‘magic’ parts of the book best, and they were very minimized in the film, in favour of an almost historical war movie feel. It was very minimal as far as the ‘sense of wonder’ went. Seriously, people, do try not to make every fantasy film out there look like the Battle of Helm’s Deep. I loved the walking trees though!
Servant of the Seasons: Winter, by Lee Benoit
I think I raved about the first episode of this series; Autumn, but Winter is even better. To sum up what happens so far: ex-dome dweller Edor has been ‘turfed’ – thrown out of his high tech world in the domes to survive, or not, in the outside world. In Autumn, he scrapes his way through a terrible winter in an abandoned farmstead, too ignorant to do more than cultivate a few beans and hope to lie low in case anyone more dangerous passes by. When his unpleasant neighbour trades him a couple of slaves, however, things begin to look up.
The slaves, Tywyll and Lys, are Novigi, tied to the land and to each other. They change with the seasons, and their presence slowly enables the land to become productive. They also teach Edor all kinds of new skills which he needs to survive.
Autumn ends with the three of them well set up to go through Winter. Tywyll and Lys are lovers, and their health and colouring wax and wane with the seasons, with one of them strongest in winter, one in summer.
‘Winter’ continues the slow but delicious unfolding of information about this alien world and these alien people. There are more sinister hints about the dreaded Salters – an enemy whom everyone fears, but whom we haven’t actually met yet. Tywyll, like a winter sprite, runs with the wolves, while Lys goes through his mid-winter sleep. Edor, who is coming off the chemical they gave him in the dome to keep him sexually inactive, slowly gets in touch with his own desires and is drawn into the love between his two guests. And the outer world intrudes in the form of a refugee barge coming down the river with troubling news and even more shocking cargo.
If possible this is even more beautifully written than ‘Autumn’, but what impressed me most was the fact that it gets more alien as it goes along. As we find out more about this world, the less similar it seems to anything I’ve read before, and I’m a long term SF/Fantasy reader. Originality is a rare thing in a fantasy world, and when you couple it with psychological realism, building UST and escalating suspense, you have a series that keeps on getting better. I can’t wait to see what happens next!
A little excerpt is available here if you want to check it out 🙂
I was browsing for something to read in WHSmiths and saw issue 5 of the Torchwood Magazine. Normally I’m not one for buying the tie-in magazines for TV shows, but the front cover story of this one was the Jack/Ianto relationship. Or, as they call it, ‘Jack & Jones’.
‘Go you!’ I thought. ‘Finally an acknowledgment that this is a big factor in the show’s appeal, rather than just an afterthought.’ So I bought it. And I’m really quite glad I did, because there was stuff in there which doesn’t seem to have made it into fandom knowledge yet. Such as the fact that the Zombie resurrection thread which ended up going to Owen was originally planned for Ianto.
After all the ‘King Ianto’s Coffee Club’ icons I’ve seen going around fandom, it was a weird blast of deja vu to find Gareth talking about how someone had told him all about it, and even made it a logo. And it was with a great sense of fandom pride that I grinned at this page:
I was also very interested in what Gareth said about Ianto’s love for the stopwatch, his diary, and old films: he likes things which are low-tech, and which are therefore more reliable. Things which are not going to die on him just when he needs them; because there’s a power shortage or whatever. And in that context, that is part of what he likes about Jack. Jack’s immortality means that Jack is not going to unexpectedly die on him either. To that extent, Jack is far more solid and reliable than anyone else. Given how much Ianto is clearly prepared to invest in a relationship, and his experience with Lisa, that just seems to make so much sense.
Altogether more thoughtful stuff than I expected in a tie-in magazine. And I liked the fashion tips too 😉 (Apparently Ianto’s earlier suits are Marks and Spencers’ best, whereas recently he’s been going for designer. Shame on him! I assumed he’d be into bespoke tailoring, given his father. But perhaps he can’t afford that yet?)
Available from Titan Magazines
I spent most of the day so far in Addenbrookes hospital, where I’d been drafted to drive my husband home after he’d had his kidney stone zapped with ultrasonic rays. Something which apparently leaves the victim patient literally shaken up. Unfortunately after x-rays it turned out that the stone had moved and was now being protected by his pelvis. Which meant strike that plan and he has to go back on Wednesday for an operation. For a couple of hours we bounced like pinballs from one reception area to another as they did preparatory tests for that, and then we payed six pounds carparking! and came home.
Writing wise I’ve had my nose to the grindstone this week and have added 5,000 words to False Colors, out of a total of 15,000 which Perseus want me to add. So it’s now 90,000 words long, and I’m not envisaging any trouble in adding another 10k. Three thousand of that five went into the final chapter alone! I think I’d got to the stage where I just wanted it to end, dammit! So the last few chapters are distinctly thin, and an extra 5k words here and there are very welcome 🙂
As for the blogging thing. I posted a bit of musing on the subject of The Muse, on the Macaronis blog yesterday. I lay odds that most of my friends list will be able to put a name to my mysterious muse 😉
And today the Britwriters blog are holding their regular Friday Brit-picking clinic. So if you have a story where you need any information about Britain, ancient or modern, feel free to drop by and ask about it.
Oh, and I should also mention that I am taking part in Rainbow Reviews’ scavenger hunt this month. 44 books to win if you manage to track Rainbow Reviews’ logo down on each of the participating authors’ websites. Could be worth an afternoon of browsing 🙂
Despite the fact that I don’t cook or do housework unless I can possibly avoid it:
