Prithee, Mistress, what art thou about, fixed to that glowing square as though ’twas a broadsheet? Art though mazed by its unearthly glow? Nay, surely it will bewitch thee, and thou shouldst smash it. Smash it now afore thy soul be sucked from thy very bones! Funny, right? Me talking in bad mimicry of the…
The summer holidays have thankfully come to an end, edits on the Trowchester books can only last so long, and that leaves me with the rest of the year to write something new. So, what should it be? I’m currently writing a fantasy about three sets of people from diverse cultures who get stranded together…
*g* It’s a slightly inflammatory title, I admit, but I do have a point, though it would be clearer if I rephrased it as “History and Historical Fantasy, is there a difference?” I’m discussing this over on the Samhain Romance blog https://www.samhainpublishing.com/2013/03/history-and-fantasy-is-there-a-difference/ and although I wouldn’t say I was 100% serious about it, having seen…
How come I know a bunch of boring stuff about Henry VIII and didn’t know about this? As part of my ongoing love affair with all things Romanian, I now discover that in Roman times they had artifacts of spectacular weirdness and opulence. Why have I not heard of the Dacians before? I was assuming…
That feeling you get when you open a mysterious cardboard box, unexpectedly delivered by the postman in the morning, and lift out the glossy-backed print copy of a book you wrote yourself. Actually, there is something like it, and it’s the feeling you get when you hold your new child. Admittedly, the second thing is…
So, it’s worth thinking about light, if you’re writing a historical novel, particularly if you live and/or were brought up in a city. We moderns are as unaware of light as a fish is of water. We switch it on where we need it, and the night goes away in an even wash of colourless…
This weekend saw me in two layers of thermals and a big black coat playing as one of Coton Morris Men’s musicians, and can I just say that (a) the inventor of handwarmers is hereby promoted by me to the status of a minor god, and (b) nobody told me that whistle players need to…
In the course of writing a certain scene I was wondering to myself ‘I wonder how I can describe John’s smell’. I wanted something that combined cream, salt and citrus (from his lemon and bergamot cologne), and after a bit of Googling I came up with yet another reason that the 18th Century was indeed…
