Showing posts with label research. Show all posts
Showing posts with label research. Show all posts

Monday, June 12, 2023

Bedlam & Baths

Ah, the neverending adventure of the historical writer. I dived down the rabbit hole recently during my research, and a dark one it was too. Mental illness is a theme that features strongly in my current WIP, and it's fair to say that treatment for mental illness for much of human history has been horrifying. Because my WIP takes place in the 1870s, I had to dive into the practices of the day.

There's a reason why "Bedlam" has become a universal term in the English language. Chains, starvation, and squalor are just the highlights. In the current draft I'm slogging through, one of my characters experiences the "water cure." Maybe it's just me and my aversion to water (yeah, sure), but how such a practice was supposed to "shake lunatics out of their insanity" is beyond me.

A sketch of Bethlehem Royal Hospital, or Bedlam

On a lighter note, a contest at LegendFire got me writing a bit of flash fiction, and a major plot point brought those little wooden nesting dolls to mind. The perfect metaphor! But what the heck are those things called? "Russian nesting dolls" is okay, but I wanted the actual name. Turns out they're Matryoshka. I love feel smarter than I was yesterday.




Monday, December 12, 2022

No Needles, Please



So this weekend, my sister hosted a Botox party. I turned 45 this year, and I've really taken care of my skin. But STILL. There are THINGS. Gravity is dumb. Making expressions, like we primates do, carves canyons in obvious places. I've been wanting to try this procedure for years. If nothing else, it's good research for stories about alien experiments or something. Anyway!

My sister, myself, our mom, and several friends were all thrilled to hang out, eat, laugh, and get stuck with needles. I do NOT like to think of myself as squeamish. I laid under a tattooist's needle gun for an hour and a half and prided myself on my nerve and strong stomach. And during the party in question, I watched a friend and my sister surrender their skin to the RN. No problem. I rushed to be third in line, plunked down in the chair, laid my head back, processed the feel of the needle in my forehead so I could remember it for future reference, told myself to not really think about it, listen to the conversations and laughter going on around me. A minute later: done. Forehead complete. Now to wait till the numbing balm really takes effect on my upper lip, cuz my sister inherited a gorgeous upper lip and I got zilch. I'm not bitter. Not at all.

But as soon as the RN goes back to her kit to refill while we wait, I start feeling a little queasy. No worries, I'll just breathe through it, it'll pass. Then the little black grainy flecks start prickling across my vision. My sister asks me, "Are you okay?" (Later, she said I was green. Apparently, that actually happens.)

I nod, in full denial. A few seconds later, I admit it: "I think I'm gonna pass out." I do not remember anyone running to me. Next thing I know, I'm waking up. My sister is holding me in the chair, my mom is fanning my face with a paper plate. Thank God these are calm women. No one panicked. 

Up till this experience, I've only ever fainted when having blood drawn. (Didn't even occur to me I could FAINT while getting Botox!) But this time, in front of everyone, my body did one better. "I think I'm gonna throw up." Someone shoves a trashcan under my chin, and sure enough, there's no stopping it.

All the while, I'm thinking, "WTF?!?! Why does this happen to me? Body, you're so stupid."

Well, the barfing shoves blood back where it belongs, my head clears, and I come fully around. My friend brings me water, my sister gives me anti-nausea medicine, and someone asks, "Are you done?" As in, Are you finished with the Botox?" Well, after everything I just went through, I consider this an affront. I declare, "I'm not stopping! Stick me again!"

By golly, I came here for an upper lip and I'm not leaving till I get one. Ah, the things we do for Beauty. She who loves no one in return.

In the end, the party was a grand success. We had a blast. Plus, a couple days later, the canyons in my forehead are relaxing into gentle valleys, and my upper lip is marginally plumper. Will I do this in again in six months? Perhaps. With the caveat that "I'm in no way squeamish. I just faint now and then." 




Wednesday, November 16, 2022

NaNoWriMo: Flash Research

NaNoWriMo is going more slowly than I had hoped, but it's going. I've decided that writing an historical novel for my NaNo project was a mistake. Details keep cropping up that I feel an urgent need to doublecheck or learn on the fly before I can continue writing with confidence.

I'm calling it 'flash research.' Where I research "in a flash," not "how to flash." Bad joke. Whatever.

I love learning things, so research is a risky business during NaNo month. One thing leads to another, and suddenly an hour of writing time is gone.

So what sorts of things are distracting me from writing? 

Today, I looked up the deathstalker. What is this thing with a kick-ass name? Be prepared to shudder in terror when you behold it.

Deathstalker Scorpion, image by מינוזיג

Let's retrofit some stuff I looked up during earlier NaNo research pitstops:

1870s fashion, not because I needed to, but because I wanted to gawk at loveliness
 
Mahalabiya, or milk pudding

The range and habits of the Egyptian cobra

Where shall the story take me next? If a djinn would come along and grant me a wish, I'd want the story to take me back to Egypt, in a literal sense. I'd go back in a heartbeat. I expect my love of the place and my fascination with its people and its history come across in the story, perhaps too strongly. Can't be helped, and I'm not sorry. :D


Wednesday, December 1, 2021

Floating the Nile

Everything is research. But what better research than to actually visit the location where your story takes place? Every mile we sailed up the Nile, every minaret, every jewel of rural life, every interaction with the wait staff and passengers, every time we ducked through thick crowds of vendors, provided more research than seeing all the ruins Egypt has to offer.

Here are a few of those jewels that I could never glean from books. And do please excuse the quality of the photos. Some were shot from a moving bus.

Typical farm and canal. The unfinished pillars atop the roof are supports for housing for the next generation.

The modern and the timeless continually crashing into each other.

A market in Cairo, just for selling birds. Parakeets, cockatoos, you name it, they got it.

Friday prayer spilling out onto the sidewalk, Luxor. If I could play the call to prayer, I would. It is haunting and powerful.

Transporting fodder or cane across the Nile.


Spice Vendor at Philae, featuring some of my fellow passengers.

Ash-brewed coffee at a Nubian village. The coffee was brewed with ginger root and other spices for ... ahem ... virility.

Courtyard at a Nubian house, featuring a sand floor and reed thatch. Domed ceilings regulate temperatures to keep the interior cool. I want a house like this.

Lush farmland stretching to the desert. West bank, Luxor/Thebes. The ruin at the edge of the green is the Ramesseum, which features largely in my story.

Sunset, Luxor, from the sundeck of the Medea. At times there are in fact gorgeous sunsets featuring molten clouds. These clouds happened to herald a storm that struck Aswan a couple of days after we left. The resulting flood caused scorpions to flee the ground and invade peoples' homes and businesses. 500 people ended up in the hospital.


Monday, November 22, 2021

Egypt Trip is Go!

 All summer, I fought the urge to blog about a hope and a dream I had in the planning, terrified that if I made the plan public, it would fall through, like so many others have. Call me superstitious. So I wrote nothing about it.

That is no longer necessary.

The hope and the dream became reality. On October 31 (yep, Halloween), my husband and I flew to Egypt for a two week tour and cruise up the Nile. We flew home on November 13 (yep, the thirteenth). If I was really that superstitious, I wouldn't have laughed about those dates.

So now I get to post highlights of the trip.

Though this photo was taken in 2021, it could've happened 100 yrs ago.

The traffic and pollution in Cairo were a shock.

The original color on the columns of Karnak struck me breathless.

Seeing Luxor Temple after dark is the way to go. Cool and beautiful.

Typical street market, this one in Luxor.

Selfie from the sundeck of our cruise boat, MS Medea. El-Qurn, the pyramidal mountain beneath which you'll find the Valley of the Kings, is over my left shoulder.

To Be Continued...

Monday, March 30, 2020

Isolation and Research

Well, it's clear that I took another hiatus from journaling, blogging, and all social media. How zen and de-stressed life has been because of it. Now to take up a little word-crafting again. (In fact, I haven't written in so long that it feels awkward to do so.)

SO! What's been going on since last September?

* I completed my first paid editing job. A lovely client and a wonderful learning experience.
* Pottery has flourished. Sold nearly all my stock, plus a few commissions.
* Got a cold and bronchitis at Christmas, which lasted for nearly a month.
* Learned to ski. Proof:
Yep, that's me, trying not to be terrified of ski class.
* Caught some weird fever/cough when we got home from ski trip.
* Watched the world go mad.
* Freaked out at the grocery store when shelves were empty.
* Meanwhile, researching for novel continues.

Given that my husband and myself work from home on a daily basis, being on lockdown amid the pandemic hasn't shaken us too much. It just feels like doubling down on routine. Plus, I'm such a successfully functioning introvert that being ordered to stay away from humans sounds too good to be true. My mom told me that whenever I got into trouble as a kiddo, it didn't do any good to "send me to my room" because I loved being alone in my room. It's beyond my comprehension that extroverts are having trouble staying at home in the stillness and quiet, alone. Alone, alone.

Still, even for introverts like myself, I've appreciated the little contact I've had. A walk around the park with a friend. Chatting and gaming with friends online. So the isolation diminishes.

Rehearsals for the apocalypse aside, what am I researching? I mentioned (somewhere?) that I'm moving the setting of a novel (still languishing in rough draft form) from a conventional English countryside to the Nile and the ruins of Egypt. This massive change in setting has induced major changes in the core characters as well, and certainly in the side plots surrounding the main plot.

Here's a few tantalizing clues of my research topics in the form of pics:

Hypostyle Hall, Karnak

Dahabiyah

(sketch by Brierly, 1869)

Unknown beauty
The best thing about forced isolation is that I have no excuse not to make massive progress on renovating this novel. I guess we'll see what good comes of it.


Friday, March 4, 2011

Know Your Falcons!

Obviously, falcons in some facet play a big part in my novels (see novel title in posts below). While the time-honored sport of hunting with falcons is mentioned in my story, the characters get into too much trouble to actually devote any scene-time to this noble way of catching one's dinner. Still, it pays to do one's research. Better to be armed with too much information than not enough. So, the next time you take your falcon out a-hunting, you'll want to take along the following:
(this gorgeous sketch is from "Knights"
by Julek Heller and Deirdre Headon, copyright 1982)

Not depicted:
1. "Mews," little buildings where your falcons live
2. Perch, or "sedille" where your falcon will rest when it's not flying or sitting on your arm

Interesting Tid-Bits:
-Only female birds were used in hunting, and only females were called "falcons" while males (smaller and rarely hunted with) were called "tiercels."
-Different sized breed of raptors were used to catch different sized quarry.
-If your falcon fails to catch its prey, you may feed it unsalted cheese or scrambled eggs instead of raw meat as a reward for a good attempt. (I'm guessing you'll want to make a good campfire in the meadow and tote along your scullery staff to cook your bird up some eggs in such a case)
- If your falcon escapes, then is found but not returned (good hunting falcons are hard to come by, after all), or if your bird is stolen outright (some people just don't have the patience to train their own), you may exact a severe penalty on the perpetrator: the falcon is allowed to eat six ounces of flesh from the thief's breast. (You can't make up this stuff, folks!)

So, my question is: What research did you feel was required for your story, but never actually came into play?
.