Sunday, September 07, 2008
First, some Humor....
That's one of my all time favorite cartoons. And I love
xkcdI'm not procrastinating by the way. Yesterday, I pulled out the chapter outline for
The Next Historical and added in all the new stuff and then rearranged the new and the old so I'd know what the new chapter order should be and which ones needed to be deleted. Two of them. The others I think have enough to warrant staying for a total rewrite. Then I reordered my chapters. Then I read
Travels in Turkey and Asia Minor, Syria and Egypt (1844) and got some really good background information. But I had to also do some quick side research on
The Levant Company to confirm a suspicion of mine about the Consuls. Uh, yes, it's true. The British Consuls were appointed but apparently needed to be approved by the Levant Company which was kind of the Middle Eastern equivalent of the East India Company. Politics and commerce. Hand in hand.
Today, my son had a soccer game in a town about 35 minutes away after which we went to Art in the Park where he ate a lot of food and looked at art. I bought a couple of things that will go into the contest stash and a couple of things I liked for me. Then I went grocery shopping then we came home. I was at the computer for a bit and when I actually fell asleep sitting up for a minute, I figured I needed a nap which I did for 2 hours. Then dinner, then cleaning up and now blogging. And so, maybe I surfed the web a bit, maybe.
Anyhoo -- off to get SOME work done because I have two deleted chapters to make up...
Labels: art, research, stuff, The Next Historical, writing
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Thursday, August 21, 2008
In which Carolyn keeps information from her hero
I redid what I lost last night. Packing in the research and learning some neat stuff. My 1958 guidebook on Aleppo arrived. Lot's of neat information some of which changed the plot but mostly it's changing itself as I write and discover my pretend plot was silly. Still a marriage under dire circumstances, but the circumstances are evolving. I killed off my first character yesterday, which I was too depressed to blog about after the big oops of August 20. A day of infamy, I tell you. Anyhow, this poor fellow had a stroke and well, he died,leaving the heroine all alone with another person who does not have her best interests at heart.
Neither does my hero, but he doesn't know yet just how low he's going to go. I don't have the heart to tell him. Besides, he'll find out eventually.
I have 41.5K words. Need more.
Off to bed. Will try to do better soon, I promise.
Labels: oops, plotting, research, writing
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Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Why Carolyn is Happy Dancing Despite a Word Count of El Zippo
Why, you ask? I shall tell you.
If you read yesterday's post, you know I finished the Revision Read Through That Would Not End yesterday. Yay! And today, I was going to buckle down and get going again on the next historical.
But first I had this little problem of a plot that might not be possible: I want my hero and heroine to be in Turkey in the early 1800's and I want them to get married under dire and dramatic circumstances. My train of thought has been going something like this:
There were lots of Christians in Turkey then so there are surely Christian churches there (yeah some pretty famous ones, I know!) But probably not the Church of England so the usual rules in Regency marriages aren't going to apply. They can't go back to England to hit up the Archbishop for a Special License and then go back to Turkey...
That train of thought died shortly thereafter.
So, where can these guys get married pretty much in the dead of night that would be legal enough to cause a problem when they're back in England later? Is there an Archbishop equivalent in Turkey? But if there is, I still can't have the hero trotting off to line up the paperwork and then going back -- Ok, bad guys, you can start again, I'm back and ready to thwart you! Thanks ever so for waiting.
Yeah, some questions to resolve, eh? Tonight, after I cleared away some stuff that had to get done first, I invoked the awesome powers of Google.
Dun dun da dun!!!!Here are my Google search phrases:
- Christianity in Turkey in 1800
- British Marriages in Turkey in 1800
Da motherlode folks! Because one of the search results was an article about a marriage that took place at the British Consulate in Turkey in 1894.
Ohmygod! Of course! They get married at the British Consulate.
So now my train of thought is like this:
Where the hell was the British Consulate in Turkey in the early 19th century? I can move this back to Constantinople if I have to but that would be seriously lame. Was there even a Consulate for sure and do I have to find out who the Consul was?
More awesome powers of Google.
twinkle twinkle twinkleHere is my Google search phrase:
- British Consulate in Turkey in 1800
And this lead pretty much directly to a
1911 Encyclopedia about Aleppo, where the British Consulate was reopened in 1800. And get this! There was some fighting going on there. Is that perfect or what? Now, Aleppo is in Syria but who cares, this doesn't have to happen in Turkey plus it's described in the 1911 source as
Asiatic Turkey. Wikipedia has this to say about Aleppo:
The city remained Ottoman until the empire's collapse, but was occasionally riven with internal feuds as well as attacks of the plague and later cholera from 1823.Seriously everyone. This could not be more perfect for my story. Internal feuds. Plus plauge AND cholera. Wow.
I am thrilled to bits.
And now going to bed.
Labels: Google Love, research, The List
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Wednesday, June 18, 2008
The Fact Kitten Hey!
That would be me. Because I can call myself a kitten if I want to. And I am.
The Fact Kitten
Because I got one of the free
Encyclopedia Britannica accounts. (Sometimes it pays to be a geek!) and today when I needed to know some stuff about Turkey in 1800 or so, I remembered I had the account and so I went. Heaven. Really. I was a kitten on her first dose of catnip ever. I learned a lot of stuff. Not necessarily about Turkey, though I did get the answers I needed.
I will now go there more often.
And, I met my minimum tonight, too. Exceeded it a bit.
I have to get to bed so I won't be a wreck tomorrow.
Labels: butt in chair, research, writing
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Friday, July 06, 2007
It's a Red Stripe* Day -- or finding info in the oddest places
Coupla things before I succumb to another day of panic mode. So, I have this day job. In the words of
Patti O'Shea, an Evil Day Job or EDJ. Yeah. I have one of those. I have to explain the EDJ in order for this post to make sense, sorry. I'm a SQL Server Database Administrator (DBA). As such, I work with Enterprise level databases that run on expensive hardware and software. Yada yada yada. As with most things that involve the need for the development of expertise, there are mailing lists. For the EDJ I belong to one such SQL Server mailing list. Mostly people post questions and answers about, well, yes, SQL Server. The list members are from all over the world. Literally. Not so interesting and not so relevant to the writing, you'd think. Au contraire!
For quite some time I have been jotting down the many cool and awesome names these people have. I've probably got at least 100 names. Some of which I am using in Magellan's Witch. Not complete names. There are very few that are cool and awesome on a total name basis. Like, Harsh. There's some DBA somewhere whose name, I think it's his first name, but I'm not sure, is Harsh. Then there's Kynan. Both of them are in Magellan's Witch. So, I've been really pleased to be building up such a solid list of cool names. Today, I hit the motherlode. Not of names, but alcohol.
I'm not much of a drinker and I don't watch TV or read many magazines that have liquor ads in them. This makes me clueless when it comes to choosing alcoholic drinks that alpha males might sit around drinking. This morning when I came to work there were already 150 emails from the DBA list, and fully half of them were of the subject
Select unique records or something like that. Easy, easy thing to do in SQL.
SELECT DISTINCT [SomeFieldName] FROM [SomeTable]
So, like, 150 emails about this. Uh, no. 150 emails about what to drink on Friday nights, with amusing and even insightful comments. Like these:
Vodka... made by the French who we all know have been purveyors of fine Vodka since Czar Louis XIV was on the throne of Ireland....
What!!
I bloody well hope not!
As they're [Boddington's] canned/bottled in Manchester I 'm assuming they're using Imperial measurements... but then the UK measures stuff in that Froggy invented metric system... so god only knows...
Zut alors!
However, I do know that it just fills a pint pot fashioned after a German beer steinl [sic], whereas when I use a US standard beer glass I have to drink down the first third of the glass before topping it off... boo shame...
On a cold day you need Laphroaig or Lagavullin... perhaps Macallan or Dalwhinnie, Cragganmore or Talikser or Glenkinchie Single Island and Highland Malt whisky laddie!!!!
Yeah, I used to get Lagavullin for $40.00, not it hovers around $80, so at the bar I get Laphroaig for 6.50 (happy hour) or around $8.00. Lagavullin is $15.00 for a measured shot. Out of my league.
Of course, to be fair, I can get Lagavullin for $10.00 at other bars...
but still...
See? The motherload. I have like a page and a half of alcohol from around the world wisdom.
*Red Stripe, as probably everyone but me knows, is a Guinness beer, and it's probably mentioned at least once a week. Big in the UK it seems.
OK, off to panic mode.
Labels: Magellan's Witch, research
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Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Plus This!
Here's something that really frosts me. I'm all for historical accuracy. I believe in doing research etc. But let's apply some common sense to the matter. As a general statement, the people who preceded us were not fundamentally stupid or lacking in inventiveness. There are implements commonly used today that were commonly used in the past because 1) the implement is obviously both useful and necessary and 2) does not require the discovery or invention of something as yet undiscovered or not-invented yet. Therefore, some common implements can reasonably be assumed to have existed in the past. It's not worth fussing over whether that's TRUE when you have plot points that make no sense.
So, take matches. Useful yes. But not necessary. Matches also require an invention, so yeah, this is something you might want to research so your heroine isn't striking a match in 1805.
Now take something like, oh, say, a rolling pin. Useful? Yes. Necessary? If you wish to make pie crust, yeah. Is an invention or discovery required? No. If you're trying to make pie crust, rest assured wood or stone have been discovered. A cook is going to stare at a lump of dough and say, wow, I need something to make this really, really thin. I feel confident that even a idiot cook is going to think of something that will have looked remarkably like a rolling pin.
I just found this in draft status in blogger. I remember why I didn't actually post it, but now that I read it, I'm going to post it anyway. Apply some common sense people. For crying out loud.Labels: research
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