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.

Writing A Book On Crime: Researching Crime Time

Having been reading and enjoying the History Girls blog for the last few weeks, I thought perhaps I might do a History Girls-type post here, about how I researched a book I wrote, and perhaps when you've read it you might like to check out the sample chapter I have on this blog. It's the story of the April Fool's Day bungled robbery, of which more later.

About four years ago, I decided to take a term off from school, on long service leave. I had no special plans, except a bit of travel and some writing of articles and short fiction. I was just about to start my nice long break when I received an email from Paul Collins of Ford Street Publishing. I had written some short fiction for Paul before, but he knew I had written a lot of non-fiction(in fact, I'd recently completed an article about forensic science for the NSW School Magazine, at their request.)

Paul explained that his partner Meredith Costain had done a book called Fifty Famous Australians and he had an idea for a book on fifty infamous Australians. Would I be interested in writing it?

Is the Pope a Catholic?

When you write non-fiction for children, you have to be prepared to write about anything, and I had been doing that. Sometimes I suggested the topic; more often I was commissioned. I love writing about something unfamiliar, because I learn something new.

I did know a little bit about crime, due to my forensics article, and all the Underbelly gangland stuff in the newspapers. I'd read about it over the years. Who hasn't heard of Ned Kelly? And then there was the gruesome story of the Batavia, mutiny and murder.

But there was a lot to do here, not merely the fifty, but a whole lot of snippets for "Did You Know?" boxes. I prepared a long list of possible entries and visited my publisher to be briefed and discuss. This was a book for children. As such, it had to be written carefully so that there wouldn't be anything too detailed in the descriptions of the crimes. I knew that, Paul didn't have to tell me. At the same time, this was a history of crime, children Iove gruesome and I was adamant that this was not going to be a book to help with homework. Potentially it could help with homework, but it was for entertainment. Anything called Fifty Infamous Australians would sound like homework material. In the end, I didn't come up with the title Crime Time: Australians behaving badly, but at least it didn't imply homework!

There had to be a mixture of men and women, grim and humorous, scary and quirky and a vague historical timeline. I would start with the Batavia incident, when a Dutch ship was wrecked off the coast of Western Australia in the seventeenth century and while the captain was gone for help, members of the crew mutinied and murdered passengers and anyone who wouldn't join them.

In the end, though, I wrote the entries in no special order, deciding to sort them later. I knew a book on Australian crime without Ned Kelly would be like a history of women in science without Marie Curie, but I also learned that there was a Kelly brother, James, who lived to a ripe old age as a pillar of the community. And with the other bushrangers there was a lady called Mary Ann Bugg, the wife of Captain Thunderbolt, who was brave and strong and who kept them alive in the bush. I devoured books about Australian crime, from the Batavia to the present day. I read the newspapers for contemporary crime stories, including those I could use for the "Did You Know?" boxes.

Australia is rich in crime stories, the only problem being how to choose among them. There were some who,like Ned Kelly, couldn't be left out. Paul requested some and I duly researched them.

Because I understand how history writing works, I made sure that each of my entries had at least two, preferably more, sources. I remember one Internet source about the Hoddle Street massacre was suspiciously sympathetic to the murderer, for example. Likewise, there were articles protesting the innocence of one of the Whiskey Au Go Go nightclub fire bombers and those declaring the innocence of Martin Bryant, the Port Arthur killer. I had to be careful to get it right. Even newspapers vary in their reporting of the same story, and one book I read, by two respected crime historians, declared that Carl Williams left school at the age of eleven! (It was Year 11 at high school) A typo, for sure, but if you don't check it, you can end up with egg on your face.

I'd written a stack of stories about serial killers and murderous baby farmers and my poor editor was groaning at the horror of it all, when I decided it was time to get into the humorous or at least quirky. I appealed to my friends for suggestions. My friend Chris Wheat, a workmate and fellow YA novelist, told me about the April Fools' Day robbery, when two would-be thieves, Donna Hayes and Benjamin Jorgensen, attempted to rob the Cuckoo restaurant in the Dandenongs, and escaped with a bag of stale bread rolls.

Thank heavens for the Internet! I went to the Google News archive and found a stack of articles about the robbery. In the course of the stuff up he accidentally shot her. The newspapers couldn't agree on where she had been injured, so I mentioned them all, saying the papers had found the incident amusing and some had said this, others that. There are times when you have to make a decision; this wasn't one of them. In any case, you can read all about it right here.

Around this time, I also asked Kerry Greenwood, author of lots of crime fiction, if she could suggest something that wasn't serial killer grim. What she suggested was a murder, but a quirky one. It was, she said, every crime writer's nightmare: the story of Snowy Rowles, who, in the 1920s, was working with novelist Arthur Upfield on the Rabbit-proof Fence(even in those days most writers had day jobs). He used an idea proposed for a perfect murder in one of Upfield's novels and very nearly got away with it! In the event, he was caught, bits of the novel were published alongside the newspaper stories and the author suddenly found himself a bestseller, but that's a story for another post.

I travelled to Central Australia during all this and, one night, met a lovely grey nomad couple in a pub. Over dinner, I told them about my book and about Caroline Grills, the arsenic-and-old-lace poisoner who killed relatives with afternoon tea treats in the 1950s, whom I was currently researching.

"Oh, Caroline Grills? I knew her," the wife said casually, adding, "She was such a sweet woman!" She had been a nurse at Long Bay Jail, where Grills spent her last years. What more could a history researcher ask for? Even if I doubted she could be described as sweet, it did tell me how she appeared to others, if she could make herself liked even by the prison staff, who knew what she had done.

My final chapter was about Tony Mokbel. Paul had asked me to do a chapter on him and I was wondering how I could do this when I went out for coffee and opened a newspaper to find a large spread on his escape from Australia, which was a wonderfully quirky and funny story in its own right, without needing any major background. I had my final chapter!

There were other humorous stories, too many to recount here, but I loved the stories of con artist Murray Beresford Roberts, of the Russian librarian who hijacked a helicopter to spring her boyfriend from jail and then was caught out because of some overdue video library loans and "Dumb and Dumber", the two Australians working in the US who robbed a bank wearing their work IDs and escaped using their staff passes on ski lifts and Mary Wade, the child convict who robbed another child of her underwear in the toilets and became the ancestress of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. It's amazing how many of these stories were in the papers while I was researching, even the Mary Wade one.

The book was published in 2009, but I'm still fascinated by crime and read every crime article I can find in the papers, including things that happened to some of my villains after the book came out.

You never know when it will come in handy!

Hey, it's my world...Research for fantasy

The other day I wandered into a Twitter conversation about world building and just what is important in it. Should you worry about accuracy when you have made up your own world or should you just say," Hey, it's my world and I can do what I want with it!"? I can't do better than stick in a link to an article written many years ago by Poul Anderson, On Thud And Blunder" I read it in hard copy, can't recall where, but thanks to the wonders of the Internet, I can share it with you, and if you're wondering this about your own writing I do urge you to check it out.

 Poul Anderson is one of my favourite writers because there's an Anderson for whatever you're in the mood for. Hard SF? Sure. Space opera, high fantasy, historical fantasy, time travel, humour, he wrote it all. He was a member of the Society for Creative Anachronism, where he wore armour and competed in tournaments. He knew what horses could and couldn't do. So if anyone knew about world building it was him. And the point he makes in this article is that even if you're writing something set in your own world it will be based, to some extent, on this one, and that there are some things that are just practical common sense- like horses not being furry machines that can be ridden hard all night. And ships not getting you swiftly across the sea. And a city that doesn't have electricity being extremely dark at night, making it difficult for your barbarian hero to rush through the streets followed by the palace guards. For those who think their hero can slice a head or a leg off in one stroke, he suggests trying to do this with hanging meat.

 It's strange when people who wouldn't dream of writing science fiction without massive research think they can write fantasy without any, because, hey, there's magic. Even magic needs to have rules. Also, as long as you're creating a world with humans and terrestrial animals and plants, you really have to consider things that could and couldn't happen here.

And then there's culture. If you're going to write a story set in a version of medieval Europe, say, you need to realise how much of the lifestyle was based on the climate, the culture and religion. You can't for example, have an Arabic-style culture in a country with the climate of Norway. That might seem obvious when it's mentioned, but it's amazing how many novels are set in a land with a mishmash of cultures that don't mix. In one novel I read recently, the aristocrats in a hot country dressed and acted like those of eighteenth century France.

 You also can't leave out religion. The medieval world was overflowing with it. I remember reading one novel that was set in a country that suggested sixteenth century Europe, in great detail, to the extent that I was annoyed that I couldn't place it - but no one in it seemed to go to church or practise religion in any way. And that's just not going to work, because there would be things in the lifestyle that depend on religion. If you want to create your own religion, fine. Some top writers have done this. But make sure you create a culture that would go with it.

If you're going to take liberties, take liberties with a society you have researched. I read a LOT of books for Wolfborn. I didn't use anywhere near all of the information in the final draft, but it was enough that I could feel comfortable with the world I was creating and the world from which it came. I did take liberties, but I knew what I was taking liberties with. Sometimes my editor would say gently,"Sue, you can't do that. You KNOW that was not around in the twelfth century," and even though it wasn't the real twelfth century, I'd rewrite. Actually, I was flattered that she'd forgotten it wasn't this world. In fact, a number of reviewers forgot it wasn't this world, despite the three moons! By the way, I researched those too, to make sure I didn't get the science too wrong, even though it was a fantasy novel. True, I kept it vague. There wasn't a lot of information. (Actually, I read only recently that we might have had two moons at one time) Hell, I even joined the SCA many years ago and learned what you can and can't do in armour, just so my fantasy would work better!

 If you've read George R.R.Martin's Song of Ice And Fire, you'll notice that his world feels very real, because despite the strange climate cycle, he's used real history as his background. Even the armour - there's plate armour in the south and ring mail in the icy north and that makes sense; the folk living away from the centre of commerce would probably still be using grandad's old chain mail; armour would be expensive! He has created his own religions to go with this world, but in the context they work. So if you're going to write an epic, do make sure you've researched the society on which it's based, even if you have to join the SCA and get hit on your helmed head with a rattan sword. It will be worth the effort.

Things I Learned In Research

I'm doing research on the year 1964, specifically the visit of the Beatles to Melbourne in June of that year, for a potential story. I have been invited to submit something and was asked for historical fiction. I've already had a look on-line and downloaded some personal reminiscences and had a quick look at the Beatles interview and clips from the concert.

There isn't more than the slight beginnings of a tale as yet and who knows, maybe it won't work out, but I decided to immerse myself in 1964 anyway, and hoped to find a human interest story or two that might help. So I took advantage of term break to visit the State Library today, using the wonderful microfilm collection.

Here are some things I learned from the Sun, June 1964:

Women weren't allowed to serve on juries in Victoria. They also didn't get equal pay in teaching. Probably my nice old teacher that year, Mrs Jamieson, didn't care particularly; she was already in her 70s at the time. Most of my other teachers in those days were male anyway.

The movies playing in Melbourne cinemas included Lawrence of Arabia, 40 Pounds of Trouble and Cleopatra.

Big stage musicals starting that month: Carousel at the Princess, Camelot at Her Majesty's. Star of that one was Paul Daneman, who'd played the lead in London - and if you're a Blake's Seven fan you may remember him in an episode of that show.

There was a new opera singer called Robert Allman - I remember him in his later years, singing for Opera Australia, as Rigoletto and other baritone roles. A wonderful singer, and here he was in his youth, just starting out.

If you put in more than 30 shillings worth of orders at Spotless Dry Cleaners you got a free Beatles beaker (suitable for hot drinks!)

The Vietnam War was hovering. Oh, we weren't involved yet, except for a few military advisers over there, but it was coming. There were several chilling articles about it - chilling if, like me, you knew what was going to happen! I printed out some of those articles.

Human interest stories; a teenage schoolgirl called Susette Belle, President of the local fan club who desperately wanted to meet the Beatles and was granted her wish. A slightly older girl, Carol, who wanted to come to their concert, but lived in Tasmania and couldn't afford the trip over. After writing a 70,000 word letter to the Beatles - 814 pages! - she too got her wish, courtesy of the Sun. Cripes, 70,000 words! The length of a novel!

There was a lot of detail about the crowds outside the hotel. I have had a chat with my brother-in-law Gary, who was there. He didn't get to the concert - the tickets were sold out. He did remember standing in that crowd of 10,000 outside the Southern Cross and outside Festival Hall.

Another thing I learned was that you can save these pages on to a USB stick, so tomorrow I'm going back and take one with me!

Writing, small press and technology

I seem to have gotten into such a nice discussion with Adelaide about technology, I thought it might be better to do a post than continue with the comments chatter.

Recently, I did a panel on small press at the Continuum 5 SF convention. On my way to the panel, I found a lot of tables in the dealers' room, all selling small press science fiction books. That, of course, included my own, the Andromeda table.

Small press has been around for a very long time,as I remember from my early days in SF fandom. In Australia we had several, over the years - Norstrilia, Aphelion, Corey and Collins to name just a few off the top of my head. And those are just the ones that did books.

They worked hard and got their stuff printed and they published writers and artists who went on to become famous. Sean Tan, who did art for Aurealis when he was very young, has become an award-winner with many books under his belt.

But since computers became available to everyone who wanted them and then the Internet arrived, it has become a lot easier to publish. There's do-it-yourself desktop publishing that lets you do something that looks good without worrying about hiring someone to do the layout, and publishing on-line and artists can submit their work overseas if they want, by email; we commission plenty of overseas artists to do work for Andromeda Spaceways, both covers and internals, and we don't have to wait days and days for it to arrive and worry about whether it might have been damaged on the way. I remember the wonderful Marilyn Pride telling me once that she couldn't send her work overseas because publishers had tight deadlines. Well, Andromeda is done entirely on-line, until the printer gets the hard-copy to us. We meet on-line, slush on-line, edit and receive the finished product on-line; I've never even met most of the Andromeda co-op members.

Technologically, it is a wonderful time for small press to flourish. And technology means I no longer have to re-type entire manuscripts. Mind you, I do copy and paste into a new file when I am going to edit, so any future university academic who wants to do a PhD on the works of Sue Bursztynski - if any - will have no problem accessing my original MSS.

My last few books have been done almost entirely on computer, the editing done by email. I do like to meet editors, but there are some I have never met at all. My second editor, Sarah Brenan, was just a voice on the phone to me till after I had handed in the full manuscript of Potions To Pulsars: Women Doing Science, although I must admit it was a little before the time of email for me; we exchanged letters.

Research has become easier for me since the Internet. I do still use plenty of books, but because I am a librarian I can understand the difference between a good site and one that isn't likely to be of use, and it's amazing what you can find on the web. My book Rolling Right Along, a history of the wheel, included a chapter on the Ferris wheel, with a description of what the builder's wife was wearing at the launch. "Are you sure?" asked my editor. I was fairly sure, because my Internet research had unearthed a newspaper article written at the time by someone who was there. The World Wide Web is, for me, a massive library on the other side of the screen, just waiting for good researchers to use it properly.

For my book Crime Time: Australians behaving badly, I did research in books, web sites and newspapers. Many of those newspapers were on-line archives. Only a few years ago, I would have had to go to the State Library and spend the evening hunting through microfilm - and I would have had to know exactly what I was looking for and when it happened before starting. Now I just need some keywords - well, duh - librarian! Pity the newspapers are planning to start charging to view their sites.

Now I'm off to do something a bit less technological - I am spending the rest of the day researching guitars for a possible book on musical instruments, and reading photocopies and printouts somewhere quiet with coffee...