Rosina Lippi's Blog, page 25

Cooper Union in the 1870s

The Cooper Union is a college in Manhattan, established in 1859 for  education  in engineering, the arts and architecture for any candidate, regardless of  race, religion, sex, wealth or social status. Pretty forward thinking for 1859, of course. And even more impressive: from the day  it first opened until 2013 anbody admitted got a full scholarship. The economic downturn put an end to that. The Union plays a role in The Gilded Hour, but primarily in the backstory and in a very brief flashback. Two of the primary characters meet as children when their parents attend Abraham Lincoln's speech at the Cooper Union in October of 1860. The map (click for the full size) is of a small part of Manhattan in 1880, which happens to contain the Savard residence (marked with a "1"), the Cooper Union, Washington Square Park and a number of other places relevant to the story.  The  photo on the left  is taken looking north from th esmall park behind the Union in about 1875, just before the elevated trains went up on Third and Fourth Avenues. The photo on the right is a little later, and you can see that train passengers had a good view into the classrooms as they sped on by.      

The Gilded Hour is finished

This is the tenth novel I've finished and sent off to an editor, and every time it's the same thing.  I hover in limbo waiting to hear something. I have quite a few beta readers, including my agent, and they have all been highly enthusiastic. But it's the editor who really counts. So think good thoughts, please. When I know something, I'll post here.  In the meantime I hope to post something every couple days about GH. Tiddly bits, as the Girlchild said when she was little.

the light at the end of the proverbial tunnel

I'm pretty close to finished The Gilded Hour. Generally I am too Italian (that is, too superstitious) to talk about something good coming up, but I feel oddly confident. About finishing, that it. Feedback from beta readers and Jill my super agent has been very good. Hmm. Maybe I should delete this post. Ah, well. Live dangerously. Click on the image to get a bigger version of a map of some of the most important geographic points for The Gilded Hour. Eventually there will be images that pop up from various points.        

when fiction, history and genealogy collide

For anybody who has read this weblog in the past, it's no secret that I am more than a little obsessive-compulsive about research. So today I was looking for medical texts published in the 1880s on a certain class of surgeries. The issue was (and I'll be brief): could I get away with intubation for a surgery conducted on xxxx in 1883. Short answer: yes. While I was looking through the publications available online I ran across the title Post Mortems and Morbid Anatomy which is relevant to another question I'm researching. But then I checked the date and saw, alas, that it was printed in 1912. Twenty years too late. That's when I saw the author's name. A little detour here. The mathematician's grandfather's eldest sister (Minnie Green, by name) was one of the first women to graduate from medical school in England in the 19th century (actually she went to medical school in Edinburgh, but you get the idea).  Some time after medical school (the dates haven't been verified yet) she married her anatomy professor, Dr. Theodore Shennan, who was by that point senior pathologist to the Royal Infirmary, Edinburgh So here I am spooling through thousands of texts available on line for some very specific information, and I come across a technical text written by the mathematician's great-aunt's husband. Maybe that doesn't sound like such a big deal, but I got a huge kick out of it. This photo was taken in September 1903 when Minnie and Theodore married, in the greenhouse of the Plantation (houses were often named; this time the choice of name was unfortunate) where the great-grandfather and ggrandmother lived while he (of the white beard, behind the bride) […]

not-so-secret vices: old newspapers

I spend untold hours reading the smallest print stories in newspapers issued in 1882-1883. Ninety percent of it is relevant to what I'm writing (how much did a house cost in Manhattan? In rural Connecticut? With a few acres? A furnace?). Some of it isn't. But I get ideas that often bear fruit, so I'm declaring myself not addicted, but appreciative. Two recent examples from the NYTimes in 1883: The first case is typical, but it gives me information on where such hearings took place and where crimes like this happened (I have a big wall map full of pins). You may not notice if I send a character to trial in the wrong court, but that kind of thing makes me break into a sweat. The second article is a mystery to me, and I'm going to send it to various physician friends to see if they can give me any insight. What comes to mind is that Mrs. Mathews was trying to save money (which is odd, because vaccinations were free for the poor), and that she used a dirty knife or similar instrument. Just a year earlier President Garfield died a terrible death after an assassination attempt, because the many doctors attending him pooh-poohed anything looking like a germ theory, and operated in dirty shirtsleeves with dirty scalpels and probes. Garfield had a bullet lodged in the fat behind the pancreas and would have survived easily if somebody had deigned to take those upstarts Lister and Pasteur seriously (other U.S. doctors were, in fact, using sterile methods at this point) seriously.  But I'll let you know what I find out.  

Giveaway: finito

Thanks everybody for your input on this question. I don't know if I'll get around to actually doing this, but it's something I'm considering. If, however, you have a large writing/critique group within driving distance of Seattle and you'd like to arrange a short (one day) conference, please email me. That would be a definite possibility. Lauren J., I pulled your name — so please get in touch by email so I can get your ebooks to you.

Wilderness novels drawing: all six!

I'm giving away all six of the Wilderness novels in e-format... Come put your name in the hat:

http://rosinalippi.com/weblog/2014/05...

Answer a couple questions, and win all six Wilderness novels in e-format

I could use some feedback on an issue I've been trying to sort out for a while, and so this post and at the same time, a drawing.  One name will be drawn at random, and that person will get all six Wilderness novels in either kindle/mobi or epub format, which ever they prefer. I'm going to keep this open for a couple weeks in the hope it will get more than a few responses. Rules: One response per person You must check back to find out if you've won; I won't go chasing you. If I don't hear from you within two weeks of announcing the winner, I'll draw another name. All I'm looking for is a thoughtful reply; no need to write a dissertation. So here's the situation: For a couple years now I've been wondering how I could best organize teaching an independent fiction-writing class. A real face-to-face, in person class. I have done some research. For example, England's Guardian newspaper is currently sponsoring a class in writing historical fiction. Spots for twelve students, taught by an author who has won an award for her fiction; the course meets for one three-hour session a week for twelve weeks. The cost of this is a whopping £1,500, or about $2,500 at current conversion rates, which works out to about $200 a session. Now, the class sponsored by the Guardian is being offered in London, which means the pool of prospective students is very deep. Even so, I find it hard to imagine that people would pay this much. On the other extreme there is one local in-person class that was offered last year. The course is more of a series of lectures/discussions by […]

evernote: oi

Sock Puppets Infest Amazon Reviews

In my last post a mentioned my lack of confidence in Amazon reviews, and in the comments Rebecca asked about that. It made me realize that people inside of publishing pay more attention to this kind of thing than people outside, so here I am, writing about it. I stopped writing Amazon reviews maybe six years ago. There were a couple of simple and practical reasons for this, but there was also the sense that things were not always what they seemed. So for example: 1. After a glitch in their computer software, Amazon/Canada's reviews suddenly no longer showed screen names, but the review writer's real name.  A couple of authors were thereby exposed: they were writing glowing reviews of their own work, and not-so-glowing reviews of other people's work. 2. There have been various expose-type investigations into fake or false reviews, in which author's friends and family organize good-review campaigns.The Cincinnati Beacon has a story about multiple reviews of a novel that can be traced back to the author's staff. The New York Times did an indepth story about sock puppet reviews: [so] writers have naturally been vying to get more, and better, notices. Several mystery writers, including R. J. Ellory, Stephen Leather and John Locke, have recently confessed to various forms of manipulation under the general category of “sock puppets,” or online identities used to deceive.  [emphasis added] 3. In 2012 a research group estimated that by 2014, 30 percent of all  reviews would be fake — paid for by advertising entities: With over half of the Internet’s population on social networks, organizations are scrambling for new ways to build bigger follower bases, generate more hits on videos, garner more positive reviews than their […]