New On My iBookshelf

I really should cut down on reading all those history-and-literature-based blogs. :-) I keep coming across interesting comments and stopping to go to Project Gutenberg or the iBook store to download yet more stuff.

In the last few days I have downloaded some classics. I do have Pride And Prejudice and Wuthering Heights somewhere on my print shelves, but where? So I downloaded both from PG, because I felt like a reread. I probably have a copy of Culpeper's Herbal somewhere in my overcrowded study too, but it's handy to have it available at my elbow when I'm working on my latest piece of fiction. So that was downloaded as well, though not from Project Gutenberg, because for some reason that one wasn't there. It was in iBooks for about $4, though, so I bought it. There's an introduction by Dr Johnson and the author himself has a letter to hs wife, which must have been written shortly before his death in 1654.

I discovered Escape Publishing, an ebook small press which seems to be entirely a romance themed list - fantasy, SF, YA, thrillers - any genre as long as it has romance in it. I bought Rayessa And The Space Pirates by my friend Donna Hanson, which cost me the massive sum of 99c and a thriller, which cost more, but looks like fun, though I am already noticing that the youthful university academic is called "Professor" though it's set here in Australia and in this country that term is only used for the head of department. She might conceivably have gained her PhD by her mid-twenties, if she'd had accelerated education, but Professor? Highly unlikely - and the murder victim is also a Professor in the same department! Never mind. It's a list worth checking out. I'm looking into it as a potential market.

I believe they have a pile of books for 99c right now, but if nothing else, get Rayessa.

And I've been having a ball with my ebook apps! One is good for even novel-length books, though there are limits - I can't work out a way to do italics, for example. Even if you have them in the original MS they disappear when you paste them. And while you can insert video, audio, pictures, you can't do it on the same page. This limits its use for school, where we ave kids with reading difficulties, including one bright, articulate dyslexic who deserves better than a picture book aimed at younger kids. There's another app which does allow picture and  text on the same page, even voice, which makes it good for an all-in-one talking book, but the amount of text on the page is very limited.

Still, I've used both. With the first-mentioned I have turned my WIP into an ebook I can just read, while keeping the MS in my Pages folder for later. With the second I have been showing other teachers some possible options for our kids with reading difficulties. And the art teacher can prepare her booklets as ebooks for the younger students, who will hopefully have ther iPads soonish. Saves photocopying and can be changed easily.

I have all these things sitting on my virtual shelf - nice!

A Feast Of Ice And Fire: The Official Companion Cookbook By Chelsea Monroe-Cassel and Sarann Lehrer. London: HarperVoyager, 2012

This book is connected with George R.R. Martin's great fantasy series - the books, not the TV series. If you've been reading them, you may have noticed how often people eat! Whether it's Jon Snow and his fellow Night Watch members having a hot and hearty meal on the Wall, a seventy-seven course banquet at King Joffrey's wedding, Sansa and her lemon cakes or Arya living on what she can on the streets, characters eat - and the author describes their meals with great relish(pardon the pun). In some ways, it reminds me of all the food being consumed in TV science fiction show Babylon 5(and that, too, has a cookbook!). The book opens with an enthusiastic introduction by George R.R. Martin, whose fans presented him with baskets of IAF foods they had cooked when he went on a signing tour for the fifth book in the series. Lucky man!

The Song Of Ice And Fire series is set at least partly in a word like fifteenth century Europe and the food is accordingly period. (Well, mostly, anyway. There are some fruits and veggies that came from North America well after that era, but hey, it's GRRM's world!) The authors of this book, who run a food-connected Ice And Fire web site, Inn At The Crossroads, don't just experiment with food like that described in the novels, they research it in mostly mediaeval and Renaissance era books. So the recipes they have reproduced here are the real thing, adapted somewhat for the modern era.

The book is divided into sections based on the different settings of the books - the Wall, the north, the south, King's Landing, Dorne and "Across the Narrow Sea". There's a chapter at the start, on stocking a medieval kitchen, with some suggested substitutes for ingredients one just can't get in the supermarket, but also some of the basics, such as "poudre douce" and "poudre forte", spice mixtures which are used in a lot of medieval recipes and can be easily enough made up and popped in the pantry for when you need them.

With each recipe, there's a quote from one of the books about the particular dish, then the recipe from whichever early cookbook it came from. Then the recipe is in modern English. You are often given the choice between the medieval or a modern version. I'm rather keen to try the medieval version of apple cakes, which are, we're told, an ancestor of the doughnut, though you don't seem to need to deep fry them. There are also recipes for standard pitta bread and hummus, which appear in the novels as flatbread and chickpea paste. Well, there are a lot of foods that have been around for a while, which don't require you to research mediaeval recipes! (I once found an Ancient Greek recipe for honey pancakes which my Greek library technician told me they're still making). And one recipe, for Tyroshi honeyfingers, is taken from Apicius's Roman cookbook.

The authors are very adventurous in their cooking, but I think I might skip the honey-spiced locusts!

A wonderful, well-researched book that should be of use both to those who want to try some of the foods described in such detail in the books and to those fantasy writers who want a starting place for their own writing. I know I'm going to keep this in my own reference collection.

New Books On My Shelves

The other day I decided I had really better spend the lovely gift voucher I received from the WA school where I paid a virtual visit last year( thank you, Anthony Panegyres! ). So I went to Dymock's and after browsing through the fiction and remembering how many review copies I still had to read, I decided it might be better to pick up a couple of things that could help me in my writing. As I'm a writer of mediaeval fantasy, I wandered over to the history section. 

I love history. Even history textbooks usually have something worth reading for the general public, but my preference runs to "history of" books written for entertainment - I have histories of chocolate, tourism, food, medicine, herbalism, even the Four Humours. 

There were plenty of bios, such as those by Alison Weir, who does bios of the early kings and queens of England, and very enjoyable they are, too, but as I'm unlikely to create a character based on Anne Boleyn in my Next BigThing novel, which is a teen fantasy with werewolves, I ended up choosing two more general books,  The Time Traveller's Guide To Medieval England by Ian Mortimer and Vanished Kingdoms: The History Of Half-Forgotten Europe by Norman Davies. 

The first one is a chatty general introduction to daily life in fourteenth century England, which pretends that you're travelling around the country and tells you what you can expect in different types of household, in the country and in town, sort of a Lonely Planet Guide. It uses medieval writings to back it up. I'm already past halfway and reading about why you really, really  WOULDN'T want to live in this time. Forget the violence, the sexism, the coarse sense of  humour, such as the mediaeval joke about the two merchants chatting about their home life(one says his last three wives hanged themselves in the garden and the other guy asks for a cutting from that tree.) The main reason you wouldn't want to live there is the weird medical practices.

I have only started the intro to the second book, but I know I'm going to like it. It's about all those kingdoms that no longer exist - something that is likely to give me ideas, but also sounds thoroughly entertaining in its own right. The author says he was growing up when the sun never set on the British Empire and guess what? He suggests that people hundreds of years from now will be wondering about OUR lost empires!

I think I've spent my gift voucher well.

English Fairy Tales - Just Downloaded From Project Gutenberg

I love Project Gutenberg! There are so many classics, so much useful stuff. I already have some Andrew Lang, but on the Sur La Lune Fairytales site I found Joseph Jacobs, who collected English, Celtic and other folk tales in the nineteenth century and while you could read them on the web site, complete with notes, I opted to get at least one of the books on Gutenberg. I started with the English Fairy Tales book. Even the introduction is charming. He argues that while there aren't too many fairies in them, you aren't going to get children asking their nurse or grandmother for "another folk-tale/ nursery tale."

I have browsed through some of them, as well as the Celtic ones on Sur La Lune and found versions of Snow White, Rumpelstiltskin, the Pied Piper, Cinderella, The Juniper Tree and Clever Else. I keep thinking,"hang on, I've read this somewhere!" And of course, I have. There are a lot of stories that just keep turning up over and over, in countries unconnected with each other.

There are evil stepmothers everywhere and heroes and heroines who break their promises to supernatural beings and live happily ever after. Serve them right for trusting humans!

It's all handy for the writing. I'm off to have breakfast and do some writing. There are some good stories to be played with out there!

Some More Useful Stuff For Writers

While checking out my bookmarks, I came back to a great web site called Writers' Resources. This particular one is for the benefit of historical novelists, but if you, like me, write fantasy set in historical-type/mediaeval societies, it's also a treasure trove, with its links to some great sites that can help you look up everything from old terms for diseases to names.

And names are important. You really can't afford to stuff them up. Not long ago, I got a request for a review of a book which starts in Salem during the witch trials and has a character with that well-known Pilgrim name Natasha. I am a kind person, plus I can't bring myself to read a book which puts me off in the blurb, so I said no. There was plenty more in that blurb that suggested the author hadn't done much, if any, historical research.

Check out this entertaining article on the subject of naming, Name That Character! Or try this one: 8 Tips For Naming Your Characters.

If you're thinking of writing crime fiction there are plenty of forensics web sites, but never underestimate the power of general encyclopaedias such as About.com. Here's an article about crime scene insects. I suspect if I ever write crime fiction it's going to be a cosy, but you may be planning a thriller.

One of my favourite research web sites, which I share with my students, is How Stuff Works. It sounds like a technical web site, but there's a lot more. It's a sort of encyclopaedia of everything. Right now, there's an item on"how mistletoe works" with the historical background and one on Santa's elves.

Good luck with your research!

The Writer's Forensics Blog: Another Useful Blog For Writers

I found this on Jordyn Redwood's "how to hurt your hero" blog and have signed up for email notification. The site is called The Writer's Forensics Blog and has regular posts about things of interest to the kind of writer who needs to hurt a hero for the purposes of a crime novel or thriller. I have to admit, I've not written such fiction, but you never know when you're going to need information about whether the poison of the blue-ringed octopus can turn you into a zombie if it doesn't kill you, or some of the weird things people eat, which kill them.wri

I'm a big fan of forensics, probably starting with my childhood dream of becoming an archaeologist.

The author, D.P.Lyle, has written a lot of books himself, both fiction and non-fiction, and has helped out with forensic information for a large number of TV crime shows, so I think he'd know what he's talking about!

Why not wander over and check it out?

A Find, A Veritable Find!

I LOVE the Internet and ebooks! I have found, at last...

But first, for my friend Stephanie Campisi, a Haiku with unicorns in it, based on Wolfborn:

Golden sky above,
My friend's horse a unicorn,
Armand, you are shamed!

Okay, I can see a real Haiku poet sneering, but it has the five/seven/five thing and it does feature nature as required, so hope you like it, Steph! You really did like that scene, didn't you? (g)

If you haven't read the book yet, it's in Chapter 9, set in the Faerie Otherworld, and has the kind of silliness both Steph and I enjoy. I do silly. I can't help it. 

Now, speaking of Faerie, I have at last acquired an e-copy of Robert Kirk's The Secret Commonwealth Of Elves, Fauns And Fairies, written back in the 17th century and a classic, a must for writers of the kind of folklore fiction I write. This edition has an introduction by Adrew Lang, who did all those coloured "Fairy Books" (I have the Blue one on my virtual shelves, courtesy of Project Gutenberg). It's said that Robert Kirk never died but was carried off by the Fairies. Well, I'm still reading the intro because Andrew Lang was a big name in folklore himself, and am having a ball. And you know how it is when you read something and, to paraphrase Helene Hanff,author of 84 Charing Cross Road, you find something interesting and say, "Hold on a minute!" and go check it out? Of course, she was writing a long time ago, when you had to go look it up in the library, but I bet she would have loved the Internet, which was just starting when she died. 

So, there were references to a book by Sir Walter Scott, on witchcraft and demonology, and like Ms Hanff, I said,"Hold it right there!" and went to find it with my good friend Mr Gutenberg and there it was. The intro to that one told me things I hadn't known, such as that he spent the last years of his life paying off a massive debt that wasn't his fault. Poor Walter!

But his book is there now, on my virtual shelves.

And I have the famous Secret Commonwealth! It was one of the books Melissa Marr used in her research for the Wicked Lovely series. Se really did some good research for those, some of them books I already had, such as The Fairy Faith In Celtic Countries, but this was one that had eluded me till now. And for $2.99 I now have access to it. There is an online edition, but I'd rather do it as an ebook, much easier to handle, and you can flip the pages.

Research is so much easier since the Internet!

PS What do you mean you haven't read 84 Charing Cross Road? It's a must-read for anyone who is passionate about books and reading.

Fairy Tales And Looking Them Up( from my other blog)

Last year I went to Swancon, where I attended a workshop on fairy tales by Juliet Marillier, who writes the most wonderful fairy tale-themed fiction herself. One of the things she told us about was a web site called Sur A Lune Fairy Tales which had all these variations on the folk tales we know and plenty we don't. Of course, I ended up bookmarking it. It was full of the kind of stuff that would give me writing ideas, and you don't even need to stick to Grimm or Perrault. For example, I'd written a story inspired by Snow White, and I found out tat there were versions of the story all over, not even only in Europe - some were in Lybia and Mozambique!

This evening I had a browse through the Cinderella stories, which are also pretty international. There was one before Perrault and Grimm, by someone called Basile, and oh, it was nasty! This Cinderella commits murder! She hates her stepmother, so her governess suggests she kills her by dropping a chest lid on her neck, which she does, then talk her Dad into marrying the governess, who then turns out to have six daughters and the rest of it is fairly familiar, with maybe a few small differences.

I mean - yuk! And the first stepmother didn't actually send her to the kitchen, just got up her nose.

The French Cinderella, Cendrillon, is a bit passive, but at least she doesn't kill anyone and her sisters are married to gentlemen of the court, not, like in the German version, cutting off their toes to fit the slipper. ( Well, okay, I wouldn't want to be one of 

Cinders' brothers-in-law and you can imagine her asking her new husband which of his courtiers he wanted to annoy...)

It's funny, though, how you can start with one thing and find yourself looking up something else. I was reading a blog post onThe History Girls about fleas in history. There was a quote from a fourteenth century book called The Goodman Of Paris, about how to keep your husband happy by making sure you get rid of fleas. I wondered if that was available from Project Gutenberg and instead I found a collection of fairy tales translated from Norse in the 19th century and that had an introduction mentioning the Scottish version of Cinderella. I wondered if that was up on my favourite fairy tale site. It was mentioned, but due to copyright isn't on line, so I had a look at some others instead and there was an Italian version, Cenerentola, which is the one I mention above. And this comes from a collection that was on the web site in full.

It was fun even back when I had to look up what I wanted in a book, but now it's even better, because I can go straight to a web site. You never know what you're going to find out there, if you check out a link.

How To Hurt Your Hero - The Latest

I just love Jordyn Redwood's web site. It's one of those things that makes the Internet so wonderful. If you're an Aussie writer who was doing fan fiction back in the eighties you might remember a lady called Mary G.T.Webber, a doctor, whose article "How To Hurt Your Hero" was so very popular because it told enthusiastic fan writers what they could and couldn't do to their heroes in their hurt/comfort stories. ( I'm still giggling over the woman whose hero broke his spleen and she wasn't the worst of them). That was years before the Internet and even now it can be hard to be sure which web sites have got it right. But Redwood's Medical Edge is a blog written by an experienced emergency room nurse who is, herself, a writer. She knows what she's talking about and so do her guest writers, one of whom has, in the latest post, answered the question of a writer who wants her heroine hurt badly by glass in the back in a car crash.

If you're a writer who wants to injure your character and you'd like to get it right, do check out this blog. Even when she's not answering writing-related questions, her guest biggers are talking about fascinating medical conditions of famous people in history. A great blog!

On a totally unrelated matter, it was On This Day in 1957, October 4, that Sputnik went into orbit, exciting the SF fans and scaring the US government. But it started the space race and if that was about military applications, it did lead to better reasons for going to space and a "sensawunda"(sense of wonder) that makes me love science fiction with a passion I feel for no other genre.