author – Catherine Schaff-Stump

Fantastic History #15: Seven of my Favorite Research Books by Kate Heartfield

Seven of My Favorite Research Books

Like all writers of historical fantasy, I know that every book I write stands on a teetering tower of other books. Each book has its own particular (and sometimes incredibly specialized) stack of research material, and I am so grateful for libraries, librarians, and everyone who has helped make books and articles available online. I’m also grateful to the academics and the other writers of non-fiction whose work informs every story I write.

In my little writing room, I have books on military tactics, clothing, folklore, food, gender, machines, politics… plus, of course, the standard reference books, from dictionaries to bird guides. There are all the primary sources: my copy of the Malleus Maleficarum is particularly well used, as I write about witchcraft a fair bit.

But there are some less obvious books on my groaning shelves that I find myself consulting over and over. I thought I’d give you a short tour of a few of these from my shelves.

These are just a few of my personal favorites, and this is emphatically not a balanced, curated guide or definitive list for other writers. They skew European and North American, for one thing. But they’ve been useful or inspiring to me, and they demonstrate how the research for historical fantasy often ranges beyond a specific setting, era or set of characters.

1. Holy Sh*t: A Brief History of Swearing, by Melissa Mohr. Swearing can be tricky in historical fiction. Readers tend to trip on “bad” words, assuming they’re more recent than they generally are. Most swear words in English (and this book does focus on English) have been around for a very long time. That said, they didn’t necessarily carry the same heft that they do today, while other words (generally blasphemous ones) were more serious than they are now. Conveying the emotional and social significance of a bit of dialogue to a modern reader, while keeping true to the period, is a feat. Mohr’s book has been a great guide to those choppy waters.

2. A Dictionary of Chivalry by Grant Uden. I’ll be honest; the main reason I love this book is because I love this particular copy. It belonged to my late grandfather. And I adore how tricksy it is: The binding is a library discard of glaring plain orange, but inside, it’s full of gorgeous illustrations by Pauline Baynes. These days, I’m probably more likely to consult Google if I want to know what a “ricasso” is or what happened at the Field of the Cloth of Gold, so the dictionary tends to be a flipping-through, inspirational book rather than a pure reference guide.

3. Indigenous Writes: A Guide to First Nations, Métis & Inuit Issues in Canada, by Chelsea Vowel. My main settings so far have tended to be northern Europe (where my family’s from) and North America (where I was born and raised.) Intrinsic to the histories of both those regions is the colonization of Indigenous people. Vowel’s book is a wealth of information and analysis on matters that will (or should) pre-occupy writers of historical fantasy, from cultural appropriation to respectful terminology.

4. Herbs for the Medieval Household for Cooking, Healing and Divers Uses by Margaret B. Freeman. This is another gorgeously illustrated book; it was, in fact, printed by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I do use this book for reference — if I want a poison or potion, for example — as it is full of references to primary sources. But it, too, is mainly for inspiration. The woodcuts that illustrate each entry are from 15th century sources themselves.

5. The World Guide to Gnomes, Fairies, Elves and Other Little People: A Compendium of International Fairy Folklore by Thomas Keightley. This one was originally published in 1828 as Fairy Mythology. Despite the title, I don’t really use this as a guide to the folklore itself, but rather as one window onto how that folklore evolved and spread, and how it informed the fantastic in the 19th century. (Keightley was a friend of Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s family.)

6. The Art of Blacksmithing by Alex W. Bealer. Smiths tend to turn up in whatever I write, or their work does. (For example, a water-powered forge hammer plays a role in my novel Armed in Her Fashion.) Metal is very important to both the history and folklore of Europe, and this illustrated guide has helped me with everything from nails and horseshoes to swords.

7. Scourge: The Once and Future Threat of Smallpox by Jonathan B. Tucker. This one might seem an odd choice, but smallpox has loomed in a few of my books (especially the ones that haven’t come out yet, which are set in 18th century Europe.) It’s hard to overstate the effect that smallpox has had on the history of the world. Beyond that, the history of smallpox is a microcosm of the history of disease and of immunization in general, and the more recent history of how humanity has tried, failed, and occasionally succeeded to work together for a common goal.

***

Kate Heartfield’s first novel was Armed in Her Fashion (CZP 2018). She is the author of two time-travel novellas coming soon from Tor.com Publishing, beginning with Alice Payne Arrives in November 2018. Her interactive novel The Road to Canterbury was published by Choice of Games in 2018. Kate is a former journalist in Ottawa, Canada. Her website is kateheartfield.com and she is on Twitter as @kateheartfield.

Fantastic History #13: An Interview with Kate Heartfield

Cath: Almost everything I’ve ever read of yours has some aspect of history coupled with fantasy. What do you find attractive about blending historical and fantastic fiction?

Kate: I remember walking through the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City for the first time when I was a teenager and experiencing a kind of frisson I’ve noticed many times since: I was feeling deliciously creeped out by the oldness of the things around me. There’s an uncanny quality to the past, or maybe to our awareness of the past. The pavement under my feet both is, and is not, the same street that bore the footsteps of people long dead. That duality feels inherently fantastical to me. So it feels like a natural fit. Real history is so very weird and sometimes the best way to illuminate that is to hold it up against something that’s obviously invented.

Cath: Much of high fantasy is considered to be about medieval Europe. Yet, your works “The Course of True Love” and “Armed in Her Fashion” much more accurately portray what the medieval period is documented to be like historically. Do you have a historical background in this time frame? What helped you to get this tone and accuracy?

Kate: I’m not a historian, but I am a journalist by trade, so I suppose my instinct is always to go to the source. Both of those books were inspired by other works. The Course of True Love was an homage to Shakespeare, so I reread the plays and tried to imagine what Shakespeare would write if he were reincarnated as me. (This made sense in my head, I swear.) Armed in Her Fashion was inspired by a 16th century painting by Pieter Bruegel and by the kinds of stories people were telling in 14th century Europe: stories like the bizarrely legalistic Reynard the Fox cycle, for example, or legends about revenants and sea snakes. The Middle Ages and the Renaissance were full of fascinating notions, technologies and stories, many of which haven’t been fully mined in medieval-inspired fantasy.

Cath: Can you talk a little bit about your game The Road to Canterbury? What are the objectives of the game? How much does it borrow from Chaucer?

Kate: The Road to Canterbury is a text-based game you can play on your computer or phone; it’s interactive fiction, which means you make choices as you read to determine the path of the character. That character is a weaver in London in 1375, who goes on pilgrimage with a civil servant and occasional poet named Geoffrey Chaucer. I had fun with the fact that in 1375, Chaucer’s wife, Philippa de Roet, is arguably a more important person than her husband, and she’s the one who drives much of the story. It’s a game about politics, economics and the role of the individual in history, but there’s a lot of just plain fun medieval stuff: I actually coded a version of the medieval dice game Hazard, for example. And there is a lot of story-telling, naturally. There are many references to Chaucer’s work, but the story in my game is its own thing, and many of the characters bear only a passing similarity to the characters in The Canterbury Tales. My editors at Choice of Games made writing the game a wonderful experience.

Cath: Both Alice Payne Arrives and its sequel are set in many time frames. I want to focus on Alice as a highway robber. Why did you choose to set her part of this story in 1788 and make her a robber? What are good places to learn about how to portray highway”men”?

Kate: The germ for this story had nothing to do with time travel and little to do with any particular period: I was struck by the idea of a highwaywoman leading a double life, who has to solve the mystery of a murder or disappearance to throw the local authorities off her scent. I suppose I liked the idea of the same person being both criminal and investigator. I still have my notes, in which I considered the 1580s, the 1640s, the 1810s, and several different countries. In the end I settled on England in the 1780s because it allowed me to create a very recognizable “highwayman” and because I had read a lot about real English highwaywomen in my initial research. I talked about some of those real-world examples in a recent Twitter thread.

Cath: Alice and Jane are together in these books. Can you discuss how you used history to both bolster and impede their relationship?

Kate: In the draft of the second Alice Payne book, there’s a cameo appearance by two elderly lesbians who are inspired by the real-life “Ladies of Llangollen”, Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby, who lived happily together in the late 18th century. The sculptor Anne Damer was another example I drew on of a probably-queer woman in 18th century England; Emma Donoghue’s novel Life Mask is about her. There are many such examples, and they suggest to me that two women in love could be fairly open about their relationship in certain circles and with certain friends; on the other hand, the dangers were real. This is all background to the relationship in Alice Payne Arrives, though, rather than foreground. Jane and Alice are together, they’re in love, and they’re having perilous time-travel adventures.

Cath: Alice’s backstory is an interesting one. What can you tell us about Jamaica in the 18th century?

Kate: The history of Jamaica in the 18th century is amazing; I think it says something about the history we learn that I was well into middle age before I learned anything about the enslaved people who rose up for their freedom there more than once, and who formed lasting, sovereign communities within colonized Jamaica. Alice’s family life and upbringing was partly inspired by that of Dido Elizabeth Belle, who lived in late 18th century England and was the child of a white Englishman and an enslaved black woman in the British West Indies. Colonial efforts to define racial categories in service of slavery-based economics had to contend with a steady migration of people of colour from Jamaica to England, usually so they could be educated with their father’s families, and sometimes so they could apply for the privileges of whiteness on their return. Daniel Livesay’s book Children of Uncertain Fortune is a fascinating look at those families and at the social and political creation of race in that era. I didn’t want to write a book about that dynamic per se, as it is very much not my story to tell, as a white Canadian. But at the same time, it would be dishonest to write about 18th century England and have everyone be white; that just wasn’t how it was. So while the books are not really about Alice’s position in English society as a woman of colour, her Jamaican origin is definitely an important aspect of her life, especially when it comes to her complicated relationship with her father.

Cath: Having read your work set in the time frames we’ve discussed above, plus the writing you’ve done regarding Marie Antionette, I have to ask: do you have a favorite historical period? Do you have any other historical periods you would really like to write a story in?

Kate: I don’t have a favourite, really! I bounce around, when it comes to time. As for space, although many of my short stories are set in Canada at various points in history (and the Alice Payne books come to North America for some scenes) all my published novels and novellas so far are set mainly in Europe. That’s partly because that’s my own heritage, both in a literal sense (my dad emigrated from the UK) and in the sense that those are the stories that I have an itch to explore and subvert. But that’s not really by design and could change.

Cath: Tell us all about the release details for the Alice Payne books.

Kate: Alice Payne Arrives will be out in paperback and ebook from Tor.com Publishing on Nov. 6, 2018; it’s available to pre-order now. Alice Payne Rides will follow in March 2019. Each is a novella of about 30,000 words. Each book is written to stand on its own, but there is space for the story to continue, if readers respond to it. We’ll see.

Cath: Are you at liberty to talk about any of your future projects?

Kate: The other book I have written and sold is a full-length novel called The Humours of Grub Street. It’s coming in 2019 or 2020 from ChiZine Publications, which published Armed in Her Fashion. It’s set in London in 1703. I’m currently revising another 18th century novel, and I’m working on a second game for Choice of Games. That one is set in Renaissance Florence and will be out sometime in 2019, if all goes well. After that, well, I have some plans but they’re still in the delicate secret stage.

***

Kate Heartfield’s first novel, a historical fantasy called Armed in Her Fashion, was published by ChiZine Publications in 2018.
Tor.com will publish two time-travel novellas by Kate, beginning with Alice Payne Arrives in November, 2018. Her interactive novel for Choice of Games, The Road to Canterbury, was published in 2018. She’s working on another.Her short fiction has appeared in magazines including Strange Horizons, Lackington’s and Podcastle, and anthologies including Clockwork Canada and Monstrous Little Voices: New Tales from Shakespeare’s Fantasy World. Her stories “The Seven O’Clock Man” and “Not Valid for Spain” were longlisted for the Sunburst Award. Until 2015, Kate was the opinion editor for the Ottawa Citizen. She was shortlisted for Canada’s National Newspaper Award for editorial writing in 2015. She now teaches journalism at Carleton University and creative writing online for the Loft Literary Center. Her agent is Jennie Goloboy at the Donald Maass Literary Agency.

Fantastic History #11: Merlin the Magician–Laying the Foundation for a Not so Friendly Wizard by Pat Esden

The myths and historic truths behind Merlin the Magician legends have fascinated me since I was a child. So it was only natural for him to slip into one of my novels (His Dark Magic—Northern Circle Coven series).

First of all, I want to clarify that I’m far from an Arthurian scholar. My knowledge is limited and the material I’m familiar with is commonly available. In a way, I think limiting the material has worked to my benefit. There is so much converging and diverging information, and endless theories about Merlin that it easily could have overwhelmed the novel’s plot and slowed the pace to a standstill. This is especially true since the Northern Circle Coven series is contemporary fantasy flavored with mythology and history, and not an alternate history or historical fantasy.

There were two specific details about Merlin that I centered my brainstorming and research on. One was the claim that Merlin’s father was a demon (the type of demon varies depending on the story’s source). The other—which in my opinion naturally arises from the first detail—is that Merlin wasn’t a particularly kindly and innocent wise wizard. He was a misogynist, perhaps not as much by historic standards but definitely by modern ones, as shown most clearly in his actions towards the Lady of the Lake. Okay, the Lady of the Lake is actually several ladies and they go by different names depending on who’s telling the tale. I’m going to simply refer to her as Nimue since that’s the name I chose to use in His Dark Magic. At any rate, Merlin—an older man—alternately harassed, tricked, and used magic to get Nimue to have sex with him, starting when she was a very young teen. If you’d like to listen to this particular tale, check out Jason Weiser’s Myths and Legends podcast.

It’s not exactly a story of courtly love that many people associate with the tales of the round table.

These two details about Merlin lead to the questions that became the foundation of my novel: what if Merlin at his nastiest became involved with modern day witches, how would they react to his misogynistic behavior? Personally, I think in the legends Nimue’s anger and outwitting of Merlin is a reaction that many modern women would have—if they had access to magic. Nimue’s rise to power and eventual subjugation of Merlin is pretty impressive given the time period when she supposedly lived. It’s also interesting that over the centuries men have been the ones to write down this tale. It leads me to wonder if the tales were first told by women. Stories have always reflected truths about societies, the darkest realities and empowering wishes and struggle for change.

Learn more about Merlin
Reading, thought, and listening list:

Merlin’s demonic roots on Myths and Legends

Sir Thomas Malory Le Morte D’ Arthur

Rumor & Misogyny in “Merlin & Vivien” (Brown University)

***

HIS DARK MAGIC
(Northern Circle Coven series book 1) Coming December 11th

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Its power is legendary. It can fulfill every impossible magical desire. But for one young witch seeking redemption, the Northern Circle coven will challenge her skills—and her heart—beyond measure.

One tragic impulsive mistake made Chloe Winslow an outcast to her influential magic family. As a medical student, she wants to combine science with sorcery to heal those she hurt and right her wrongs. But brilliant, charismatic Devlin Marsh re-routes her plans with a once-in-eternity offer: membership in the exclusive Northern Circle, a mysterious Vermont coven known for pushing the limits.

Enthralled by Devlin and their mesmerizing mutual attraction, Chloe makes a dangerous sacrifice to help the Circle’s high priestess awaken Merlin himself—and learn his timeless cures. But a foreshadowing soon causes Chloe to doubt the Circle’s real motives, as well as Devlin’s . . .

Now Merlin’s demonic shade is loose in the human world, while Chloe and Devlin’s uneasy alliance will pit them against ancient enemies, malevolent illusions, and shattering betrayal. And with the fate of two realms in the balance, Chloe must risk her untried power against a force she can’t defeat—and a passion that could destroy her.

***

Pat Esden would love to say she spent her childhood in intellectual pursuits. The truth is she was fonder of exploring abandoned houses and old cemeteries. When not out on her own adventures, she can be found in her northern Vermont home writing stories about brave, smart women and the men who capture their hearts.

She is the author of the contemporary paranormal Dark Heart series from Kensington Books, and the upcoming Northern Circle Coven series. Her short fiction has appeared in a number of publications, including Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, the Mythopoeic Society’s Mythic Circle, George Scither’s Cat Tales Anthology, and the Fragments of Darkness anthology.

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Fantastic History #10: Come and Write with Me–When the Fiction Becomes the Source by Christopher Kastensmidt

Reading through the articles here at Fantastic History, I can relate. I’ve been working with The Elephant and Macaw Banner universe for twelve years now, and I’ve certainly faced every challenge mentioned here along the way: historical fidelity, anachronisms, researching in a foreign language and all the rest. The Elephant and Macaw Banner (let’s call it EAMB for short) is a series based on sixteenth-century Brazil: a period marking the beginning of European colonization and a massive clash of cultures along the coast.

Similar to what Tim Powers does in his works, I rigorously follow historical events, while at the same time mixing in the supernatural. In this case, my supernatural elements include creatures from Brazilian folklore and miraculous powers associated with pajés (native shamans) and religious characters (like Jesuit missionaries).

The Headless Mule, a well-known Brazilian myth (artist: SulaMoon)

About 90% of my research is in Portuguese, with the other 10% English and Spanish. The sixteenth-century is by far the least-documented period in Brazilian history. For one, Brazil had no printing press at the time (they were, in fact, illegal in the colony until the nineteenth century). That means that works from the period only got published if they somehow made it back to Europe—a rarity. There are about a dozen relatively reliable first-hand accounts from the period and not a lot of in-depth secondary works. While that has made my research a challenge, it has also created an interesting reverse effect, where the fiction itself has become a reference.

To support that conclusion, I’ll have to provide a little bit of history. The series has passed through multiple stages over the last twelve years, which I’ll try to summarize here.

Phase One: Prose

I started work on the stories in late 2006. I read some 20 books before I wrote the first story, a number that would quickly surpass 200 as I made my way through the series. That first story was published in Realms of Fantasy in 2010, and after a Nebula nomination in 2011, the stories soon reached an international audience. They were published in several languages, including a series of pocket editions in Brazil.

To my surprise, the stories were quickly adopted in schools as an alternative method of introducing several cultural elements, including: folklore, slavery, colonization and others.

A school play based on A Parlous Battle Against the Capelobo, the second story in the series (school: E.E. B. Professora Erica Marques)

Phase Two: Adaptation

Parallel to the stories being launched, I began working on adaptations. The first of these, a graphic novel, came out in late 2014. Thanks to sponsorship through a government program, the graphic novel was donated to hundreds of public school libraries in the states of Sao Paulo, Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina.

A flashback to the Kingdom of Ketu, in modern-day Benin, from the graphic novel adaptation (artist: Carolina Mylius)

The graphic novel format is extremely accessible to young readers and helped the series reach an even greater audience. In 2015 alone, I participated in over 30 events and school visits in the states where the donations had taken place.

Phase Three: Interaction

In late 2017, I launched a table-top RPG based on the world of the stories. It was a success beyond my greatest expectations, selling out in just four months. Half of the copies went to public schools in eight states. The RPG gave me a chance to synthesize my (at the time) eleven years of research into an accessible and interactive format. I was able to present historical details such as measurements, currency and professions alongside statistics for fantastic creatures.

Pages from the RPG (art by Marcela Medeiros and Cássio Yoshiyaki)

Just seven months after launch, I know of dozens of schools which are already using the RPG in the classroom to teach students about folklore and sixteenth-century history. I receive almost weekly messages of people telling me how they’re studying history for the first time in their lives, so that they can create their own adventures in the setting.

The Elephant and Macaw Banner RPG in the classroom (school: Dom Walfrido Teixeira Vieira EEEP)

Phase Four: Community

The biggest surprise has been adoption by the community. The RPG is quickly becoming a reference in the area and has brought many readers back to the source material. It paved a clear path for people to tell their own stories in the world, in turn giving them a sense of ownership. That feeds back in a loop, with the community creating material for itself, thus expanding the universe and inspiring new creators. The fans are actively participating in every aspect of the future of this universe, providing feedback and ideas for future products. It has been a marvelous and humbling experience.

Examples of fan-written content for the EAMB RPG (content by Jan Piertezoon, Gustavo Tenório and Arthur Pinto de Andrade)

For those looking to know more about ABEA, the stories are available in individual editions at the moment on Amazon, but I recently signed a contract with Guardbridge Books (yeah!), and we’ll be replacing those with a definitive, revised edition in electronic and print formats. That edition will be launched at the World Fantasy Conference in November. Catherine’s Comment: !!!!

The stories are also available in Spanish, through Sportula, in Chinese, through Douban Read, and Portuguese, through Devir. The RPG should be out in English in 2019, and other products are on the way, such as a video game based on the RPG.

My thanks to Catherine and Fantastic History for the chance to publish this article. Congrats on the wonderful blog!

Fantastic History #9: Name Dropping by Kurt Wilcken

I think one of the first alternate history books I ever read was Poul Anderson’s Operation Chaos, set in a world where 20th century technology was based on a fusion of science and magic. There’s an intriguing passage at the very beginning where the narrator directly addresses the reader:

“You probably do not live in worlds radically foreign to ours, or communication would be impossible…You too must remember Galileo, Newton, Lavoisier, Watt; the chances are that you too are an American. But we have diverged at some point. Have you had an Einstein? And if you did, what did he think about after his early papers on Brownian movement and special relativity?”

That passage has always stuck in my imagination. Although Einstein never comes up again in the story, his mention here establishes a point of similarity between the fantasy world and ours: Einstein existed and was a significant figure in both. And at the same time, his mention suggests that there are differences too, and invites the reader to speculate on what those differences might be.

I will admit to doing a fair amount of “name dropping” in my own creative works–often little more than in-jokes for my own amusement and maybe of those who notice, but sometimes to offer, as Pooh-Bah says, “corroborative detail to give verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative.”

My webcomic, Hannibal Tesla Adventure Magazine, is a pulp-era adventure set in an alternate version of 1935 where dirigibles and electric autogyros soar above the skyscrapers of Manhattan and where rockets travel to the moon and beyond. My main characters are Hannibal, a two-fisted scientist in the Doc Savage mold, and Ginger DuPree, a gutsy girl reporter following in the tradition of Lois Lane and Hildy Johnson from His Girl Friday. But I always wanted to give my readers the sense that there were other heroes in this world besides my main protagonists and that there were other adventures happening off-panel.

For this reason, I decided that in my world, Charles Lindbergh would be the first man to walk on the moon, in a rocket built by Charles Goddard. In one adventure where Ginger traveled into space to battle the Cat-Men from Mars, mention is made of “Lindbergh Base” located in Mare Tranquillitatis, (where Apollo 11 landed in our universe). And although this was largely a throw-away reference–like Einstein in the Operation Chaos passage, Lucky Lindy makes no other appearance in the story–the choice was appropriate. I found out in later research that Lindbergh was interested in rocketry, and after he gained celebrity and fortune crossing the Atlantic, he helped Goddard get financial support for his rocket experiments in the desert. You’d think I planned it that way.

These things don’t always work out that conveniently, though. In another story, I had Hannibal traveling into the Himalayas and looking up a Sherpa guide who has worked with him before. “Going to try for Everest again?” the guide asks him. I originally intended to have Hannibal laugh and say, “No, I thought I’d give Sir Edmund a shot at it this year.” But then I wondered, was Edmund Hillary a knight before he climbed Mount Everest, or was he knighted as a consequence of it? Looking the matter up, I found that the knighthood came afterwards; and that Hillary didn’t conquer Everest until 1953, nearly twenty years after my story takes place. With a sigh of regret, I cut the joke.

Sometimes the reference can grow beyond just a casual name-drop. The current story in my webcomic involves Hannibal’s father, the noted inventor Nikola Tesla, and in researching the man I found all sorts of factoids to work into my plot: the “Peace Ray” he tried to invent which he hoped to make war obsolete by disintegrating battleships; his device for operating ships by remote control; his ambitious plan to broadcast electricity like radio waves; the early computer built in the sub-basement of Grand Central Station designed to handle switching for subway cars. Some of these will just be bits of flavor, but some will become important plot points as the story progresses. And sometimes I don’t know myself which will be which.

And sometimes all these bits remain beneath the surface. For the “Cat-Men from Mars” story, the climax involved a battle in space between the invading Martian armada and a fleet of rockets from Earth. I thought it would be cool to have Brigadier General Billy Mitchell in command of the Earth defense fleet. In our timeline, Mitchell was an aviator who served as commander of the US Army’s Air Service in France during WWI. Both during and following the war, he was a vocal and determined advocate of air power, to the annoyance of his superiors, and was ultimately brought before a court-martial for insubordination. He was right about air power, but he was still found insubordinate. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor vindicated his theories and predictions, and today Billy Mitchell is regarded as the Father of the modern U.S. Air Force.

I decided that for my history, Mitchell played the game of military politics a little better and managed to avoid the court-martial. He still annoyed his superiors in the general staff, though, and so got shuffled off to the newly formed U.S. Army Space Corps following the Lindbergh moon landing, which was considered a position of little importance…until the Martians invaded the moon.

I had worked up a nice little backstory for Mitchell, but little came of it. By the time I got to that part of the story, I was nearing the climax and really wanted to finish things up. I didn’t want to impede the plot further by introducing a new character, so Billy Mitchell wound up appearing in only a single panel, and that one was so small that I couldn’t really draw a good likeness of him. In the end, the reader had no way of knowing that he was anyone significant, or that someday there would be a spaceport in Milwaukee named after him. But I did.

I suppose in that case my appropriation of a historical figure amounts to little more than an obscure and highly-indulgent in-joke. Still, I think that such name-dropping serves a valid purpose. It establishes points of similarity which anchor the fictional world to the real one, as well as benchmarks which give a sense of how they differ.

At least that’s my excuse.

***

In his secret identity, Kurt Wilcken is a Ninja Cartoonist. He attended Iowa State University, where he drew political cartoons for the Iowa State Daily and sold photocopied comics out of his backpack. He went on to write and draw comics for Innovation, Antarctic Press and Radio Comix. He has illustrated children’s books and occasionally blogs about subjects ranging from science fiction to comic books to weird Bible stories. He currently publishes a Pulp-Era adventure comic, HANNIBAL TESLA ADVENTURE MAGAZINE, on his website.

Fantastic History #8: Researching Recent History by Dan Stout

Researching Recent History

I should begin with a confession: As a writer, I don’t have much in common with any self-assured, elbow-patched master of the craft. Instead, I chase after topics like a puppy chases lightning bugs, leaping at every new flash, spinning mad circles in the summer twilight before collapsing exhausted onto a soft carpet of a freshly-mowed lawn.

In other words, I suffer from a short attention span and an inclination to naps.

These traits helped shape the creation of my debut novel. TITANSHADE is a murder mystery set in an alternate world with 1970s technology. This setting immediately appealed to my inner puppy because A) it blends the familiar with the unknown in fun and flashing-light ways, and B) I thought it would make my life easier, leaving more time for naps.

So I dove into the novel headfirst, chasing the flashing lights and assuming I’d have to do minimal research. After all, there’s no shortage of information about the 70s, and hey– I’ve even got first-hand knowledge! How hard could it be, right?

I think you see where this is going.

Halfway through the first draft, I realized my catastrophic miscalculation. Yes, I’d experienced the 70s… as a kindergartener. My expertise was limited to juice boxes and show-and-tell, not the inner workings of a homicide investigation. Even worse, when I finally started my research, I found that very few sources addressed the day-in, day-out drudgery suitable for noir fiction. In order to make any headway, I knew I had to find a different approach.

Death at the Disco

Let’s take a simple example: a patron has been found dead at a popular nightclub. Our goal in this scene is to create a vivid sense of setting and to convey the forensic science of the investigation.

Just like today, nightclubs in the 70s ranged from high-end to grungy. (The cocaine-fueled decadence of Studio 54 was worlds away from the intentional squalor of CBGB, for example.) Because we’re writing fantasy, we also need to reveal the rules and norms of the world in a way that seems natural. We need to find small details, short asides that feel like background flavor to the reader, but actually do the heavy lifting of world-building. And when it comes to recent history, these are the kind of details it can be surprisingly hard to turn up.

There’s no shortage of articles about the discos and dance halls of the 70s, but almost all of them were written decades after the fact. Retrospective articles are fine for some things – want to know when Studio 54 opened its doors? Easy! – but it can be a mistake to rely on them for a true feel of what life was like at that place, in that time.

We run into the same issue portraying the forensic team investigating the crime. Hop online and you’ll find a wealth of resources about forensics. But almost all of them showcase current technology and theories. It seems the 1970s fall into that narrow range of post-computer, but pre-Internet, a period of time for which surprisingly few archives are available online.

From the Horse’s Mouth

The most direct method to learn about recent history is to talk to the people who lived it. Reach out to family members or friends of friends to see who might be willing to share their story with you. These people are treasures, rich sources of history and experience. But they can sometimes put a spin on their experiences or find that their recollections have become clouded over time. Memories are great, but even better are contemporary accounts.

Contemporary accounts are less tainted by nostalgia and tend to be focused on the level of comfort and short-term concerns. Conveniently, that’s what most fictional characters are interested in, as well.

One of the most effective methods I’ve found is to track down the technical manuals and travel guides from the era. Travel guides are covered in more detail in Fantastic History #3, and are great resources often filled with the small details that can bring a setting to life, such as the real cost of daily items, or tips on how not to get pick-pocketed.

In our example of a murder that takes place in a disco, we’re better off looking beyond the mainstream, and finding sources that were targeted to a niche market. Fanzines and gossip columns described the activity in the clubs with more relish than would ever appear in a traditional newspaper column. Often viewed as ephemera, these sources were only rarely saved. Finding them requires scouring second-hand bookstores and haunting university library book sales.

For topics like forensic procedures, the best source is often contemporary technical instruction. Especially valuable are texts geared to the general public or introductory texts intended for trainees in the field. Some of these manuals are available in digital form, but the vast majority are not. Back to the second-hand stores! (I wish I could make that sound like work, but it’s way too much fun.)

A much easier resource to locate is contemporary photos. These images give a glimpse into the sights (and implied sounds and smells) we might encounter in any given setting. Ranging from snapshots to artistic explorations, photos have been preserved more frequently than paper items. Collections are readily available online, covering everything from Chicago nightclubs to life on the NYPD.

Putting it Together

Getting the period-specific details right is only part of the equation. A fantasy setting gives us some leeway; as long as things “feel” like the late 70s, the readers will be along for the ride. A bigger issue is the possible ramifications that magic and other technologies might have on the historical setting. These need to be thought through as much as possible, their “what if?” blending with our research to create an immersive experience.

It’s not always easy to focus your inner writerly puppy, but the hard work pays off. Discovering first-hand accounts and sliding into the mindset of an era allows us to highlight the wonder and strangeness of the times, while also giving readers enough essential information to follow the narrative. So if you’ve got a story set in a recent historical era, go ahead and do the work. Talk to people who lived it, dig up original sources, and plunge into the images and stories that informed life in that place and time. There’ll be plenty of time to chase lightning bugs when you’re done.

***

Dan Stout lives in Columbus, Ohio, where he writes about fever dreams and half-glimpsed shapes in the shadows. His fiction draws on travels throughout Europe, Asia, and the Pacific Rim as well as an employment history spanning everything from subpoena server to assistant well driller. Dan’s stories have appeared in publications such as The Saturday Evening Post, Nature, and Mad Scientist Journal. His debut novel Titanshade releases in March 2019 from DAW Books. To say hello, visit him at DanStout.com.

Fantastic History #7: The Creative Spark in Ancient Worlds by Rachel Marks

Every story has been written. Every tale has been told. As you look at history you begin to see how true this idea is. At this point, as artists, we’re all basically re-creators. There is nothing new under the sun. What one man leaves behind another picks up and reshapes, and this is especially true in the sci-fi/fantasy genre. From Harry Potter, to Star Wars, to Bram Stoker’s Dracula, most well-know speculative creations have been inspired by, or seem to echo ancient mythology, a historic culture or a historical event. According to George R.R. Martian, Game of Thrones was inspired by his fascination with the War of the Roses. Tolkien was inspired by his love of ancient language and Norse and Celtic mythology. And the much maligned/loved Twilight could easily be seen as a retelling of Beauty and the Beast.

After I finished work on my debut series (The Dark Cycle), I found myself in a slump with a very real case of writer’s block. I had several projects in the baby stages but nothing that had enough meat on its bones to allow for me to really dive in as my next big challenge. I went back and forth between projects for several months and just couldn’t make any of them work. I decided to take a break in writing and focus on research. Just research. Because that’s my sandbox. I would soak in information based on ancient culture, historic wars, colonization and change, and I would go into my sponge time with no preconceived notions. I’d just take it all in and see what my subconscious did.

I’ve always been fascinated by ancient Irish-Celtic mythology/culture, and Norse as well (having a grandma who sprouted from each of them), with a solid knowledge base on both of them, and so I naturally gravitated towards those. I knew that I wanted to write something with an ancient feeling, but told in a modern setting. I planned on laying out a few paths I could possibly walk down as I started taking notes.

Within the first two weeks of soaking, I had a new main character waving at me, a mythology structure rising to the surface, and a very real mood I wanted to create; all the bones I needed to build the new world of Fire and Bone. A world woven through with ancient Irish Folklore, wrapped in the mood of a dark European faerie tale, with a twist of sassy modern wit.

I was surprised how quickly my writer’s block was broken by simple historical research, my mind opening to new ideas from old stories and ancient imaginings. And while I may not have had all the details laid out perfectly, I had a baseline to jump off of. I was finally weaving a story again. A new story sparked because I couldn’t get the vision of what I’d read out of my head; I felt the plight of the old gods clashing with the new as the East met the West through Rome, I saw the image of a god transforming into a raven, I marveled at stories of children abandoned in the woods by parents who feared the illusive fae. Because they had faith that not setting out fresh cream for the pixies brought fate’s mischief, that a sickly child was a changeling. Superstition was the order of the day. And the gods walked among us.

The inevitable story questions rose: what would that look like in modern day? And how would the ancient gods of Erin, of Albion and Prydain play with us now, if they could? The answers to this author’s inspiration came from the past.

Maybe yours will as well.

***

Rachel A. Marks is an author and artist, a cancer survivor and the mom of four awesome humans. She’s the author of the bestselling Urban Fantasy series, The Dark Cycle. And her new book Fire and Bone was one of SyFy.com’s most anticipated books of 2018. You can read more about her on her website: www.RachelAnneMarks.com

Fantastic History #6: A Time Traveler’s Guide to Avoiding Anachronisms by Wendy Nikel

We’ve all read them: modern words, phrases, inventions, or brand names that somehow sneak their way into settings that are supposed to predate them. Language is constantly changing, as are the ways that we use words, so if you want your period piece or time travel story to sound authentic, it’s important to take note of which words your characters use. A manor in the year 1400, for instance, isn’t going to have any doorknobs (invented in 1878); a child in the 1860s isn’t going to carry around a teddy bear (invented in 1902); and sadly, no one in the 19th century is going to be snacking on chocolate chip cookies (invented in 1933).

Though anachronisms can be used to infuse humor into a piece of fiction (i.e. The Emperor’s New Groove, A Knight’s Tale, the Monty Python movies, or any Mel Brooks film), when a story is shooting for historical accuracy, these elements can throw the reader out of a story faster than a ’52 Corvette (first produced in 1953).

While editing THE GRANDMOTHER PARADOX, the second novella in my Place in Time series, which is set to be released on July 10, my editor found a word that didn’t seem quite right for the 1893 setting, which sent me on a search down a research rabbit hole into the word’s etymology and usage in history. The word in question: stalker.

My initial thoughts circled around famous serial killers. After all, Jack the Ripper dated back to 1888, and I knew I’d seen him referred to as a stalker, as was H.H. Holmes, who stalked his victims during the very World’s Fair which I was writing about. But just because we nowadays refer to them as stalkers doesn’t mean that’s the term that was used in their day. So, I turned to one of my favorite resources to seek out an answer: Etymonline.com

This online etymology dictionary is a quick way to search those words which seem a bit suspect. For instance, when I searched “stalker” it came up with this definition:

So while the word technically was in existence during the 1890s, the definition wasn’t the one I’d intended and could cause confusion for my characters. The modern-day character who was using it would think that he was referring to someone who obsessively harassed a person, while my character from the 19th century would think it was simply someone prowling around to try to steal something.

This sort of changing language isn’t at all uncommon. The word “awful,” for instance, used to mean “worthy of respect or fear, striking with awe.” World War I wasn’t referred to as such until World War II was underway. This is one reason why it’s a good idea, when researching for a novel, for historical fiction writers to read primary sources: newspapers, articles, journals, and books that were written during that era – not just for the details of the setting itself, but for how language is used, in order to make your dialogue and narrative sound more authentic.

Listed below are some bonus resources which may be useful when trying to write accurate historical fiction:

Historical Currency Conversions
Google Books Ngram Viewer
Word Spy
The Phrase Finder

***

Wendy Nikel is a speculative fiction author with a degree in elementary education, a fondness for road trips, and a terrible habit of forgetting where she’s left her cup of tea. Her short fiction has been published by Fantastic Stories of the Imagination, Daily Science Fiction, Nature: Futures, and various e-zines and anthologies. Her time travel novella, The Continuum, was published by World Weaver Press in January 2018, with a sequel following in July. For more info, visit wendynikel.com

Fantastic History #4: Researching in a Foreign Language by J. Kathleen Cheney

When your research drags you into foreign places…

When I chose the setting for my Golden City series (way back in 2009), I did so without a great deal of consideration. For the most part, that was because I was writing a single novelette. I was supposed to do 15,000 words and get out. Instead, I was still there, almost a decade later, regularly researching stuff on the Iberian Peninsula, Brazil, and Cape Verde.

One thing I didn’t realize at the time, though, was that Portugal, despite being England’s oldest military ally, does not end up with much of its literature/writings translated into English. I don’t know why.

Now, when I was working on a single novelette, that was acceptable. I could use Google Translate to work around some of the sections of various webpages and use my workmanlike Spanish to hack my way through other bits, but when I started working on novel-length fiction set there…I knew I was in trouble.

Big trouble.

Why Do It, Then?

I get asked this question regularly: Why did you choose to set this in Portugal? Above I noted that I did so without a lot of consideration. I saw that Portugal had tons of coastline, and that was what I needed.

But along the way, I also learned there are some advantages to working in a culture people haven’t often seen before.
1) It’s fresh for readers.
2) It leaves lots of room for mistakes.

WHAT? Number 2 was an unplanned benefit. What I’ve learned from my decade of writing for American readers about Portugal is that they know very little about Portugal.

Basically, the more commonly used a setting is, the more ‘experts’ there are on that topic. If you set a book in NYC, in London, in Paris…a gazillion readers will point out every little thing you get wrong. If you set a story during WW1 of WW2, during the American Civil War, during the Napoleonic Wars…enough readers will know that era to spot any glitch.

1901 in Porto? An unintended benefit of this was that I had very few readers who knew enough about that setting to argue with me about…anything.

But also, I simply came to love the setting. I dove into researching the history (although I changed a lot of it) and found a rich culture, a fascinating past, and centuries of relationships with other cultures, often very fraught (and often deservedly so.) And I think that all the effort I’ve had to put in has been worth it.

So how do I tackle researching in a foreign language?
In the course of the first three novels, I did a ton of research online, often using sites that were in Portuguese. Or Spanish. Or Catalan. In fact, I used sites with two difference dialects of Catalan. Am I an expert in any of those languages? No. I started with mild familiarity with Spanish and worked from there.

Here are some of the steps I took:

1) Use machine translation: A good example of this is Google Translate, where you can simply paste a paragraph into a box and it will give you a -passable- translation. There are major flaws in this, but if you’re looking at something simple, that’s the fastest way to read it. Also, some browsers (I use Chrome) have a popup or toggle that offers to translate entire pages for you into your regular browsing language. This has proven incredibly helpful, especially when I don’t know whether I want to try to read the whole page. HOWEVER, machine translation is not entirely reliable, so I strongly suggest having other sources…

2) Get a language buddy: When I hit a real snag with something I absolutely had to get correct, I turned to some of my friends. Christopher Kastensmidt (author of The Elephant and Macaw Banner series) lives in Brazil and is a fluent Portuguese speaker, so when I had a complex question, I went to him for help and he got me the answers I needed. I hit up Sue Burke (author of Semiosis), who lived in Madrid at the time, for questions in Spanish. I even had someone I could contact for Galician, although I ended up not using them. So use your writer buddies to your advantage. Ask around and find out who can help you.

3) Ask your writers group: I’m a member of a large online group, and when I needed something specific, I could always post the question there, and someone would know the answer. (This is a subset of #2).

4) Learn the language: Now, some of you will be saying, “This should have been point #1”, but I disagree. I know we would all love to be diligent researchers, but that takes time–time we won’t spend writing. We need to research efficiently. Therefore, this step came along later in my process, when I realized I was doing far more than just one story. I got a set of Portuguese learning CDs (I used Pimsleur), popped them in my car, and listened to them everywhere I went. To this day, I am NOT fluent in the language, although I managed to get around in Portugal well enough. What the lessons provided instead was an understanding of the framework of the language. That helped me to grasp all the things that the machine translations were doing wrong, so that I could use the machine translation better.*

5) Use Wikipedia as a portal: I’ve done this a gazillion times now. I go into the English Wikipedia to look at something about a city in Portugal, discover that the English version has almost no data, and switch over to Portuguese Wikipedia, which not-surprisingly seems to care more about Portugal than the English version does. I’ve written about this a lot online, so I’ll just insert a link to that information here Once you’ve got a handle on machine translation and its foibles, this can be incredibly valuable.

6) Use social media: Take this one with a grain of salt. If your desperate for a quick translation or have a simple question about the language, ask on social media. I’ve used Facebook this way and have had some great results. Just be warned that you will get a lot of dross along with that bit of gold. Don’t assume the first answer is the correct one.

Admittedly, some languages are more different than others. I’ve recently started work in Finnish, and it’s absolutely unlike any language I’ve studied before (but in my first Finnish lesson, I quickly learned why speakers of that language often sound ‘depressed’ to outsiders.) I have studied Russian, which helped with my work set in Russia, but I have never tackled any other Asian language. I admit, I’m a bit lazy for that. As much as we enjoy researching, we’re writers instead of anthropologists for a reason. Most of us want to concentrate on the writing.

But if you find yourself lost in a different culture, don’t back away. There are a lot of things that you can try to help you wade through the unfamiliar. It’s worth trying.

*Machine translation often struggles with things that a language does differently than English. For example, Portuguese and Spanish are null-subject languages, which means that their sentences do not have to have a subject. She is an astronaut simply becomes Is an astronaut. Because the machine translation wants to put in a subject, it sticks in HE most of the time—He is an astronaut–creating confusion when you’re researching a woman. In addition, formal names are often baffling to the machines and end up being translated into nouns. (The name of the city, Porto, was constantly being changed to the port.) Learning a bit of the language helped me know which issues to watch out for in the translation process, and I could glance back at the original language sentence to see what should have happened instead of the gobbledygook that came out the other end!

***

J. Kathleen Cheney taught mathematics ranging from 7th grade to Calculus, but gave it all up for a chance to write stories. Her novella “Iron Shoes” was a 2010 Nebula Award Finalist. Her novel, The Golden City was a Finalist for the 2014 Locus Awards (Best First Novel). Dreaming Death (Feb 2016) is the first in a new world, with the books of The Horn coming out in 2017, and the books of The King’s Daughter and sequels to Dreaming Death in 2018/2019

Social Media Links:
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Website: www.jkathleencheney.com
Twitter: @jkcheney

***

For two years, Oriana Paredes has been a spy among the social elite of the Golden City, reporting back to her people, the sereia, sea folk banned from the city’s shores….

When her employer and only confidante decides to elope, Oriana agrees to accompany her to Paris. But before they can depart, the two women are abducted and left to drown. Trapped beneath the waves, Oriana survives because of her heritage, but she is forced to watch her only friend die.

Vowing vengeance, Oriana crosses paths with Duilio Ferreira—a police consultant who has been investigating the disappearance of a string of servants from the city’s wealthiest homes. Duilio also has a secret: He is a seer and his gifts have led him to Oriana.

Bound by their secrets, not trusting each other completely yet having no choice but to work together, Oriana and Duilio must expose a twisted plot of magic so dark that it could cause the very fabric of history to come undone….

Fantastic History #3: Researching Historical Fantasy–A Dilettante’s Reminiscence by Caroline Stevermer

A large part of the joy of writing historical fantasy, for me, is the research. Although I also read letters, diaries, and newspapers from times and places equivalent to the historical setting I hope to use, the research tool I most enjoy using is obsolete travel guides. They have helped to spark my imagination and to improve my world-building.

Some travel guides had life and death importance for travelers. The Green-Book, written, published, and revised by Victor H. Green from 1936 to 1963, helped African-American travelers survive the dangers of travel in the United States. Some travel guides are centuries old. The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea may date from the first century CE. To clarify, I don’t intend to get into the use of such important historical resources here.

Instead, I plan to reminisce about the origin of my fascination with travel guides published to help their intended audience to negotiate travel for pleasure to a particular place for a particular year. My very first obsolete travel guide was a Ward Lock guide. This particular edition of The English Lake District, or to be exact, A Pictorial and Descriptive Guide to the English Lake District, with an outline guide for pedestrians and a special section for motorists, was published in U.K. in the early 1930s.

I found the battered red book in a bargain bin at the excellent used bookstore nearest my college campus. I had no plans to write anything set in the Lake District, nor to travel in the Lake District, and at that point I sincerely doubt I knew where the Lake District was. As an avid reader of The Lord of the Rings, I had devoured many of the other titles Ballantine Books published in their fantasy line. Among them was E.R. Eddison’s The Worm Ouroboros.
I found Eddison’s deliberately antiquated prose style difficult to read at first, but I think there was an element of the Ikea effect at work. Because I worked harder than usual to read that book, I connected with it more than the other titles from Ballantine. My love for Worm was cemented when I went to college and made friends* based on our shared passion for such novels.

The Worm Ouroboros begins with these words: “There was man named Lessingham dwelt in an old low house in Wastdale, set in a gray old garden where yew-trees flourished that had seen Vikings in Copeland in their seedling time.” Wastdale is in the English Lake District. The index to the travel guide showed a reference to Wastdale, two for Wastdale Head, and two more for Wastwater. Intrigued, I read those entries, then went on skimming the guidebook.
I was eighteen. At the time, the travel guide, which seemed antique to me then, was about thirty years out of date. Perhaps because it was missing one of its maps, it only cost me 75 cents. Its true cost was the time I took to read it, as I should have been studying instead.

The guidebook had maps, photographs, detailed itineraries for hikers, and down-to-earth advice for the cyclists and motorists who were its intended audience.

[“…at this point is the Devil’s Elbow, a sharp double turn down a steep slope. (Cyclists, dismount! Motorists, crawl!)”]

The true reason I bought the book was its ads. The guidebook begins and ends with pages of advertisements to defray the cost of printing. One of the first pages is an advertisement for United Kingdom Credit, placed by the Westminster Bank Limited. “Motorists, tourists, and others traveling in Great Britain run no less risk of theft or loss here than they do abroad.” The ad goes on to say, “A customer of the Westminster Bank who provides himself with the Bank’s Letter of Credit may tour the Kingdom with no more loose money in his pocket than he wants for meeting his needs from hour to hour. By this means, he reduces his risk of loss and is sure of being able to obtain cash in any town throughout England, Scotland, and Wales.”

The hotels advertised had names straight out of Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers. As I read, I began to get a feeling for what it would be like to journey in this lost world. As a single woman, I thought I’d be more comfortable staying at a temperance hotel. I didn’t know how to drive, but that would present no problem. Walking holidays were popular enough to be catered for, so I could probably get a lift aboard one of the motor coaches that provided transport to the most popular sites. I would certainly obtain a letter of credit from a suitable bank. No travelers checks, or cheques, would be necessary.

In addition to providing help envisioning concrete details of daily life, it is a great source for names. Place names can make good names for people, too. Most of all, the obsolete guidebook can inspire. This is from English Lake District again: “Another feature of the by-roads are the gates, which are generally kept closed to prevent sheep from straying, and which form a real danger to the unwary motorist.” I’m sure I could have imagined a chase scene on a rural road. I might even have imagined the sheep, but I would never have thought to imagine a closed gate across a road suitable for motoring.

In Baedeker’s 1914 edition of Russia, the section on traveling in the Grand Duchy of Finland begins with this useful information: “In Finland Helsingfors (Helsinki) time is kept. This is 22 min. behind St. Petersburg time, 39 min. ahead of Central European time, and 1 hr. 39 min. ahead of W. European time.” I knew that time zones originated when scheduled train travel required such a thing, but not that the time intervals weren’t given in hours. It’s a world-building detail that would never have occurred to me.

When I was writing A College of Magics, I found period guidebooks helpful when considering such vital questions as which hotel in Paris my protagonist would choose and how she would get to the railway station (and which railway station should it be?) when she needed to leave the city. Many years after that, my vintage copy of Baedeker’s United States told me what coins and currency were in use, common and otherwise, in 1905. When my protagonist decided to ride the elevated railway in New York City, I knew how much the ticket would cost her (and what she should do with it), because my Baedeker explained that useful information in detail.

That first 75-cent guidebook has led to my current shelf of battered Baedekers, fragile Satchel Guides, and other out-of-date handbooks for travelers. In recent years, I’ve been happy to find modern reprints, which let me use a book without ruining it (and also contain every single map). I may think I know precisely what I’m looking for in an obsolete guidebook, but I never know exactly what else I’ll find.

* Ellen Kushner, I am thinking of you!

***

Caroline Stevermer (b. 1955) is known for her historical fantasy novels for young adults. She published her first book, The Alchemist, in 1981, and before collaborating with fellow Minnesotan Patricia C. Wrede to create a magical version of Regency England. Stevermer graduated from Bryn Mawr College with a degree in art history and currently lives in Minnesota.