Why ‘Gemæcca’? I subscribe to British Archaeology, a bi-monthly magazine stuffed with dug-up-in-Britain wonders, covering everything from how to excavate an abandoned Ford Transit Van to discovery of tools created half a million years ago. The thrill factor is variable (I often read it in bed and nod out over the articles). But a few […]
Read more "Why ‘Gemæcca’?"This is the novel that I’ve been aiming for my whole life. I didn’t really understand that until early last year when I wrote my memoir, And Now We Are Going to Have a Party: Liner Notes to a Writer’s Early Life (a multi-media memoir-in-a-box about my life in the UK before I came to […]
Read more "Where It Began"I’m having a little trouble sorting out some word choices. Specifically, I need to decide whether a certain character would be a gesith, a thegn, or something else (ealdorman?). A gesith, as I understand it, is a warrior companion, a member of the warband. It’s a term used in very early A-S times, i.e. the […]
Read more "Word Choice"I’m writing a novel about Hild of Whitby, also known as St. Hilda, who lived in seventh century Britain. For about ten years I’ve been researching, on and off, the basics: language, the politics of conversion, food, arms and armour, textile production, etc. The more I learn the more I realise I don’t know. So […]
Read more "History Meme Game"
Gemæcce 