Less than two hundred pages packed with information on the title subject, written in lively prose and illustrated mostly with line drawings from the times, plus a few photographs. Where else are you going find out that during the Middle Ages An amusement gallery was sometimes run in conjunction with a medieval zoo…In these galleries…
If you write long enough, eventually someone will ask you to contribute a chapter for a serial novel. What is a serial novel, you ask? In the archaic meaning, it’s a work of fiction published in installments–think of Dickens’ The Old Curiosity Shop and people in New York waiting on the docks for the ship…
Cahill is determined to redeem the Middle Ages from the likes of William Manchester (A World Lit Only By Fire) and Mark Twain (A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court). On the contrary, Cahill writes The reputation of the Middle Ages for thuggish cruelty is largely (if not wholly) undeserved. which I find a bit…
Change, growing from within and forced from without, is the mainspring of character development.—Rita Mae Brown Anticipation is the sweet pain to know whatever’s next–a must for every real writer.—Richard Ford If you happen to be one of the fretful minority who can do creative work, never force an idea; you’ll abort it if you…
A wealth of detail in this you-are-there look at life in medieval England. Just dipping in at random: When you draw closer to the city walls you will see the great gatehouse…And then you notice the smell. Four hundred yards from the city gate, the muddy road you are folowing crosses a brook. As you…
So, in Theft of an Idol (Isis3), Tetisheri discovers a body in the desert. I’m from the Arctic myself. I have a very rudimentary notion of how bodies decay (or don’t) in the cold, and no notion at all of what happens if they are left out in the Sahara. This requires some research. Google,…
Henry II to Richard II, 250 years’ worth of Plantagenet kings in 500 plus pages. Written briskly and with humor, the narrative hits all the highlights of this era in British history without missing the low points, of which there were plenty, and debunking myths along the way. Henry II hid out in Ireland for…
Read more You could get whiplash, reading through John’s reign.
Time. In crime fiction time is the essence of detection. If Whositz says “I was sleeping with my mistress when my wife was murdered” the first thing the detective on the case will do is verify that alibi. If Whositz is seen leaving his mistress’ house by the back alley in time to get home,…
Lavishly illustrated, which initially led me to regard this book with some suspicion, but in the end lots of interesting information of harem life and history. That the author has a family history that reaches back to the seraglio and that she has included a photo of her great-uncle with his odalisque is convincing in…
Read more You could buy seven women slaves for 1,000 to 2,000 kurush. One horse cost 5,000.
Years ago I taught a class on “The Business of Writing” at the University of Alaska, Anchorage. One of the segments was how to write a query letter, and included a sample query letter I wrote to give my students an idea of how to get their toe in the door. From my syllabus: 3] …
