Research

I enjoy doing research for the places and times where my stories are set. The only down side is that I almost invariably get all bound up with being historically correct with facts and/or factoids. I want to give the flavor of the pieces a good dose of verisimilitude, but I almost always go too far with trying to "get it right". It's so stupid. How am I supposed to make fiction completely historically accurate? By definition, it's inaccurate, because it never really happened.

I need to just settle down, take the facts, absorb them so that I understand the feeling of the place and time, and then just let the words roll. Who really cares what colors and designs the Mohegan really used for the decorations on their breechclouts? It's not like I'm going to devote paragraphs to describing what my characters are wearing. It's not that important. So what do I do? I spend two hours researching the contact-era clothing and society of the Mohegan, download a glossary, make notes on their religion and spirit figures, and pore over the sorry history of English contact with the tribe, including the exact timing of small pox outbreaks and population numbers. And for what? So I can write a short story about a supernatural happening in a forest inhabited with people I'm making up? I drive myself crazy sometimes.

Sometimes I think my schooling as a historian has been more hindrance than help.

Egad!

I'm having a thought that flies in the face of all that I believe. It violates all of my ethics, but I'm thinking it's something I might have to pursue.

I have to...

...shudder...

... have a picture taken for the website.

Egad.

There's a button for "bio", and most authors have photographs on their bio pages, and I really should have one, too.

The very thought makes my skin crawl. I've successfully avoided cameras to the point that I'm mostly bereft of any photographic evidence of my horrid appearance, but now I'm going to have to put something up. I'll also have to come up with a bio, which I dread. I mean, really, who cares? If any one comes to the site, it'll be for the writing, not for me...right? (I'm assuming that anyone is going to the site.)

:: listens to the crickets ::

Sigh.

Well, if I do end up having pictures taken and posted, at least I can rest easy in the knowledge that nobody will ever see them. ;)

Left turn at Albuquerque

He's done it to me again.

Just when I think I know exactly how the plot of Catherine's Wheel is going to go, and how Tobyn is going to be moving through his world to tell the story, the little bastard takes a left turn and totally discombobulates me. I just added two pages to the book where I just have to shake my head and type what he "tells" me, because I have no earthly clue where this is going. I know what he's supposed to be doing, but as always, Tobyn has his own ideas.

Sometimes I really believe that my characters develop lives of their own, almost independent of me, as a result of all of the energy that I put into them. Some of them are very cooperative, others are complete pains. Tobyn, naturally, falls into the latter category. He's such a jerk sometimes...but I guess that's why I love him. His unpredictability makes him interesting to write, and, I hope, interesting to read.

And still I have no idea where he's going or who this Frau Schulmann is who just blundered into the book, but I have the sinking suspicion that she's not what she seems. (Really, who in the Clans universe ever is?)

Eureka

I realized what tripped me up on Knight of Sorrows. I was trying to be too historically accurate and yet true to the original Arthurian story, which was an anachronism when it was first recorded in the 1400’s. I just have to tell the story as it’s in my head and stop worrying about what historians and Arthurian purists are going to say. Once I finish Catherine’s Wheel, I’m going back to Tristan.