Barbara Hambly's Blog, page 43
May 13, 2011
Kid Gloves 'n' Hookers
ADVENTURES IN RESEARCH – 2
Kid Gloves ‘n’ Hookers
Barbara Hambly
So, did a hooker cost more than a pair of kid gloves?
Since the first moment long-ago when I sat down with a sheet of blue-lined notebook paper in front of me at the kitchen table to write my first “historical novel” (this was before I learned to type – and slightly before electric typewriters became sufficiently common that they’d be found in ordinary homes), I’ve been in quest of information about what things used to cost.
This is always important in detective fiction, because when your detective thinks, Hmn, he claims he’s just a poor boy from Podunk, so what’s he doing wearing $500 Tony Lama boots? it tells your reader a) that Poorboy from Podunk is lying like a rug and b) that Ms. Detective is the kind of person who notices that kind of thing. Specificity always makes your character sound more intelligent, and puts the reader firmly into the setting.
If we’re in the eighteenth century, that’s a whole nother wrinkle on that puzzle.
So, where do you get this information?
I used to go up to UCLA or UC Riverside libraries and poke around the stacks (which is how I figured out what motorcycle James Asher rides, and whether you could or couldn’t ride one if you happen to have just had your right wrist broken by an irate vampire). These days, I have a collection of books on the subject, though you can find this information about some things on the Net. (For instance, at janeausten.co.uk – an online magazine about the works of Ms. Austen – I gleaned the information that a family of five plus a maid-servant in 1825 could live on £2.11.7d a week, tough doings if Dad was only pulling in 15 shillings a week). (Which is what Scrooge paid Bob Cratchit, the wicked old skinflint, and Bob had six or seven children and no maid-servant in sight).
A History of the Cost of Living, by John Burnett, is a dandy.
So’s Oliver Bernier’s Pleasure and Privilege, for late 18th-century France.
I’ve always loved Paul Johnson’s The Birth of the Modern, for Ben January’s period – 1815-1830s (though Ben is slightly beyond that now). (It also tells what was the strongest patent-medicine opium).
Bernier sourced his book from Mercier’s Tableau de Paris, some of which has been translated: amazing stuff on Paris in the 1780s. Another good one is Henry Mayhew’s London Labour and the London Poor, written in the 1840s-50s. Both of these have been reprinted. Also reprinted are old Sears Catalogs, which give American prices, but estimates can be jiggered with on-line currency converters (how much does Ysidro pay for his shoes?).
Most helpful of all is Liza Picard’s 4-volume series about London: Elizabeth’s London, Restoration London, Dr. Johnson’s London, and Victorian London. All of these can be found on abebooks.com, through which I can often buy these very dry, obscure, specific volumes for only a couple dollars over the cost of postage.
So, which was more expensive? As it is today, of course, that depended on the hooker – and the gloves.
May 11, 2011
Kindling
The school year is winding down, so I'm buried in exams and fighting for time to work on Asher & Ysidro #4. The size of my classes this semester have impacted me in terms of work and energy WAY more than I'd thought they would. Over the summer I hope to have the time to get back to regularly trolling LJ and seeing how everyone is doing.
Does anyone know a "polite" euphemism for "Damn" in German? The equivalent of "gosh-darn-it" that a well-bred lady would say?
May 1, 2011
Ishmael - Let me Say This About That
ISHMAEL – LET ME SAY THIS ABOUT THAT
People have asked me, Have I ever written fan fiction?
When I started writing Star Trek stories for my few friends in High School in the fall of 1966, as far as I knew there WAS no media fan fiction. I had two friends, both struck with that first season of Star Trek as I was. We wrote Star Trek stories for each other, but there was no network of fans and no way we could have gotten in touch with them if there had been. As far as we knew, it was just us.
Ditto with a sort-of Western called Here Come the Brides, which included in the cast Mark Lenard, the actor who played Spock’s father in the Trek episode “Journey to Babel.” (And the Romulan Commander in the previous season’s episode, “Balance of Terror.”) OF COURSE a cross-over story was inevitable. (MANY other fans came to this conclusion independently, as I later learned). (These weren’t the only TV shows we wrote stories about, either. I blush when I think of some of them).
When I started writing Ishmael, I was still living in Riverside. My agent called me saying that Pocket Books (a division of Simon & Schuster) had acquired the Star Trek franchise, and were looking for already-published science fiction authors who had Star Trek stories sitting around in their files. I dug out the manuscript of Ishmael that I’d written for my friends, about the first third of what it later became. I knew MUCH less then about how licensing worked, but I wrote to the editor of the new Trek line explaining that it was a cross-over, and saying that I could easily and cheerfully re-write it in a generic Western milieu – a cow-town in the 1870s, I think.
I’m glad I kept a carbon of that letter. (This was slightly before the days when photocopying was easy and cheap).
The editor (the second one of the line already – the Star Trek line at Pocket went through four or five editors during the time I worked with them) told me, “I checked with the Legal Department and they say there isn’t enough of a similarity for us to worry about.” I was surprised, but very pleased.
I worked on Ishmael in between drafts of Ladies of Mandrigyn. I remember working on it in that corner study in the Riverside apartment, listening to the wail of the train-whistles from the tracks a few blocks away. That was the novel that taught me, “Do not start boiling eggs in the kitchen and then go back to the typewriter.” I sent it off shortly before I moved back to Ontario, but my memories of the condo in Ontario aren’t as linear: I was extremely isolated and unhappy there, and there was a tremendous amount going on in my life. It’s hard to sort out a timeline. I remember very clearly this enormous, battered brown-paper package of galleys FINALLY showing up on the doorstep of the condo one morning, not long before I moved out, which had to be back in New York in less than a week.
And I remember being extremely annoyed, because at that point Pocket had had the manuscript for almost two years. It was eighteen months before I even got a copy-edit. For many, many months I heard nothing from them, though during that time I made a special journey down to the Nebula Awards on the Queen Mary to speak to the editor and ask specifically, “You’re SURE doing this cross-over is okay?” I was assured, specifically, that it was. I wrote Dragonsbane – and went through all the re-writes and cutting and re-thinking that book involved – and every now and then something would surface about Ishmael, and I’d have to set Dragonsbane aside and do work on Ish: copyedit, galleys, etc, with LONG periods of inactivity (once over a year) when I figured the book had simply vanished.
In between all that I started writing cartoons, so there was a LOT of driving back and forth to North Hollywood in my rattly little red car that didn’t have a radio, and going to Michael Reaves’s parties. Because of a warning talk with David Gerrold, I phoned the editor at Pocket a few days before Ishmael went to press (they’d changed editors yet again), to ask in a panic, “Are you SURE this is okay?” and was assured that it really was okay.
I’m told Ishmael was one of the most popular of the early Trek novels.
Almost a year after the book appeared (and there was yet another editor in charge of the Trek line), I received a phone call. “Hi. We’re the Simon and Schuster Legal Department. Who told you you could do that?”
I said, “The editor.” I think I offered to send them a copy of the original, I’ll-rewrite-it letter I’d sent to Editor #1.
They said, “Thank you,” and hung up.
That is all that I actually know of my own knowledge.
Nobody ever told me anything officially. Of course it’s not anything I’d do these days. I acted originally out of ignorance, but I well and truly learned my lesson. Evidently Pocket didn’t hold anything against me, since they took two more Trek novels from me. And of course, editors are far more savvy and careful, having had twenty-plus years of media fandom to deal with.
I’m told (again, unofficially) that the S&S Legal Department also got a phone call from a fan-writer accusing me of stealing HER idea of having Mr. Spock cross over into Here Come the Brides (like four other fan-writers that I subsequently heard of hadn’t had the same extremely obvious idea). The Legal Department said, “Oh, you mean you were violating Paramount’s licensed characters without permission?” End of that conversation.
Though it’s a cross-over (with walk-throughs by various other time-and-space travelers in the bar scenes), I wrote it as though the reader had never watched either show: I wanted it to read like a “real novel.” I’m told it does, though Gabriel Garcia Marquez probably does not have anything to worry about. A number of readers have enthused to me about it who clearly had never heard of Here Come the Brides, and Mark Lenard later told me that a copy of it had been passed around among several of the alumni of Brides, to their great amusement.
It’s still one of my favorite of my own books.
April 28, 2011
Flamboyant?
Although I'm not sure what to think when a reviewer describes the January series as "flamboyant."
April 22, 2011
road trip
Had a wonderful time in the Bay Area, which included an AMAZING research-trip to Chinatown and some rather unfortunate meal-choices in a dim sum parlor, including a forcible reminder why caffeine is Out for me forever. (And another reminder about, ALWAYS mention the shellfish allergy UP FRONT... and pray the waitress speaks some English, though this one was very good. It's just that it never occurred to me to ask, "Is there little tiny shrimp buried in the rice?" There were).
Also finally watched "Up" and "The Devils".
Driving back through the brown-gold monotony of the Central Valley, passed a refulgent pink Cadillac whose side-panel was inscribed with the name and web address of "The Country's Best Elvis Impersonator."
And spent hours passing long pods of trucks.
Now got to go iron napkins.
April 17, 2011
Road Trip
There's something so calming about getting in the car, turning on the music, and knowing that nobody expects me to do anything for the next 6 hours except watch the white line. Damsel and the cats will be in good hands. Today will be about packing and prepping.
Evil Hearts and Snappy Outfits
Since, apparently, the release of my old vampire series – Those Who Hunt the Night and Traveling with the Dead – on digital last month via Open Road Media (www.openroadmedia.com) qualifies me as a “well-known author of vampire fiction” these days, I guess it’s okay for me to write about my take on vampires and vampire fiction. (The third of the James Asher vampire series, Blood Maidens, is available in print from Severn House, U.K., but not yet in digital).
I’ve always preferred my vampires dangerous. When I was working on Those Who Hunt the Night, I read various novels of vampire fiction which were around at the time (this was long before Twilight – Ms. Meyer might not even have been born then), and I recall one in which the vampires, though eerie and powerful, were rather benign, like a secret society of people who lived forever and only “immortalized” those who really deserved to live forever; who only drank a little bit of human blood from people who knew them: consenting adults, as it were. And I remember thinking, “No. If vampires were really like that, why the horrific legends?”
So I came up with the best reason I could think of, that vampires have to kill. The blood nourishes vampire flesh, and doesn’t necessarily have to be human. (I recall Anne Rice’s Lestat, among others, lived for decades on rats). In my view of vampires, they kill – and kill humans – because the psychic energy released by the human soul at death is what enables vampires to exercise psychic influence on people: to read dreams. To influence dreams. To make themselves appear to the living as overwhelmingly attractive, to cloud human judgement and human perception… Why else would you walk down a dark alley with a total stranger?
Vampires must kill in order to hunt, and in order to survive.
That being established as a base-line – along with total destruction at the first touch of sunlight, something which is in some legends and not in others – what kind of person would survive as a vampire? What kind of person would become a vampire? Not someone anybody in their right mind would want to get close to.
The development of my version of vampires evolved from there.
Another thing about vampires in legend: a lot of them are very snappy dressers. They’re frequently protrayed as sophisticated, and wealthy enough to have all sorts of henchmen and booby-traps for the unwary around their castles. This is because, of course, even a moderate amount of money looted from early victims, if properly invested, yields a quite substantial income over two or three centuries. And if a vampire isn’t smart enough to get himself a good accountant and proper investments, he probably doesn’t survive.
Wealthy, well-dressed, sexually attractive, been everywhere, remember the world centuries ago, utterly selfish and ruthlessly charming – the ultimate power figure. No wonder people are fascinated by the idea. And, an infinitely variable archetype: every writer does them differently.
And that’s what fascinates me.
April 12, 2011
Refuelling
In any case, the below thoughts about a MAJOR aspect of writing will also show up on my Official Website.
Refuelling
Barbara Hambly
Refuelling. That’s what Poppy Z Brite called it, standing on a streetcorner of Royal Street one evening in 1997. “Reading books, going to clubs, listening to music,” she said.
It’s the part of writing that a lot of non-writers don’t really understand.
I’ve just spent a very pleasant afternoon cutting out shirts for myself. Later I’ll go for a walk, and hope to put in a couple of hours this evening slaughtering unoffending Evil Mercenaries on the X-Box. This is as much a part of being a writer as the actual sitting-in-front-of-the-computer part. Getting out. Breathing air. Talking to friends. I find I always work better, when I can put my brain in a bowl of cold water for a couple of days.
Sometimes, one has no choice. Lower advances = taking as many projects as are offered, and these +a part-time job (see: “lower advances” above) = a heavier work schedule. I am fortunately insanely disciplined about my work, and, when possible, insanely disciplined about my rest-time as well. (I’m a Virgo, it’s what we do).
But a part of writing is – metaphorically or actually – lying on one’s back staring at the clouds, and this can get difficult if there is another member of the household, and understandably so. (I’m sure the legendarily crabby Xantippe, wife of Socrates, got pretty tired of Soc just hanging out talking instead of bringing in even a minimal paycheck). I’ve been on both sides of that line, and both are ugly. Where does refuelling turn into procrastinating? I generally know for myself (since I don’t procrastinate about writing), but living with a writer who had a different clock-speed than I got pretty tense sometimes. “Why don’t you help out around here?” is bad enough, but there’s also, “I’m bored, come talk to me…” I have no idea what the appropriate response connected with either of those is, but closing the study door did not help).
Essentially, the part of me that writes is still a five-year-old child. During the ‘seventies those New Age effusions about “Caring for your Inner Child” put my teeth on edge – they often seemed to me to be simply a justification for bad behavior, irresponsibility, and selfishness – but yes, the part of me that writes is very much a child. Writing – any kind of art, I think – is a balancing-act, being simultaneously child and adult. The stories – the dreams – the people I see in my head – those are produced by that five-year-old sitting in some mental inner closet pecking away at a keyboard. But it’s the adult that crafts them, so that other people can see them exactly as I do: “WAY too many adjectives, dear… that’s the fifth time you’ve used the word ‘deleriously’ in three paragraphs… does the reader really need to know about Zelda’s toenails?” Or, “What does the air smell like, when it smells like that?”
And the adult has the responsibilities of an adult, to make sure the dog gets fed, to behave responsibly with sales people, to maintain her part of the relationships that nourish the soul.
But part of my job as the adult is to take care of that child. And children need their naps.
(I also buy her presents from time to time, which unfortunately I can’t deduct from my income-tax the way I can a new monitor for the computer.)
April 10, 2011
Question for the Group Mind
April 3, 2011
Internet Strangeness
All day it's been glacially slow, with a number of places (like iTunes Store and World of Warcraft) claiming they can't connect. Is anyone else in the LA area having these troubles? Or, is this something I need to contact the phone company about for my DSL line? (Plenty of places seem to be getting through fine).
