K.B. Inglee's Blog: The Shepherd's Notes, page 16

I'm back, I hope

I hate to think of how long it has been since I wrote anything here. I was just on a roll giving my ideas about historical errors and I ran out of steam. I am going to pick it up again and try harder to stick with it.
The sheep are having a hard time with the heat, as am I.
I spent the last two weeks reading Icelandic mysterys. Cool.

Let's do the research

I have read a few historical novels that seem to have been researched by going to movies. They are rife with errors and give little flavor of the times. I am glad to say there haven’t been all that many. People use products or processes that haven’t been invented or aren’t in common use. I have run into baled hay several times in the 17th, 18th and early 19th century. Hay bailers use either steam engines or internal combustion engines, so, sorry no hay bales yet. I admit I made that mistake in one manuscript but removed it before the work came out. People ride trains where there were none. Yup, I made that mistake too, but again, it’s gone from the manuscript. Zippers on the Titanic? No way.
It isn’t all that difficult to do the research and there is no excuse to skim over it. Newspapers are easy to get and give heaps of information about daily life. Almost every time period has interpreters and re-enactors who are happy to answer questions and recommend sources. Look at the art and architecture, listen to the music, read the books. Then seek out secondary sources that will explain it.
Once you have done the research, it will provide texture for the work. I discovered that most horses stolen from south eastern Pennsylvania in 1751-2 were black. You can bet that isn’t going to show up in my writing, but it is one more piece of important background.

Those pesky errors

I have been paying attention to historical errors in fiction lately. When I read an historical I am always on the lookout for errors. Once I find one I settle back to enjoy the rest of the book. I think there are four basic reasons for them:

Not enough research: the author didn’t dig deeper than the reader.
Too much research: here is this nifty new thing e.g. zippers which were not in popular use until a long time after they were invented.
New research: when I wrote it, it agreed with the available scholarship. Since I wrote it this something new has been discovered.
Perception: the author sees things through the eyes of a modern person. The stagecoach stuck in the snow spinning its wheels to get out, or the woman who refuses to wear a cap in the house because she sees it as an example of the oppression of women, rather than a practical article of clothing.

Over the next four weeks I will take each of these apart. I am struggling with them all now as I start work on my new novel.

Footnotes in Fiction

I finally figured out which of the robbers had which gun. I am on what I hope is the final edit of the story. Set in 1889, it deals with early forensics, in this case rifling on bullets. I don’t usually put footnotes in my stories, but in this case I am tempted.

I have read books in which the history is pretty much made up by the author. I have read others that are researched to within an inch of its life. When I discover an odd fact and base a story on it, I want to make sure the reader knows I didn’t make it up to suit the plot. Soooo…..to footnote or not?

A Wonderful New Way to Spend Money

My best Christmas present was a Nook.

Several people gave me gift certificates which, when added together, covered the cost of a mid range Nook. So I have many to thank for the wonderful gift.

I wasn’t sure I would like an e-reader since I like the look and feel of a book. My prime motivation was to have something I could read while knitting, since I wouldn’t have to hold it open.

I have yet to knit while reading but I have been reading up a storm on it.

The biggest problem is that I keep buying books. I have yet to build up a to-be-read pile the size of the one on the floor by my bed. It is so easy to add books to it that I seldom pay attention to the money I am spending. I have to get a grip on that.

Beware the sheep that bites

I was bitten by a sheep on December 17th and things went down hill from there. I was in the ER on Christmas Eve for one of a series of Rabies shots. I won’t bother to list the four other things that added to my downward spiral.
I seem to be pretty much over it now. Hey, I am feeling cheerful today. I made a bunch of resolutions about how many short stories I would write and submit this year. This morning I revised my resolutions to include: I will start another novel.
I was going to post my Christmas story here, but didn’t (see paragraph one). These will be the people I will be working with.
All these years I have been working in a firmly established close third person point of view. Now suddenly I am switching to first person. We will see how it goes.

Hair on the Pork

There’s Hair on the Pork is an old family saying meaning, nothing is right today. One of my great aunts is supposed to have said it at the end of a litany of things that were wrong that day.
No one remembers anything else on the list.
When one of us would get to feeling sorry for herself, my mother would say “and there’s hair on the pork.” That would usually bring us out of it.
This week I had one of those days, beginning with rising at 5 to watch the total lunar eclipse. I watched the moon from 5:30 til I couldn’t see it any more. No eclipse. Later I learned I was too far east.
Sheep were out a 7 am. It was easy enough to coax them in with some grain. Two sheep seemed to be on a hunger strike, preferring the sweet feed to the pellets they are forced to suffer these days. The dog wouldn’t behave on our walk forcing me to pick her up and carry her out of the hole she wanted to dig in someone else’s property.
My mood spiraled down so that there was no point in trying to figure out which of the bank robbers was using black powder and why, or how to make looking down a microscope interesting to a reader. I will finish that story this week.
Maybe this week the pork will be bald.

Hair on the Pork

There’s Hair on the Pork is an old family saying meaning, nothing is right today. One of my great aunts is supposed to have said it at the end of a litany of things that were wrong that day.
No one remembers anything else on the list.
When one of us would get to feeling sorry for herself, my mother would say “and there’s hair on the pork.” That would usually bring us out of it.
This week I had one of those days, beginning with rising at 5 to watch the total lunar eclipse. I watched the moon from 5:30 til I couldn’t see it any more. No eclipse. Later I learned I was too far east.
Sheep were out a 7 am. It was easy enough to coax them in with some grain. Two sheep seemed to be on a hunger strike, preferring the sweet feed to the pellets they are forced to suffer these days. The dog wouldn’t behave on our walk forcing me to pick her up and carry her out of the hole she wanted to dig in someone else’s property.
My mood spiraled down so that there was no point in trying to figure out which of the bank robbers was using black powder and why, or how to make looking down a microscope interesting to a reader. I will finish that story this week.
Maybe this week the pork will be bald.

The amusing incident of THE DOG IN THE NIGHT

If I can’t come up with a word while I am writing, I use a place holder and keep going lest I lose my train of thought. Often this is an XX, but sometimes I put in the first word or phrase that comes to mind. I try to remember to put them in upper case so I can find them easily when I do my first edit.
This year’s Holiday story was already out when someone told me I had missed something in my edit. I didn’t have a name for the ship that waited off Cobb’s Crossing to carry passengers and freight to Philadelphia. So there in the Delaware River in the mid 1700s is a ship oddly named The Good Ship Lollypop. So once more the reader is abandoned by the author. Pick what ever name you like when I post the story next week.

The 18th Century Earworm

This year my holiday story is about an 18th century ear worm.
Usually I start writing in August, fiddle with it ‘til November, when I design the cover and format the story. I am already stuffing this years’ offering into envelopes and putting stamps on them. Some years I have been known to post them after Christmas.
I am a firm believer in the mid winter holiday. Every culture celebrates something in the darkest time of the year. My characters, being for the most part white Europeans on the Atlantic coast, happen to celebrate (or not celebrate) Christmas.
An 18th century Christmas celebration was not the warm, home centered affair it is today. It was a cross between Halloween and St. Patrick’s Day. Revelers went from house to house singing and demanding the best spirits of the householder and firing their weapons. Public drunkenness, excessive noise, and bullying, were the order of the day and many spent the holiday in gaol.
It was so rowdy and irreligious that in colonial times, Mid Atlantic Quakers and New England puritans refused to celebrate, and fined people who did.
Elizabeth Drinker noted in her journal that she “did a fortnight’s wash,” one Christmas day.
Two of my holiday stories will be posted. “Mistress is Dead” will be up on Writers Who Kill on Tuesday November 29, and I will post the earworm story here as soon as I put the hard copies in the mail.