The Sale of a Wife
This is quite a bit more modern than my beloved sixteenth century, but I ran across it while researching other documents and couldn’t resist sharing it. After all, how often does one come across:
“A full and particular Account of the Sale of a Woman named Mary MacKintosh, which took place on Wednesday Evening, the 16th of July, 1828, in the Grass Market of Edinburgh, accused by her Husband of being a notorious Drunkard; with the particulars of the bloody Battle which took place afterwards.”
You must read the full transcription, if nothing else for its vivid nineteenth-century slang. One of the fighters (and yes, a huge fistfight between women and men broke out, with the women pretty much carrying the day) is described as being “as drunk as 50 cats in a wallet.” I can’t wait to use that one. Heh.
The Scottish broadside, ladies and gentlemen—the TMZ-crossed-with-Craigslist of its day!
The Time Traveler’s Life
I’ve changed the title of my site a bit. Here’s why.
Reading and writing historical fiction is the closest we can ever come to traveling in time. From my earliest days as a reader I loved stories set in “the olden days”—I loved Little Women and Black Beauty, Gone with the Wind and Forever Amber and the Angélique books, ancient Frank Yerby and Thomas B. Costain novels lurking in dusty library bookshelves like pirate treasure, my beloved Crawford of Lymond novels by the peerless Dorothy Dunnett. To this day I gobble up historical fiction with relish. Right now I am reading the mother of all historical novels (no pun intended), Eve by Elissa Elliott. It’s a beautiful and somewhat controversial book and a fascinating piece of time travel.
My life as a writer is a time traveler’s life. When I slip inside my characters and look out through their eyes, I’m away—in a Ferrarese castello, in a garden by the sea in sixteenth-century Scotland. I return almost reluctantly to the twenty-first century. I say “almost” because, for all the delights of the sixteenth century there are still modern necessities like clean hot running water, gleaming conveniences, air conditioning, and—of course—Ghirardelli chocolate.
There’s a Long Long Trail A-Winding
A Google trail, that is. I’m stealing an idea from my friend and fellow Shrinking Violet P.J. Hoover, and tracking my “Google Trail.” What have I been Googling this past week in the name of research?
- Wildflowers of sixteenth-century Scotland
- Pierre de Bocosel de Chastelard
- Quatrains of Nostradamus
- Lennoxlove House
- Antoinette de Bourbon, Duchess of Guise
- Battle of Corrichie
- Clan Leslie
One of the great delights of writing historical fiction with sprinkles is that one can spend hours reading about the most fascinating bits and pieces of history and actually be working. Could there be any better job?
Hello, June
And look, there’s summer, right behind you. One of my summer projects (in addition to my wonderful new book that I’m madly in love with but don’t really want to talk about too much yet for fear of jinxing it) is refurbishing some beautiful old pieces of family furniture I’ve had in storage for years and years. I’m starting with this chest—four large drawers and then two small drawers on top. It dates back to about 1910, and as you can see, it has actual shelves inside for each drawer to rest on. Solid mahogany. Weighs a ton, as the Broadcasting Legend™ and our neighbor the Proud Father of Twins™ can attest, after wrestling it out of the storage unit, onto the truck, off the truck, and into our front foyer. My first step is to take out all the drawers and give it a good scrubbing with Murphy’s Oil Soap.
What has it seen, in the century or so of its life? What stories could it tell? I dream as I work on it. What was folded away in its drawers? One element of my new book is an object (not really a piece of furniture, but definitely a personal object) that passes through various hands and affects each person, on its way to its moment of destiny on the world stage, and then back to obscurity. What could be more intriguing? (Oh, and it has Nostradamus, too.)
The Séance by John Harwood
I just finished The Séance by John Harwood, and what a deliciously eldritch gothic tale it is. As a reader one must have a little patience through the first few chapters, but it all turns out to be important in the end and there are rewards to come. Constance Langton, orphaned and dependent on a single feckless uncle, unexpectedly inherits Wraxford Hall, a derelict manor house by the Sussex coast with—would you ever doubt it?—a dark history. A dark history entangled with Constance’s own past. Or is it her past? Told in multiple viewpoints and narratives, The Séance is like a crumbling scrapbook of mysterious apparitions, betrayal, blackmail and horror.
With a dreamlike photograph by Julia Margaret Cameron (see the post below on the Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood) on its cover and the stuff of nightmares inside, The Séance brings late-Victorian England to effortless and mesmerizing life. One of the best books I’ve read so far this year.
The Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood
My beloved Pre-Raphs are usually referred to as “The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood,” even though there were women peripherally associated with the group—the poet Christina Rossetti; the model, poet and artist Elizabeth Siddal; the model Jane Morris, the artist Marie Spartali Stillman; the photographer Julia Margaret Cameron come to mind. Here, however, is a way-cool website that turns the whole concept around:
…and focuses primarily on the women involved in, and inspired by, the Pre-Raphaelite movement. The site is full of tidbits (a “Lady of Shalott” film!) and dozens and dozens of gorgeous images. I often call myself a Post-Pre-Raphaelite, and this site is definitely going on my must-read list. When I “see” scenes from my writing, I almost always see them as intricately detailed, color-saturated, intensely romantic Pre-Raph-style images.
I suppose you could say (as Alec Baldwin does in those funny Hulu commercials) it’s just the way I roll.
FLAT RINETTE
The Flower Reader
Read the First Chapter of The Flower Reader
The Second Duchess
Read the First Chapter of The Second Duchess
The Second Duchess is available on iBookstore!
