Returning to the Research Notebooks

Over the next few months, I will be retyping pretty much all of my research notes for my novels into posts -- in large part because I can never find what I am looking for when going through the battered 10-30 years old college-ruled notebooks. And because when I do happen to re-read them I am always inspired by a whole range of new ideas -- that for one reason or another didn't make it into the final work but still offer great opportunites. Small, but tasty bits of information that helped form the scaffold for an earlier work, but were never featured. For example I have at least twenty or thirty different descriptions of ancient, medieval, and renaissance mazes, with commentaries by the scholars of the time, and every one of those mazes is a new world waiting for a story. So bear with me -- or not -- but my motives are two fold: to better organize my research (and bless the use of catagories!), and to share some interesting moments out of history, myth, medival literary theory, lost words and killer insults that still ignite my imagination and perhaps yours. 

Cycle of frescos of the 12 labors of the months Location Trento, IItaly, Castello del Buonconsiglio (Bishops Castle), Torre del'Aquila (Tower of the eagle) Master Wenceslas of Bohemia 1397-1400