"A Lead is a Promise"

What is more welcome than a new piece by John McPhee, and on writing, of all things!

This article ("Writing a Strong Lead is Half the Battle"--the quote in my blog title comes near the end) is from the Wall Street Journal. It's short and to the point and everyone who writes should read it.

I don't consider myself a journalist; my degree is in history. But I love to write and want to write well. Like many, many freelancers these days, I find myself working for Patch a lot, so I'm learning to write a lead.

Or, as some purists would have it, lede. Thank you, Mr. McPhee, for spelling it "lead." That makes me feel less like an outsider. "Lede" seems to be the secret handshake that proves one went to journalism school.

McPhee is one of my heroes. I know little about hiim except that he writes great articles and books about the things he finds interesting. His writing is always exactly right--the pacing, the unrolling of facts, the subtle story behind the facts. If I set out to emulate him in everything I write--except the fiction--I would do quite well, I believe.

I'm not the only one who thinks he's a joy to read, of course. Everyone loves him--his book Giving Good Weight was passed around by engineers at the aerospace company I once worked for, and believe me, those guys don't normally read anything but schematics. McPhee won a Pulitzer Prize for Annals of the Former World.

Successful Writers Defined

In this most excellent interview, blogger and author Laurie Pawlik-Kienlen defines a successful writer as "someone who can make a living by writing." 

Fairly simple. Know anyone? Actually, I've met a few and their energy amazes me.

Pawlik-Kienlen does not query magazines, but makes her living from several successful, monetized blogs and by selling her ebooks. One of said ebooks is titled 75 Ways to Make Money Blogging--certainly something I'm adding to my Christmas list (it's only ten bucks!)

She gives a couple of tips in her interview--it's well worth reading, so go to. I could add more but I'm going to go check out her blog, Quips and Tips for Successful Writers.

Musings on New World Food

Here is something that makes me glad I didn't get a book published at 22, cuz this is exactly the sort of error I would have made: Inserting food like potatoes or tomatoes into a story set way before these products made it out of the Americas. Or inserting coffee or spices a few centuries before they were known.

Seriously. It is hard to write a scene of someone waking up during...I dunno, the 12th Century mini-Rennaisance, and not pouring themselves a steaming cup of Joe to get moving. How did people get up before coffee? More to the point, what did folks drink on a 12th century morning?

I keep thinking about that internet anecdote I read years ago, about a New Agey author who wrote a book on ancient Irish Druids. She based her text not on research, but on intuitive or channeled knowledge, and stated that the potato was quite sacred to them. When it was pointed out to her that potatoes were not introduced into Ireland until the 17th century, she wondered why everyone was being so mean to her.

So I look up every vegetable and condiment before I put it in a story. I hope everyone does. When I read a book, say Ancient Evenings by Mailer, I enjoy it that much more knowing that he invested years in the reseach. I don't want any anachronistic faux-pas to jolt readers out of the magic.

Mucho apologies for neglecting the blog once again, btw. Who knew I could get so busy?

SWAT Port-a-potties

I know this is just silly, but...

You know when something awful happens in a neighborhood and the SWAT team comes out (thankfully) and maybe even the bomb squad? Sometimes there's a person barricaded in a home, and the police are there for hours and hours.

I never thought of this before, but they bring their own key-locked port-a-potties, bolted to a trailer. It makes sense. I mean, if you're evacuating civilians and deploying snipers, do you really want to knock on a door and say, "By the way, ma'am, may I use your bathroom?"

So I took a picture. Because even heroic death-defying law-enforcement officials have to pee at times.

Under the Sea Near Wales

A couple of posts ago I mentioned that the seas have risen over the millennia. Not making it up; as the glaciers receded and (now) the ice caps melt, more water is released into our oceans.

So historical sites are submerged.

An article from Wales Online tells how archaeologist Dr Andrew Petersen (pictured, looking quite rakish and Indiana Jones-ish) is searching off shore near the coast of Wales. Specifically, he hopes to find fish traps made of stone or willow, which may have been put in place a Long, Long Time Ago. Saber-tooth tiger era Long Ago. And in the process of seeking these fish traps--which are quite large--Dr. Petersen will also keep an eye open for things like fossilized forests that may tell us how people lived in the area many thousands of years ago.

Dr. Petersen did similar oceanic surveying in Qatar recently, and found an underwater mosque, fort, and homes. (Story here or BBC story-with-pictures here) So heck, who knows what may turn up?

Dr. Martin Bates, an environmental archaeologist, states in the Wales Online article that the current sea level was established 6000 years ago. "We are going to use multi-beam sonar surveys to look beneath the sand banks and see what is under the sea bed above the rock, that relates to the last Ice Age. This new science is still in its infancy.”

Exciting...makes me want to go back to school and learn all this new stuff. Except that there's probably tons of math and chemistry involved. More news will no doubt be forthcoming, since a Nations of the Sea Conference took place at the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff three weeks ago, when this story appeared.

Good Earth Floors--a How-to

Now that I'm exploring the wonders of Twitter, I come across tons more stuff. Just what I needed, right? Only, since tweets are limited to a couple of lines, I don't have to read through much, just skim. Like scanning a counter full of scarves for a color that jumps out at you.

Here's what jumped out today: an article from England about putting in an earthen floor.

Once as ubiquitous as thatch roofs, over the centuries earthen floors have gone the way of ... um ... earthen floors.  Dirt is something you shake off as you walk inside, right? Not what you walk on inside the house.

Looking for pictures, I found a site called Build and Rebuild. Their "Earthen Floor" link sent me here, which is where ia found the picture and step by step instructions for the home builder.

I recall reading about how wonderful earth floors were, in The Horse of Pride. Helias recalled how his mother swept it--swept the dirt off the dirt floor, an image hard to shake. And as the UK Tobias Jones piece shows (the same one referenced above), a well-designed earth floor hardens into a rich, beautiful surface...eventually.

In the meantime, though, you're dumping sand (or straw or ash), manure, and clay together. In this modern effort, Tobias Jones laid in a gravel subfloor (I doubt that our ancient ancestors did that) and uses a cement mixer to toss his ingredients together.

Lacking a cement mixer, I wonder how the Celts put together their floor. In small batches, perhaps, mixing sand, manure, and clay in a vat and then dumping it on ground? A plot of ground cleared of large rocks, foliage, roots, etc...I don't recall ever reading about the construction of an ancient floor. A gravel subfloor makes so much sense, but has such a floor ever been found?

Tobias points out a couple of real advantages to the earthen floor. Flaws--cracks, dips, etc--can be so easily fixed. Second, there are no health risks--no asbestos hiding in the mix, no chemicals, no skin irritants, etc. That is surprising--isn't manure a prime ingredient? Not that I'd be setting food on the floor, but  isn't manure rather aromatic in an unpleasant way? Tobias never mentions a troubling smell.

He finishes with his plans to finish the floor with a layer of beeswax, although linseed oil is another option. Linseed oil, I learn from another blog (I love cob), is combustible, so be careful with that. This picture--of an earth floor after being treated with linseed oil, came from that blog as well.

An expert called in to consult on the floor was a felow called "Old Boar": Eddie Wills. His expertise is in Iron Age crafts, among other things, and he's trying to set up an Iron Age Lake Village. Another name to run through Twitter!

Garbled Spam

Time to award someone for their prodigious gall!

I delete a lot of spam commments on this blog. This one made me laugh...you gotta credit this writer's stamina, hammering out a sales pitch with (I'm guessing) a dictionary and very cheap thesaurus before him or her.

I affair listening to music from my iPod while I'm on the emigrate, be it on the bus, the indoctrinate, or good while doing groceries. Quest of that saneness, I every time requirement a creditable span of stereo earphones with me, and of ambit on some days I'd like my earphones to be an whistles, where I match it with my outfit for that day. So I get a join of creator earphone every other month.

The typical links and garbage follow.

"on the emigrate"--was the writer looking for a synonym for on the road? and "the indoctrinate"--a class? But I'm mystified by the first phrase: "I affair listening to music".  I affair?  Too precious.

The Tromenie: a Breton Pardon with Gaulish Roots

In my humble opinion, Brittany is one of the loveliest areas in France. I offer as evidence my only picture of Locranon, a town with bodacious hydrangeas.

The Breton peninsula is particularly Celtic, being the land of the Veneti, Osismi, Coriosolites, and other tribes of Caesar's day and before, and being repopulated in the 5th century or so by people from Cornwall.

Brittany has a lot of Catholic processions and fests, called Pardons, but one--the Tromenie--dates back to the Celtic times before Caesar. The Tromenie takes place on the second Sunday of every July, outside the village of Locranon--a place which you may have seen in A Very Long Engagement. The idea is to walk the route of St. Ronan, who founded Locranon.

Pilgrims walk to a little chapel where St. Ronan's supposedly lived and have an open-air Mass.
That's the Petitie Tromenie. Here's a pretty comprehensive site with its history, some music, and lore. It's documented to have gone on since the 11th century, and since St. Ronan lived several centuries before that, my guess is that the practice is much older.

Every six years, though, folks make the Grande Tromenie--a map of that route is on the site, at the bottom of the page. The next Grande Tromenie will be in 2013. These 19th-century postcards show the area--it hasn't changed all that much.

The Grande Tromenie route follows a much longer path from the village well to a clearing called Le Nemeton. That word--Nemeton--is Celtic for temple (that's pretty well documented, even though a lot of the Gaulish language is lost). Twelve markers are passed during the seven and a half mile circuit, representing the twelve months of a lunar calendar. Or, if you prefer the Catholic version, the markers are twelve stations of the cross. It's anyone's guess whether a sacred walk was made yearly during the B.C. years, but I wouldn't bet against it. I was told that some of the markers date to pre-Roman times.

When I went looking for links, I was surprised to find this 1959 article from Time Magazine, describing the Tromenie. An abbreviated version of the legend of St. Ronan and how the walk started, and what the author saw in 1959, is very interesting.

Judith Merkle Riley Dies

One of my favorite authors, and someone local to my former home in Claremont has died after battling cancer for years. It's sad when anyone dies, but espcially a writer. Fans know that there will be no more wonderful, intricate stories forthcoming.
Judith Merkle Riley's historical novels were published from 1989 to 1999. My favorite, The Oracle Glass, is at left.

I heard her speak at an Inland Empire area bookstore in 2003 or 2004, and bought a book. For book lovers, is there any thrill greater than stumbling across a writer that's new to you, but that has several books published? To find not just one, but several magical realms waiting to be visited?

Her last book was The Master of all Desires, and Nostradamus himself was a featured character in it. Both books mentioned here are stand-alone tales, not part-one-of-a-series or anything liket hat. I may be in the minority, but I'm getting to the point where "Series" is a code word preparing me to accept formulaic plots and escapes with no real thrills.However delightful a first book is, knowing there's a second installment takes the freshnes out. You know the hero will survive to star in future adventures.

I digress. The point of this post is simply to say that I am saddened that Judith Merkle Riley is gone.

Irish Historical Works Online

Here's a nifty website called CELT: the Corpus of Eectronic Texts. Texts are all of Old Ireland, from the 5th century onward. Want a sample? Here's how the first two entries in the Annals of Ulster translates into English:

U432.0Kalends of January sixth feria, fifth of the moon, [AM]4636. AD 432 according to Dyonisius.
U432.1Patrick arrived in Ireland in the ninth year of the reign of Theodosius the Less and in the first year of the episcopate of Xistus, 42nd bishop of the Roman Church. So Bede, Maxcellinus and Isidore compute in their chronicles.

This incredible collection of texts from the 5th through the 20th century is a result of intense scholarly work done by the Department of History and the Computer Center of the University College Cork.

What's online, in English and other languages? Annals of the Four Masters, Annals from all over Ireland, the History of Nennius, the Cáin Lánamna (the Law of Couples, dating back to about 700 A.D.), lives of saints, travelers' descriptions of Ireland through the centuries, old tales of Finn and other heroes... so very much, right at your fingertips.

Thank you, UCC. If I ever bury myself in Celtic history again to write a follow up novel, I will be pouring over this treasure.

Ancient Herbs 'n France..s

A bow to Respighi in the the title.

When you get sick, you seek out the person who can make you better. Today, that may be the clerk at RiteAid, but before the 20th century it was very often someone who knew plants and made medicines from them. In Death Speaker, my novel of ancient Gaul, the heroine is raised by a woman who heals with plants, so I had to do a bit of research on them.

The pretties on the right are Aconitum, aka Wolfbane. If you know your Harry Potter you know it's poisonous. Information on it and how it works on the human body is all over the internet. A decent place to start is here at Thinkquest.org, but there are plenty of other spots as well.

Not surprising that poisonous plants are well-covered on the net, is it? Death is sexy. We love that stuff. There's even a TV show on SPIKE called 1000 Ways to Die. The commercials turn my stomach so I won't include a link.

But even finding information on non-lethal plants--like this comfrey--gets easier every day, as herbalists, nurseries, and agencies in every state and country put their plants online. When I check several sights and they all agree on a how a plant grows and how it affects people, I'm pretty comfortable using that information.

Oddly, I didn't rely on books on herbs, mainly because there's so much dis-information around. Isn't that weird--I used to trust the printed word implicitly. But I've seen many books on "New-Agey" topics, like herbs and healing, which went into rituals and folklore...yet when I tried to learn more, I found nothing at all that could support the book's claims. No other books, websites, experts--nothing.
So if a book claims that a plant was once used to cure headaches, for example, but no other book or expert or website backs up that claim...well, maybe the author vetted their information, maybe they didn't. Maybe they just repeated something they heard anecdotally, and maybe they got it wrong.

If I've got a headache, I want something I KNOW will knock it out. And if my character has a headache, I figure she wants the same thing. So I try to find it for her. It's the least I can do.

Geography, 2000 Years Ago

Some musings about writing a historical novel:

One of the most difficult things to figure out in an ancient setting is the geography. The further back you go, the more things change. Seas rise and fall, rivers change course, beaches erode, hills get carved up by miners...stuff happens.

Of course, the good part about that is the further back you go, the less likely it is that someone may call you out on a mistake. ("You idiot! That lake is manmade--no one would have stopped there before 1972!")

My novel is set in France, 2000 years ago. France is unique in that it--more than most countries--has tamed its rivers. Who knows how the Loire ambled along in the BC era?  Well, there may be a few scholars of the esoteric who know, but not many. How about the beaches near Carnac? What were they like? And the fields, what sort of flowers would have grown wild there?

I did as much research as I could. Maybe I over-researched, but I think that's better than not doing enough. I even found a little book in a university library that was written for American soldiers in WWI, explaining in general terms the lay of the land in France. What a jewel that was! 

One thing I did learn was that the seas have risen over the past two milennia. Archaeologists know it. The many islands off France and other countries in Northern Europe have higher shorelines than they used to. Some disappear entirely, and yet there are carvings and structures that indicated they were used once, maybe 3000 years ago when the seas were lower.

An annotation on Caesar's Conquest of Gaul clued me into the fact that the Netherlands and Belgium and other coastal areas were more marshy than they are today.

The bottom line is that you do your best, which is the bottom line for almost everything in writing, isn't it?

The Cost of EBooks

Like many others, I thought books for the Kindle would be dirt cheap. Five dollars or less--after all, no paper, shipping, store costs, etc. Wrong!

According to the September 2010 Wired Magazine's "Burning Question" column--which I can't find online--those costs account for a paltry 15% of book prices. The other 85% is taken by authors, editors, designers, marketers, publicists, distributors and resellers. And all but the last two (and I'm not so sure about distributors) are still necessary to effectively sell ebooks.

In addition, an ebook needs antipiracy software, programmers to adapt each text to different platforms, and extra legal support (not sure what that entails). Another less obvious reason for slightly higher-than-necessary prices comes from Larry Doyle: Publishers are "concerned about devaluing people's perception of books."

Hmm. Don't know if I agree but I never pass up an opportunity to quote a Doyle. That was my grandmother's family name.

However, Rick Broida--the author of this Wired article--goes on to point out that authors can eliminate all those middlemen and publish their tomes on Amazon. Amazon lets authors take 35%, an unheard-of cut...but wait! Apple ibooks will let authors keep 70% of sales--70% !!!

I assume that means, though, that the author has to put out money in advance for professional editing and cover art and design. I assume too that all publicity is the author's responsibility, so s/he will probably have to pay for a publicist, travel, promotional items, ads.

So stay tuned. I doubt that we'll be downloading $4.99 thrillers any time soon.

Howard Carter's Notes

Howard Carter died in 1939, seventeen years after discovering Tutankhamun's tomb. The treasure he found has been all over the world, but usually rests in a museum in Cairo, right? Nothing more to know?

Ha! Of course there's tons more to know! But we're just now going to find out how much more, and what that 'more' is.

Turns out that since Carter died, only about a third of his carefully written research notes--including over 3500 cards, 1000 photographs, 60 maps, notes from chemist Alfred Lucas, and hundreds of pages from Carter's own journals and diaries--have ever been made public. Carter spent ten years cataloguing his find--there were about 5400 objects in the tomb, after all. But he died before he could publish all that stuff.

Carter's notes have been locked up in the Griffith Institute, a temperature-controlled underground lab/library/archive at Oxford University. Read all about it here at Archaeology News Net. The article is a reprint from the New Zealand Herald of August 9, 2010.

In 1993, a gentleman named Jaromir Malek became the caretaker of Carter's notes, and two years later he and began working with Jonathan Moffett, the chief IT guy at the Ashmolean Library. (I'm sure both men have far more impressive titles.) Fighting a sparse budget for years, they are now near the day when most of the archive will not only be available, but will be online.

In fact, 98% of it IS online. Wow.

I just always assumed that as King Tut's tomb was so well publicized, everyone knew all about it. Wrong! Everyone just got so entranced by the Big Gold Shiny Things (understandable) that they've never bothered to really study the many mundane and ordinary (ordinary to ancient Egyptians, that is) items in the tomb. Now it's all online and available. (The other 2% will be up within three months.) HERE.

Maybe the most valuable link I've ever made.

Janelle Brown on HuffPost: Dearth of Paying Creative Jobs

In a great article that starts out with anecdotal evidence of creative talent fleeing Los Angeles (my city), Brown nails something that has been bothering many, many people lately. She talks about the writing opportunities on the Internet: "In a flooded marketplace of ideas, the price for creativity has been driven down by a glut of free supply."

Brown points out that over 30,000 writers/journalist have lost their jobs in the past two years, and fight over the pathetically small pay that sites like Demand Media offer. (I could add a few others, but Demand is who Brown singled out.) She gives some great examples, then moves on to other creative types: musicians, filmmakers, etc. She does get around to plugging her own book, This is Where We Live, only to mention that she's found bootlegged copies of it downloaded 9,500 times!

Enough of stealing her thunder: read the article. She ends with a scenario that reminds me of Atlas Shrugged.

Ebook Updating Capability

Here is something I didn't know: when an ebook is updated or revised or corrected, the seller can, technically, update, revise, or correct each copy of that ebook that sits on Kindles or Ipads everywhere. Read about it in the May 2010 issue of Wired but I can't find a link to the piece. Ironic, huh?

Now, just because a seller can reach out tentacles across the airwaves to manipulate text, doesn't mean that they do. As Wired points out, a year ago Amazon deleted a bunch of copies of 1984 from the reading devices of customers because the copies were bootlegged. (huh? I don't know how that happened but that's what Wired says.) Customers were very angry; Amazon apologized and will not update or change an ebook without a customer's permission.

It brings up possiblities, doesn't it? How many new textbooks are sold because the authors add a new chapter and up the rev. number so that students can't buy a used copy? If the texts can be automatically updated, students don't have to buy new books. But why would authors take the time to update such books if they're not compensated for their efforts?

What about translated works? When a new translation of The Conquest of Gaul becomes available, should everybody who has an older copy have the option of updating? And what about a map book? Now there's something you'd want to have updated, huh? But if there's no profit in such updates, who will bother?

I'm probably spinning my wheels. As I said, just because ebooks can be updated doesn't mean they will be.

Susan Isaacs Gets the Last Word (Deservedly So!)

A Wall Street Journal article about book signings in New York City makes clear what branding and positioning hath wrought. The big book stores like Borders and Barnes and Noble offer venues seating up to 1100 people. Each outlet has its own cachet--do you want liberals, the savvy and trendy, or warmish families with their kids in tow?

In a way, this sounds so much like an amped-up version of cheerleader tryouts in high school. I'm sure it's inevitable--bookselling is a business--but reading the story almost makes me glad I'm an unknown drudge. Almost.

(OK, truthfully, I wish I had that problem. I wish my publicist was going nuts arranging a slot for me.)

The piece finishes with a bit of spectacular wisdom from Susan Isaacs: "Say you sell 75 books. It's all to the good, but I don't know how much it matters in the scheme of things....You should be using that energy to write books."

Paying for Writing Space?

As in--the writer pays to write there.

I wouldn't have thought this a workable business model, even in non-recessionary times. But in Santa Monica, there are two such places. One has been around a few years; the other just opened.

The new one first: Writers Junction. You join and use the facilities whenever you like. There's a coffee-bar/kitchenette, a cozy lounge with cushy sofas and chairs, a small lending library, a couple of meeting and/or presentation rooms, printers & a copy machine, and--the main raison d'etre of the place--quiet, well-lit writing alcoves where you can plug in your laptop and just scrive in quiet privatude.

Is that worth $125 a month (with a year's commitment)? Writers Junction is a modern, uncluttered place (check out pictures here), and I suppose for folks who can't get peace and quiet any other way, it's very worth it.

The other place (for writers, anyway. This L.A. Times article mentions other facilities for creative types, including artists, designers, etc.) is The Office, which charges $150 part-time, and $250 full-time. Those are first month introductory rates, btw. Like Writers Junction, a full-time membership at The Office gets you access at ALL hours.

Here's a picture from their website at left--it's certainly more attractive to me, but I'm a sucker for big windows and sunlight. The Office has been around for six years, and even has an "It was written here" page of honor--heavy on screenplays.

Again, worth it? Well, if all those screenplays and novels on their "It was written here" page would not have existed but for The Office, then yeah. If you live in Santa Monica. Wonder if the concept has been tried elsewhere?

Radar maps Hyksos' capital

Remember the Hyksos? The foreign invaders who ruled Egypt for about 100 years? No one is sure who they were--a branch of Phoenician? Semites--Canaanites? Their ascendancy in Egypt took place 3500 years ago: 1664 to 1569 BC. In context, that's just before the dynasty that gave us Thutmose and Hatshepsut.

An Austrian team of archaeologists led by Irene Mueller used radar to map out the boundaries of the Hyksos principal city, Avaris. There are tons of stories on all the news networks, all saying exactly the same thing. I'm linking to this one on Heritage Key because it links best to a map--the only picture accompanying all those news stories. But Heritage Key's version of the map lets you zoom in.

So, the 2.6 sq. km. they've mapped out with magnetometric and resistivity surveys contain streets, temples, cemeteries, houses, and a possible port area (has the Nile changed course in that area in 3500 years? Probably, huh?). The Heritage Key article says that the most amazing find so far has been frescoes in a Minoan style, showing bull-leaping--similar to the artistic themes of Knossos on Crete.

It's not clear to me whether those frescoes are from the Hyksos palace, or from later, 18th-Dynasty Egyptian palaces that were built on the site--the current locale of Tel el-Dabaa. Or Tell  el Daba'.  A 2008 version of the ubiquitous map--with labels and more detail--is here.

Ten Most Amazing Historical Objects...

...According to the Web Urbanist--and this link goes direct to the posted list, with all the pictures.

Number One is the Antikythera Mechanism, which I've blogged about before. But some of the objects are news to me--like Number Two, the Baigong Pipes, which may have been literally used for number two. (But probably not.) The picture and following link are from China Expat.

The Baigong Pipes of China sit on top of a mountain and go through caves. Not everyone agrees that these are pipes or the remnants of pipes, but they certainly are intriguing. Wikipedia describes them and compares them to some naturally occurring pipe features in Navajo country and Louisiana.

The list also includes the Phaistos Disk, the Shroud of Turin, the Baghdad Battery--which I just saw on TV. Here's a nice site explaining the battery, which could generate 1-2 volts of electricity...but for what purpose?

What else is on the list?

Roman Dodecahedra (left) which could be anything from dice to a calibration device. About a hundred of them have been found throughout Europe. The Stone Spheres of Costa Rica, the Coso Artefact, The Maine Penny,  the Voynich Mss--I was going to look up links for these, but go to the Web Urbanist list and read their descriptions.