Because this blog doesn’t have enough nerdery already.

So as I was saying last time, this trip to Phila. was in search of three pretty specific things that I couldn’t find in books or the net–at least not to this degree of time, place, and personal specificity. So here’s what I did for them:

First-hand sources like letters and journals, from which I could glean both language information… and a general look at the concerns of the class of people on which I was focusing.
For this, I browsed the online catalogs of both the Historical Society of Pennsylvania and the Athenaeum. The latter had been recommended in the notes to a series of books I’m very much enjoying right now (Cordelia Frances Biddle’s Martha Beale Mysteries–Victorian Philadelphia fun!). Their collections of primary source material are so extensive that it took me a couple of hours to figure out how to effectively use the finding aids, but my education didn’t fail me! (Well, not completely.)

I found a few very likely ladies of similar age, class, and interest to my girls in The Resurrectionists, and located the numbers of the boxes in which their correspondence, journals, albums and such could be found in the HSP. So I’m walking in there thinking maybe they’ll let me see photocopies–or transcriptions. There’s no way some librarian-curator is going to dig in the vaults and bring me up some fragile 184 year old letters just so I can write some silly novel. I’ll need academic credentials at least–and I haven’t had those for ages.

But the lovely librarians at the HSP did just that. Follow a few simple rules, and all the information in the world is yours, huh? And this is some research I’ve been wanting to do since Neuronaut Reenie told me that’s how Georgette Heyer found some of the more clever phrases she used in her lovely Regency romances, so– well, that’s totally squee-worthy. Yeah, okay, I felt a little weird reading letters from husbands and wives, friends, mothers, and sons… but it was too cool for the discomfort to last.

What went on at UPENN’s medical school on a day-to-day basis.
I didn’t have much hope for this one, honestly. Finding out in a general way what would’ve been a popular lecture topic is easy enough, but I thought something this specific would be lost to time.

Wrong again, Kate. College of Physicians of Philadelphia, the lovely people who run the famous (or is it infamous, considering?) Mütter Museum, have an extensive library on the history of medicine. Seeing as it’s in Philadelphia, home of the first ever medical school in the US (UPENN– oh hey, my little proto-doctors attend UPENN!), I guess I shouldn’t have been so surprised to find what I did in their catalog:

“Lecture notes from the University of Pennsylvania,1826; 1852./Fowler”
“Notes on Dr. Coxe’s lectures on materia medica and pharmacy delivered in the University of Pennsylvania,1826-1827 /by W.W.G.”

etc. etc. And these aren’t just notes typed up and printed, these are the actual notebooks in which these eager young medical men scribbled down, often word for word, the lectures of their professors. People like Dr. Philip Syng Physick (dubbed the “Father of American Surgery”) and co. And precisely the lectures my boys would’ve been attending over the course of The Resurrectionists.

And now I know exactly what Dart would do for Tom’s gunshot wound, and exactly who would’ve told him to do it. Among other exciting and extremely nerdy things!

Newspapers! … Obviously, the papers had the pulse of the people, and I needed to know how it was flowing during the months in question.
I think this day ended up being my favorite, because I spent it at the lovely Library Company of Philadelphia. I’d been in touch with a wonderful librarian beforehand, since the periodicals aren’t quite cataloged online like some of the other materials they have, and when I got there she helped me sort out exactly how to find the precise periodicals I required. I spent the day taking snapshots of The National Gazette and Literary Register and The Aurora and Franklin Gazette, those being the two that had popped up in my earlier research as important rags of the time.

From the "National Gazette and Literary Register", Apr 19, 1826 courtesy of The Library Company of Philadelphia

So I have reviews of theater events, art shows, international gossip, philanthropic societies, neighborhood emergencies, political scandals, and all other sorts of things that will inform the general tone and color of my characters’ days. That and of course a wander around the chosen neighborhood, a tour of Dr. Physick’s house with some excellent tour guides, and all that sort of thing so it’ll be fresh in my mind when I go back to it in–two weeks and counting, now. I’m so excited!

Can’t wait for the next chance I get to do it all over again. But for all this lovely research, it’s weird how so very, very little of it will be directly referenced. It’s more a question of me understanding what their days were really like, of making the setting sit more easily for everyone involved.

And maybe a question of me just being carried away by my own historical obsessions. Now the idea is to make something entertaining out of them!

And my parting words, as a solemnly promise to stop talking about this now: Librarians are rad. Love them. I know you don’t need me to tell you, but it’s worth saying all the same.

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Now playing: Aaron Copland – Appalachian Spring
via FoxyTunes

Well I’m home from Philadelphia and feeling beat up, thanks! I don’t mind because I also feel pretty damn accomplished. Three days is nowhere near enough time to dig through the vaults of historical goodness there, but I ran my ass off trying.

I don’t know how many people who see this blog are interested in writing historicals, but I know one or two of you have done it already, and several others have more than a passing interest in the subject. So I figured I’d put up the story of my research for The Resurrectionists, my first novel-length historical (historical-paranormal-romance-medical… somethingorother?) and see if y’all wanted to compare notes or give suggestions. And hell, it’s about the most interesting thing I’ll ever have to talk about here anyhow, so why not?

Brief background on this plot: boys go to medical school, girls have their scholarly reading circle. Ambitious boys entangle girls in dubious experiments (not to mention dubious lifestyle choices), clever girls complicate said experiments with their own concerns (and some dubious lifestyle choices of their own). Experiment ends in gaping face wounds, insanity, suicide, terrifying medical breakthrough, and severe guilt complexes for all. Also some broken hearts, though by that time it seems incidental.

I knew this much when I started prep reading. My research shelf at GoodReads gives some indication of just what I was looking at, but there are also a lot of articles and documentaries I dug up on the relevant subjects. I also read a lot of historical fiction to the same end, but there are two problems with that:

1. Fiction involving early modern medical types is generally Victorian, whether British or Colonial, which makes it too late to be useful; what doctors talked about then would not be what my doctors should be talking about. Also, fiction involving grave-robbers and resurrection men is almost always British, in spite of the fact that we imported the trend, not to mention a few actual grave robbers, late in the 18th c. Alas, fictional period grave robbery seems to be the province of the country that gave us the very real Burke and Hare*. Admittedly, this was part of the impetus for writing about some American resurrectionists, so at least I saw that one coming.

2. American historical fiction usually clusters around the Revolutionary or Civil War eras– and I’m landing squarely between those. (War of 1812? What was that? Yeah, we hate talking about wars wherein American ass got kicked, don’t we? None of it happened but the Battle of New Orleans!) So that means a lot of Brit-centric Regency fiction, which is of course my favorite historical sub-genre, but worried me in terms of day-to-day life and how people spoke.

So then I did my first Philadelphia trip to learn the lay of the land, choose an appropriate neighborhood, and just get a general education on How Things Worked. By the time that was accomplished these characters were bouncing around in my head like mad, and I thought well, I’m comfortable enough with this whole concept to at least hammer out a rough draft.

Those of you who are long-time sufferers of this blog will recall a series of WIP Wednesday posts involving pistol duels, grave robberies, medical experiments, ladies’ charitable societies, Madeira wine, early feminism, and of course, cravats. Naturally the whole thing was about 20k too long when I was done, but so’s everything I write.

Then and only then did I know precisely when the action in the book took place. I had chosen a year that seemed interesting (1826) and decided the seasons (spring-summer) based wholly on what sort of weather and activities the plot required. Ah, I realized, now comes the time for the real research. I started a new round of reading (also on the GoodReads shelf) and wondered how the hell I was going to get my hands on:

• First-hand sources like letters and journals, from which I could glean both language information– despite reassurances that Philadelphians sounded very like their cosmopolitan English cousins, there are obvious turns of expression that were different– and a general look at the concerns of the class of people on which I was focusing.
• Newspapers! American men were infamous for their attachment to newspapers, in all walks and classes of life, in everything I read about them. American woman not much less. Obviously, the papers had the pulse of the people, and I needed to know how it was flowing during the months in question. What were they doing on May 23, what criminal activity or stock prices were they discussing on street corners, and what was running at the New Theater on Chestnut?
• What went on at UPENN’s medical school on a day-to-day basis. This one was the hardest for me to fathom. There are plenty of excellent medical history books out there, America-centric ones abound, but specifics like this are neglected. Even just finding a listing of the faculty at this time is difficult, let alone finding out what they said in their lectures.

And that takes me to this week. But I’ll come back to that in a day or two, as this is already longwinded even for me.

ETA: Just got the okay to post this image I took this week. Eeee! Cravat Stiffeners!

From "The Philadelphia Directory and Annual Advertiser", 1825, courtesy of The Library Company of Philadelphia

*Oh my god, Simon Pegg and Andy Serkis are playing them in a movie this year?! Tim Curry. Christopher Lee. Tom Wilkinson?! How did I not know about this?!

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Now playing: Kasabian – Underdog
via FoxyTunes

Ever have one of those days where you have 20620 ideas clawing at the inside of your head, but you sit down to write and none of your sentences make sense?

I had one of those yesterday. I’m working on a collaborative story that is so much fun, and it was time for me to write my bit. I sat down, got into the character’s head (yeah, I’m a freaking method actor, apparently) and found myself incapable of arranging words in any meaningful way. Okay, no cracks about how I have trouble with that on the best of days, right? Right! Something was just broken. I wrote the first three sentences some 10 times, deleted them 10 times, and stared a lot.

Then I thought about the two stories I wanted to write. One has aliens– could this be my first sci fi? How exciting! … nothing. So I thought about the other one. It has an elf– which is not what it sounds like, especially coming from someone who spends way too much spare time on Lord of the Rings Online, but I guess that’s not the point of this post. The point is that either of those sounds like something I’d be very into.

Nothing!

So I decided to write a personal blog post detailing how pissed off I was about this turn of events. And deleted it 10 times before throwing up my hands and going to bed.

But it’s a new day, and what ability I once had to make words seems to be on its way back, if slowly. I share this with you because you will understand. And as expressed many times on this blog before, my misery loves company. What is it that breaks in our brains on days like this? Did I simply reach my word saturation point?

There are good things too! I got an acceptance this week, but since I’m not sure what the story title is yet– it needs a change– I reckon I’d better not say what it is. This was my last short story floating in the ether, so now I need to edit the two lingering on my hard-drive and send them out. Or, you know, WRITE THE NEW ONES.

Also, I have Red Penny Papers swag incoming. Well, bookmarks, but they should be very pretty. So if anyone’s coming to Context 23 this year– conveniently timed to be the weekend before the first RPP release– count on me searching you out and handing you one. You think you don’t want it now, but when you see the glory of Magdala Twistleton in bookmark form, you won’t be able to refuse.

She’s kind of a bad ass. (This is why I need an alter-ego to hide behind, you see! Well, that and she’s pretty.)

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Now playing: Kasabian – Fast Fuse
via FoxyTunes

The vacation fended off the usual post-novel-finishing depression, but apparently not the exhaustion. I have the brainpower for precisely nothing– and though I have friends and family would disagree, that is in fact strange. I haven’t even read through the last three chapters of Plaguebringer yet, something I usually do before I send them to the first reader, my dear Meghan. The very thought makes me feel like my head weighs a metric fuck-ton. (Larger than the English fuck-ton… or is it?)

I love feeling tired. It’s like working out until your body refuses to move any more. So awesome.

But it’s been a good week. I signed my first ever book contract and found out that my short story, The Runner, made the cut for Dark Quest Books‘ Beauty Has Her Way anthology, edited by Jennifer Brozek. I only know a few other people in the ToC, and it’s already quite exciting. It can’t help but be a lot of fun, can it?

Fun fact: The Runner takes place in Plaguebringer-verse and is about Cami Rushclan, who was featured in several of my incessant WIP Wednesday updates over the last few months.

Well, okay, the fact is fun for me, anyhow. If I were a better Buddhist I would not be so worried that the excellence of this month must mean that something terrible is about to happen any moment. Alas, my practical meditation fell by the wayside years ago.

But I’ve done precisely nothing of use. I am supposed to be doing several things, for example: scripting the first chapter of a graphic novel, reading several research books in prep for round 2 on The Resurrectionists, and composing any number of short stories. Or perhaps cleaning my house in preparation for my parents’ visit this upcoming long weekend– for which I cannot use the “tired brain!” excuse. No, instead I’ve been playing The Sims 3 (finally got the World Adventures expansion… must solve tomb puzzles!) and occasionally pulling my head out of the sand to email/call/bother my friends about this and that (which I did not do during the last month nearly enough, as I was in Hermit Mode. My poor friends. I will never know how they tolerate me).

No wait, I did adjust the Scripped page slightly, so it’s now further up on the sidebar and has a much shorter intro. That counts, right?

So yeah, downtime. Recharge. All that good stuff.

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Now playing: Franz Schubert – 4 Impromptus, Op.90, D.899: No.4 in A Flat: Allegretto
via FoxyTunes

Done done done. Plaguebringer is done. Oh a sigh of relief– the hell with that, tears of relief! Okay, yes, I did take a large part of one month off to edit Wolfton but still, holy mother of god, why did I ever, ever think writing fantasy was a good idea? Four months of my life! For what?!

… well, actually, I am a little bit proud of myself. I won’t choke you all with the word count, but let’s just say it’s officially the hugest thing I’ve ever written. And while it’ll shrink considerably with edits, as everything I write inevitably does– well, not enough.

In celebration, I give you my Plaguebringer soundtrack, which has now dominated my last.fm for several months running, as you might imagine.

• Yeah Yeah Yeahs – “Gold Lion“
  Opening/closing credits sort of song. You know the type.
• Camera Obscura – “French Navy“
  For the ill-fated relationship of a certain sailor of our acquaintance. (Rufus, if you’re playing along at home.)
• The Fratellis – “Look Out Sunshine“
  For a certain prince who is all sunshine, but ends up pretty fucked. (Ronan– just putting names here for the people who’ve suffered through months of me talking about this crap. Ignore them, other people!)
• Dark Materia – “The Worf Song“
  … long story. There’s this cranky hippy-mystic guy– well anyhow. The Worf Song is awesome. (Ruarigh)
• Hot Chip – “Hold On“
  My only weapon was my pen, but I traded it for my hand. Not a smart move, but my move– does this say I’m a man? (Elanzah)
• Franz Ferdinand – “Auf Achse“
  For about the only relationship that is not ill-fated. Though as you might imagine from this song, it starts out rather badly. (Felix and/or Ilidh)
• Kasabian – “Fire“
  Because there’s always at least one character who is on fire. Figuratively speaking– well, no, there are people actually on fire in this book. But not her. (Cami)
• Charlatans – “North Country Boy“
  And there’s always one kid from the boondocks who falls in love with someone he shouldn’t. (Niall)
• Rob Zombie – “Dragula“
  Because if the grumpy hippy-mystic had a car, it’d definitely be Dragula. He’d also dig Rob Zombie.
• Yeah Yeah Yeahs – “Honeybear“
  Aka the Ballad of Osgar and Cami. As close to a ballad as they’ll ever come, anyhow.
• Franz Ferdinand – “Ulysses“
  Come on doll and use me, I don’t need your sympathy//Then suddenly you know you’re never going home (Rufus)
• The Smiths – “Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want“
  Like I say, being 16 sucks, doesn’t it, kid? (Ronan)
• Louis XIV – “Finding Out True Love Is Blind”
  Hey Carrot Juice, I wanna squeeze you every way until you bleed/and your vanilla friend, well she looks like something I need . (Osgar. Though this could also apply to Rufus or Cami, in truth. Or Elan. Book is full of, er, voracious types.)
• Hot Chip – “Shake a Fist“
  So you know how every fantasy novel needs a bad-ass swordsman? And the badass swordsman needs a theme song when he walks into the room? Yeah. (Elanzah)
• Oasis – “Soldier On“
  Sailor-boy sure gets a lot of song action, doesn’t he? Well he’s been with me the longest, so he’s allowed. (Rufus)
• Black Rebel Motorcycle Club – “Half-State“
  We were close but we never made it home/We could see what we had and we let it go/Now it’s miles away and cast in stone/Now we’re miles away and casting stones//There’s a fire, there’s a fire on the road/It’s a cruel world that lets us go

Definitely the weirdest playlist for a book yet. Hell, I’m not even all that fond of some of that stuff. Obviously certain albums feature more heavily than others– I listened to so much Hot Chip and Yeah Yeah Yeahs– wow. But I’ve already talked about most of it at one time or another. Just thought it’d be a nice little way to cap off the evening, and the book, to put it all together like this. Props to John, who found some of them for me way back when it was just a weird idea in my brain.

I’m off for the next few days, and will be entertaining company from the frozen north for the rest of the week after. So I apologize in advance for my lack of keeping in touch. I will make amends as soon as normal service resumes.

(And by normal service, I mean me not writing anything. At all. Ever. Good god.)

—————-
Now playing: Hot Chip – Hold On
via FoxyTunes