Medieval stocking stuffers! What a cool idea. (Via Heavenfield.) Pewter whatchamacallits from Aebba Art Gallery. I’ve always been very fond of pewter–though I hated polishing it when I was a child. It was always my job before Christmas: rub rub, polish polish, tuh. It was the old-fashioned kind of pewter, too, with lead; hand-hammered. Beautiful […]
Read more "pewter Hild"I know very well (that is, I think I know) that ‘harps’ in Hild’s time were essentially lyres, like this: reproduction of Sutton Hoo lyre at the British Museum However, story-wise my notions of ‘harp’ are so strong that I’ve taken the liberty of giving Anglo-Saxons gut-strung lyres, like the one above, and the British–especially […]
Read more "most heinous use of a musical instrument–so far"illustration of 10th century (I think) sleeping arrangements I’ve been working on my Hild novel for a year now. She is twelve. I have 75,000 words. (To put that in context, most novels are around 100,000.) If you believe Bede’s suspicious symmetry, she lived to the ripe old age of 66–so this is turning into […]
Read more "Update on Hild, plus Where do they sleep?"I don’t know much about dogs; my sister had one when I was seven, but I’m a cat person. Nothing against dogs, I’ve just always lived in cities, which I think is a hostile environment for large dogs (and small dogs, in my experience–small though it is–tend to yap). So, regarding dogs: utterly ignorant. I’ve […]
Read more "dogs in the 7th century"Hild is still prepubescent, but I’m already turning my research attention to sexuality. (In writing terms, I need to have facts about four years ahead of character and plot development so my unconscious brain can be knitting things together without having to worry about taking things to places my conscious brain later finds impossible.) So […]
Read more "The Beautiful Sin"I’ve been asked twice in the last week (once over at my personal blog, once during a discussion with an Oregon book group about my most recent novel, Always) about charts: do I use them? What are they like? Are they on the wall? So I thought I’d talk a little about my process for […]
Read more "Charty process porn"Today I got my copy of British Archaeology (May/June 2008) in the mail. On p.30-37 there was a wonderful, detailed article, “The Lost Royal cult of Street House Yorkshire,” on the finds at Street House Farm, near Saltburn, North Yorkshire, the ‘possible cult centre’ graves with the fabulous jewellery. Everything is now beginning to make […]
Read more "no comparison"Time to confess: I’ve been taking unconscionable liberties with a well-known historical character. I took a very brief and most definitely dubious mention of a possible siege of Bebbanburg by Fiachnae mac Báetáin of the Dál nAraidi, turned it into reality (well, fiction). But that’s not the worst of it: then I had one of […]
Read more "Most Heinous Use of an Historical Character (So Far…)"I now have 37,000 words. Hild is ten. She has just deliberately assumed the uncomfortable mantle of lightbringer, per her mother’s prophetic dream. She knows she has no otherwordly gifts, but she knows this is the only way to persuade the king to do certain things she–being a very bright and observant child–believes to be […]
Read more "General Update"Three days ago I wrote a scene where my protagonist, Hild (now aged ten), stands on the Whitby headland for the first time, by the ruins of an old Roman signal tower and a broken down old church complete with a thorn hedge and graveyard. Here she meets a young cowherd who informs her that […]
Read more "Coincidence"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’?"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 