The Time Traveling Lounge

Found this fun video on YouTube "American Greatest Hits by Year, 1840-2013": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1T9VvaKNW28

Disclaimers: Some of the content herein is horribly racist, graphic, or otherwise offensive. So is history. Inclusion in this video does not mean endorsement. The greatest hit of any given year is somewhat subjective, especially early on.

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Another fun YouTube video - bayonet tactics and naughty innuendos! You don't want to charge with your butt, indeed

https://youtu.be/oM2cUbhJqGo

So research on period ammunition led me to the Stowmarket Guncotton Explosion: http://eastanglianlife.org.uk/learn/online-resources/explosion.html
It killed 28 people and launched one of the earliest forensic investigations, but the apparent saboteur was never caught.

My WIP might turn into a steampunk spy thriller and this was right at the time Nicolette was in England...

Anyone for a spot of rum?

In true time-traveller style, my husband managed to get himself injured by a sword! Not too seriously, thankfully. He teaches HEMA (Historical European Martial Arts), he took off his helmet so one of his pupils could hear him, and got a whack on the side of the eye. Double vision has gone down but he has been left with quite a shiner.

Also, the web site "Ireland Before You Die" has published my listicle about piracy in Ireland: http://www.irelandbeforeyoudie.com/6-places-ireland-terrorised-pirates/
(I didn't choose the title, which is a bit misleading. At least half the time, it was the Irish doing the terrorizing!)

well that sounds painful

Finished reading Here Be Dragons today. I seem to have a thing where I love to read about medieval England (and Wales, in Here Be Dragons), but I would never write a book set in that era.

Why ever not? I found tenth-century Wales lent itself well to research. It wasn't easy, but I got more than enough for my 973 Clwyd romance. The one thing I couldn't suss out was what the Welsh armsmen might've called their battle leader. The Northmen were easy: they called him Swein or Erik or whatever his name was. No title. The English would call theirs "hlaford" or whatever. But I couldn't find any term for what the Cymry might have called him. 973 is too early for "pendeuic" or "arglwydd." I simply couldn't find it.

One tactic I used when writing this book, was not to stop the flow if I didn't know a word or fact. I'd change the font color to red, meaning "to be researched" and kept writing. It did help.

I say, do your best if you decide to write in this fascinating time and place. May your work find favor!

Sunflowerrei said:

Finished reading Here Be Dragons today. I seem to have a thing where I love to read about medieval England (and Wales, in Here Be Dragons), but I would never write a book set in that era.

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I love Sharon Kay Penman!

I also think "Penman" is the best surname ever for a writer. And it does appear to be her real name, not a pen name.

autumnleaf said:

I love Sharon Kay Penman!

I also think "Penman" is the best surname ever for a writer. And it does appear to be her real name, not a pen name.

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Y'know, I was wondering about whether it was a pen name or not. It seems too perfect for an author!

This post on the research forum piqued my interest in the 1859 Carrington Event, a massive solar storm that caused spectacular aurora displays worldwide. http://absolutewrite.com/forums/sho...-of-an-EMP&p=10171160&viewfull=1#post10171160
More details here: https://arstechnica.com/science/2012/05/1859s-great-auroral-stormthe-week-the-sun-touched-the-earth/

Since I'm writing 1860s-70s I feel compelled to give my characters vivid memories of this. It seems eerily appropriate that these lights were often blood-red instead of the more usual green. I'm thinking it will feature in someone's post-battle opium dreams....

CWatts said:

This post on the research forum piqued my interest in the 1859 Carrington Event, a massive solar storm that caused spectacular aurora displays worldwide. http://absolutewrite.com/forums/sho...-of-an-EMP&p=10171160&viewfull=1#post10171160
More details here: https://arstechnica.com/science/2012/05/1859s-great-auroral-stormthe-week-the-sun-touched-the-earth/

Since I'm writing 1860s-70s I feel compelled to give my characters vivid memories of this. It seems eerily appropriate that these lights were often blood-red instead of the more usual green. I'm thinking it will feature in someone's post-battle opium dreams....

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I love finding out about odd little events like these, where the natural world affects the human world in unexpected ways. Like how a volcanic eruption in the Indian Ocean caused an unseasonably cold summer in Europe, which lead to the creation of Frankenstein (http://io9.gizmodo.com/5885668/the-year-without-a-summer-and-how-it-spawned-frankenstein).

It does seem that the Aurora Borealis becomes redder whenever it appears at more southerly latitudes: http://www.earthpowernews.com/rare-northern-lights-captured-uk/

I ran across this fascinating project charting a block of Greene Street in NYC through history. And hey, I've got a charcter in the neighborhood at the height of its time as a red-light district!
http://www.greenestreet.nyc/home

I'm working on a historical romance, taking place in 1804 London, and so far, I've been able to mention Napoleon's threats to invade the southern coast of England, Ackermann's art shop, and the summer exhibit of the Royal Academy of Art.

I also started taking notes for a plot bunny, something taking place in 1890s Nagasaki, Japan. About a year ago, I was noodling around on Ancestry, looking for an immigration date for my first ancestors on American soil, an Irish couple named Edward and Annie Talbot--my great-great-grandparents. Instead, I came across a listing for a marriage certificate between a William Talbot and a Kum Mi, married in Nagasaki in 1895, and I've been kind of intrigued ever since. I'm half Japanese and my Japanese side is from Nagasaki prefecture, which is not quite like the rest of Japan, so I always kind of knew that if I was to ever write about Japan or write Japanese characters, they'd have to be from that part of the country for me to feel comfortable writing them.

Sunflowerrei said:

I also started taking notes for a plot bunny, something taking place in 1890s Nagasaki, Japan. About a year ago, I was noodling around on Ancestry, looking for an immigration date for my first ancestors on American soil, an Irish couple named Edward and Annie Talbot--my great-great-grandparents. Instead, I came across a listing for a marriage certificate between a William Talbot and a Kum Mi, married in Nagasaki in 1895, and I've been kind of intrigued ever since. I'm half Japanese and my Japanese side is from Nagasaki prefecture, which is not quite like the rest of Japan, so I always kind of knew that if I was to ever write about Japan or write Japanese characters, they'd have to be from that part of the country for me to feel comfortable writing them.

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Hey, this sounds intriguing (the same period I'm writing about, give or take a few years). Kum Mi = Kumi?

And you're right that Nagasaki would be quite different than other parts of Japan, although maybe less different in 1890s than earlier. I'd imagine that at the end of the 19th century Nagasaki would be close in atmosphere to Yokohama.

Anyway, fingers crossed, feed that bunny well

Tocotin said:

Hey, this sounds intriguing (the same period I'm writing about, give or take a few years). Kum Mi = Kumi?

And you're right that Nagasaki would be quite different than other parts of Japan, although maybe less different in 1890s than earlier. I'd imagine that at the end of the 19th century Nagasaki would be close in atmosphere to Yokohama.

Anyway, fingers crossed, feed that bunny well

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No, it seems that Kum Mi was her name--the marriage cert says she's from Tainan, Taiwan and that she's "a foundling, so her father's name isn't known." I've literally just started dipping my toe into research, since I'm still writing a draft of something else, so I don't even have characters worked out yet. I need to figure out some Nagasaki-specific history first, since I don't know very much Japanese history and the worldbuilding will have to be strong.

Sunflowerrei said:

I'm working on a historical romance, taking place in 1804 London, and so far, I've been able to mention Napoleon's threats to invade the southern coast of England, Ackermann's art shop, and the summer exhibit of the Royal Academy of Art.

I also started taking notes for a plot bunny, something taking place in 1890s Nagasaki, Japan. About a year ago, I was noodling around on Ancestry, looking for an immigration date for my first ancestors on American soil, an Irish couple named Edward and Annie Talbot--my great-great-grandparents. Instead, I came across a listing for a marriage certificate between a William Talbot and a Kum Mi, married in Nagasaki in 1895, and I've been kind of intrigued ever since. I'm half Japanese and my Japanese side is from Nagasaki prefecture, which is not quite like the rest of Japan, so I always kind of knew that if I was to ever write about Japan or write Japanese characters, they'd have to be from that part of the country for me to feel comfortable writing them.

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Family history is so fascinating. A few years ago, I was in New York with my husband and we checked out the records at Ellis Island -- his great-granddad had passed through there in the 1890s. We found gg-dad's name in the ship's roll, and right next to it was a woman with the same surname. He was 17 at the time and presumably unmarried (he later returned to Ireland and married my husbands gg-mother), and as far as we know he was travelling on his own (he left without telling the rest of the family, using the money he earned by selling the eggs from the farm!). So I don't know if that was a coincidence or there's another story there. My husband suspects that the woman was travelling alone and asked his gg-dad if she could pose as his wife or sister so the immigration officials would let her through without too many questions.

I've been fascinated with researching family history, but have hit a snag as it has gotten international. USA's records are really good, but reaching towards Italy is where the trail starts to go dead unfortunately.

While researching for my story, I came across my own mother's case records as a foster child. Every volunteer's report. Every thank you note my mother wrote the good ladies, "I've only ever had one doll before," AND every report card.

When I flunked algebra in seventh grade, my mother refused to sign the report card because she "wouldn't allow her name to appear on SUCH a document." You can imagine the administrative furor.

And now I know--she flunked out of the whole sixth grade.

Family history is fascinating. I got into genealogy due to a juicy family skeleton - my grandmother's cousin was a murderer. He killed two people, twenty years apart. The first was his ex-girlfriend, who the papers considered a scandalous "divorcee" (it was the 1930s). He forced another cousin to be his getaway driver at gunpoint. The driver got away as soon as he could, went straight to the police and testified at the trial. The killer was eventually paroled, promptly had an affair with a married woman, and this time murdered her husband (progress...?). He was captured after being wounded in a shootout with police and died in prison in the 1970s. I've tried to write about him before, also about his cousin the driver who was killed in WW2 when his Flying Fortress was shot down over Germany.

Family history also gave me the plot and main characters for my Reconstruction novel. One of my ancestors had a brother who was married but I could never find their marriage records. Lo and behold I find him as a child in the 1880s with his future wife living next door - with her white father and black mother (the census taker actually wrote her relationship done as "mistress"). Judging from the children's ages they had been together since about 1860, with her in the next house using her maiden name in 1870 but in 1880 she and the children used his last name. He seems to have never married anyone else and provided for her in his will, which his relatives contested. The court case in 1890s (when hard-core Jim Crow took hold) ended with her and the children keeping half their land and the family home. Meanwhile their daughter who married into my family and half her siblings assimilated into the white community. It's quite a fascinating trail to follow. I'd love to track down descendants but...it could get awkward, ya know?

My current WIP is set in early 17th-century Ireland, and among the chief primary sources of information at this time comes from British travelers and settlers. As you can imagine, they're not particularly flattering of the country or its people (they were trying to justify why the place should be subdued and colonized, after all).

One of my favorite descriptions, because it's so unremittingly prejudiced, is from a Scotsman called William Lithgow. He compares the Irish to “the undaunted or untamed Arabian, the devilish idolatrous Turkoman, or the moon-worshipping Caramines”. He claims that "the alehouse is their church... their prayers carousing". And best of all, he paints an outlandish portrait of Irishwomen with breasts "more than half a yard long, and as well wrought as any tanner" so that they could throw them over their shoulders and "give suck to the babes behind their backs" !

I got into genealogy because of those aforementioned ancestors, Edward and Annie Talbot, who are my g.g. grandparents. I'd heard when I was little that their daughter Annie, who was my dad's mother's mother, had been sent back to Ireland at a young age to be raised by a grandmother. She was born in New Jersey and returned to the United States at around 18 or so in 1912, nearly getting on the Titanic in the process.

It turned out that the family story was right. The parents died young from pnuemonia and Annie was about seven years old and sent back to County Mayo to be raised by her grandmother.

On my mother's side, her grandmother's second husband ran a restaurant or something in Manchuria during the Japanese occupation in WWII. At some point, my great-grandmother was on a ship coming back to Japan and the ship was torpedoed, but she survived. I'd love to dig around on the Japanese side more, but I can't read Japanese and family records are pretty private.

I've gone back about as far as I can on my Irish side--early 19th century. My family's Catholic, they were all tenant farmers, and from a rural part of the country, so although I have questions, I think I've hit the end of any kind of paper trail.

Sadly, a lot of Irish genealogy records were destroyed in 1922, during the Irish Civil War:
https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/...office-marked-loss-of-great-archive-1.1069843

Genealogy is a gateway drug to history

Coenradt Ten Eyck arrived in New Amsterdam about 1648. Rare name helped me build his properly placed descendants to almost 200K but this history it has led me to has been amazing. I still work on it regularly, will hit the 200,000 mark late this year or early next. I have several thousand more waiting to find their connection and the entire index will pass 400,000 in a few weeks. If you have roots in colonial New York or New Jersey, we very well might be distant cousins.

Quick question - does it count as the dreaded Waking Up Opening if your character wakes up (alive) in a coffin?

CWatts said:

Quick question - does it count as the dreaded Waking Up Opening if your character wakes up (alive) in a coffin?

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1. I don't think so... I think it only counts when the character is waking up like everyone else would in the morning – including readers – so it's just yawn-inducing. You can say a lot about waking up alive in the coffin but yawn-inducing it ain't.

2. If it works for your story, who cares? Go for it. Be forceful and proud of the devices you use and the story will be better for it.