Being able to see and hear and touch and taste and smell all of those things for themselves. Being able to turn them in the light and sneeze at the dust upon them or smell the lemon of the furniture wax. Too many writers make the mistake of just telling people that it is raining … More NaNoWriMo VP 5 – It takes senses to make sense!
And that brings us to mystery writers. Sad to say true mysteries are dying out due to the ease of access and glut of technology available to crime fighters these days, with the private eye novel especially being close to extinction, but there are still some good ones out there and some of the rules … More NaNoWriMo VP 4 – Mystery Writers
So to begin with item one, in a rather famous dark cave a short little hobbit with hairy feet whilst riddling for his life once asked a seeming little monster with throat issues, “What’s in my pocket?” Okay, as a riddle this was unfair, and frankly Gollum should have called the sneaky, feelthy hobbit on … More NaNoWriMo VP 2 – What’s In Its Pocketses, Part 1
There is an “article” on Facebook going around that deals with the dangers of sodas. Yes, sodas are problematic, but the article, accredited to this person – https://www.facebook.com/judit.forgacs.144 – and only she, is a classic example of really bad science in action. And a piece of dangerousy viral misinformation. TL:DR : It is written in … More On sodas and misinformation (long)
I recently answered a question in another forum about whether or not it was normal for writers to be interested in more than one genre in another form. Minus the names involved here is my answer. Since I write full immersion in the hopes of making things as believable as possible even when writing horror … More Writing process: Full immersion
Part of the research into my Victorian novel…codebreaking. This one was from a puzzle book with Turn of the Last Century themes. It is a very simple substitution code – one that a computer or a mathematician could brute force very easily, but it took me about three hours using the ETA ONIS process. ETA … More Research process
So a friend asked me today how one goes about researching a book. The short answer is that that depends upon the book. I use several techniques depending on the genre of what I am writing. For my most current project, a book both about and based mostly in the Victorian Era, id est Historical … More On research – part 1, brief
This blog tells the long tale of my experiments into Victorian clothes laundering. The why is at the beginning and may be skipped by those who only wish to know the how. Scroll on down or read on. I recently suffered an unlikely disaster in my washroom. First you must know that I use a … More Book Process: Research: 19th Century Laundry DIY
In my further book researches into upper class Victoriana, I spent an evening in a man’s dressing gown, and boxers (a true Victorian would have forgone the underwear, wearing a night shirt or nothing underneath unless it was very cold in which case a sort of union suit or almost bloomer-style pajama trouser would have … More Writing process post: Research
As what follows is a copyrighted academic paper used with permission, I am not going to change it in any way. My only comment here is that I spoke to Jillian several times during the course of my researches and found her well worth listening to. You will note I left her full name on … More Lyme Disease: Stories From the Front Lines of An Epidemic – Jillian Cote
EVOLVING MALE 