Author: Allison Thurman

Raised on a diet of Star Wars, Monty Python, and In Search Of, Allison Thurman has always made stuff, lately out of words. She lives in a galaxy far, far away (well, the DC metro area) with too many books and not enough swords.

diversions

Last weekend I took a break from the book to attend my first costume conference in several years. The scholarship has proceeded by leaps and bounds since I last made anything substantial, but the real treat was seeing old friends and making new ones.

Photo of ship Susan Constant at sunset
Reproduction of the Susan Constant, one of the ships that brought settlers to Jamestown. Author’s own.

Even so, I couldn’t avoid the book entirely.

The conference was in Jamestown Settlement/Historic Jamestown, a recreation of the first permanent English settlement in North America and the archaeological site of the original fort, respectively. Neither Dee or Kelley ever came to the New World, but some of Dee’s acquaintances did.

Settler George Percy presided over the winter of 1609-10 Starving Time. The name rang a bell, and a Google search revealed that he was the youngest brother of Henry Percy, 9th earl of Northumberland, called the Wizard Earl for his interest in early science. Percy’s Syon House was near Dee’s in Mortlake, and they ran in similar intellectual circles: the Wizard Earl led the so called School of Night, a group of men interested in clandestine religion and science.

The Jamestown archaeological museum included a selection of early tobacco pipes. Names of prominent courtiers and nobles decorated many of them, among them Charles Howard, first earl of Nottingham. Howard was Lord Admiral of the English fleet ca. 1585 to 1619. In a rather oblique connection, Jane Dee (nee Fromonds) served as lady in waiting to his wife Catherine before her marriage to John Dee.

Though he wasn’t involved in the Jamestown voyage, Dee acted as navigating consultant to earlier English voyages of discovery. His 1577 publication of General and Rare Memorials pertayning to the Perfect Arte of Navigation was the first to put forth the notion of a “British empire” and advocated English colonization of the New World.

These connections aren’t that surprising. The rich, powerful, and educated of sixteenth century England comprised a small group so most were acquainted with and/or related to each other. I just found it amusing that even when I take a break my interests reel me right back into the book.

And I discovered a costume element I can use to make Kelley (more) miserable, so that amuses.

I came out of the conference wanting to make everything, and while I find myself with some surprise free hours this summer, I’m going to stick to short, simple projects. Much as I’d love to drown in linen and lace the book still comes first.

 

 

biweekly links 6-29-2016

Short one this week as I was out-of-town (wasn’t doing book research, but inadvertently found some anyway!) Enjoy:

The Fool card from the Rider Waite tarot deck
The Fool from the Rider-Waite tarot, courtesy Wikipedia.

historic fiction through a side door

I’m getting critiques back about the first 50 pages of my second draft. Responses are mostly positive: definitely still needs work but it’s evidently it’s a compelling read.

Most of my critique partners aren’t historical fiction enthusiasts so I find their input valuable re: possible cross-genre appeal. One even said that though she’s not a history buff she’d read my book for the alchemy and magic alone.

I never thought I read historical fiction as a child, at least in the “pure” Dorothy Dunnett/Philippa Gregory/Margaret George mold. I preferred “real history” (I cringe at my childhood snobbiness). But after this discussion it occurred to me: I was reading histfic all along. I just found it in other genres.

Take Anne Rice. I was a teenage goth so of course I read and reread her Vampire Chronicles and Mayfair Witches series. Rice typically falls on the horror/fantasy but Lestat and co. survive through pre-revolutionary France and antebellum New Orleans; the Mayfair family moves from England through to the Caribbean and thence to the New World over five centuries.

Anne Rice shelfie
My carefully preserved Anne Rice novels from yonks ago. Many hours spent in line to get them signed.

Octavia Butler’s Kindred also stuck with me. Time travel puts this sobering read squarely in the sci-fi box but Butler’s nuanced depiction of slavery in the American south suggests painstaking research of the type associated with the best historical fiction.

Kage Baker’s Company series goes everywhen: Tudor England (Baker taught Elizabethan English as a second language and it shows) to 17th century Spanish California to the 19th century old west and elsewhere…with time-traveling, historical-artifact-saving cyborgs.

More histfic with scifi/paranormal elements:

Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series goes without saying.

Sarah Waters’ 19th century spiritualists in Affinity  and post-WWII haunted house in The Little Stranger

M. J. Rose’s Seduction is a fictional account of Victor Hugo’s seances in search of his daughter’s ghost. Witch of Painted Sorrows involves fin de siècle Parisian occultism and possession.

Deborah Harkness’ All Souls Trilogy has it all: witches, vampires, werewolves, and time travel

The Witch Who Came in From the Cold: John LeCarre-style Cold War spies…with witches

The Voynich Manuscript motivates the antagonist in Linda Lafferty’s The Bloodletter’s Daughter (and oh hey – someone over at CipherMysteries made up a huge list of novels revolving around Voynich)

Chelsea Quinn Harbor’s Saint Germain series – the vampire St. Germain through multiple time periods

Kim Newman’s Anno Dracula series – mixes Victorian vampires and Jack the Ripper

The quality and success of all of these genre mash-ups reassure me that there’s a place for my hybrid WIP someday.

Please share your own favorites in the comments!

 

 

biweekly links 6-15-2016

going there – the importance of (quality) sex scenes

When writing about Dee and Kelley’s time together it is impossible to avoid the infamous “crossmatching” incident. The “spirits” hold out the promise of great secrets if they agree to share everything in common – including their wives. After much angsty soul-searching, they agree, and even wrote up a pact outlining their commitment to the act (I could not make this up!)

Sure, it’s attention-getting for salaciousness alone, but in the context of the WIP it’s a major plot point. Are the “spirits” good or evil? How far – and why – are Dee and Kelley willing to go to achieve their ambitions? How far – and why – are Jane Dee and Joanna Kelley willing to compromise themselves for their husbands’ mad schemes? And what are the repercussions?

So of course I have to include it.

I’ve been asked whether I’m really going to “go there”. Wouldn’t a “fade to black” be more tasteful? Don’t you worry about putting off potential readers? Aren’t you afraid of the narrative minefield erotica poses?

No, no, and yes. Which is why I’m taking a class on writing love scenes.

The excellent essay Show Me, Don’t Tell Me – Unless it’s Sex over at Remittance Girl’s blog (which I highly recommend – not safe for work, so be smart) explores some of the reasons why writers shy away from sex scenes: societal hang-ups about sex, the impression that sex scenes are automatically porn, the fear that sex is so commercialized that sex scenes won’t elicit a real response in the reader – just a memory of the latest tv ad.

All of which are valid concerns. But for me, in this case, omission would represent a narrative “flinch” of the kind I’ve always abhorred. Telling the reader about it after the fact would be like telling the aftermath of a fight after putting away the swords: I’d sacrifice all the emotional punch. I also imagine the “pulling back” of telling after a novel of close 3rd person showing would jar the reader right out of the story.

Ultimately good sex scenes aren’t about tab A into slot B but are about emotions, in all their messy glory. I’d cheat my readers if I left out such a rich opportunity for character development.

Will explicit content put off some readers? Yes, most likely, but not all books are for all people and I’m fine with that. However, I don’t want to drown the right readers with purple prose, hence the class.

I’m setting aside rewrites for the next 2 weeks to focus on learning – a break in momentum, but a worthy one.

 

 

biweekly links 6-1-2016

Welcome to June! For your perusal this week:

    • Think history’s all boring dates? Try social history – a former history class-hater turned historical fiction writer because of her love for the ‘real lives behind boring dates and wars’. I never disliked the big names but the food, clothing, hygiene, tools, and other minutiae of every day life provides a sense of place and time that larger events just don’t.
    • New research maps in unique detail the devastation of the Black Death on medieval England – Over two thousand square meters of plague burial pits excavated between 2005 and 2014 reveal such a sharp drop in pottery fragments that they estimate the “population of England remained somewhere between 35 and 55 per cent below its pre-Black Death level well into the sixteenth century”. The article links to the University of Lincoln’s announcement and it links to the original paper, which is, alas, password protected.
    • Call to save nude Tudor murals on old brothel site – renovation of a former clothing shop in Buckingham UK reveals murals with “lots of naked people in them and…several explicit images” dating from the 1570s-80s. Only one rather tame image at the link, though I suppose the curious could always try contacting the professor quoted in the article.
    • Work from 1616 is ‘the first ever science fiction novel’ – I’ve never thought of the Rosicrucian text “The Chymical Wedding” as proto-science fiction, but given that it’s about alchemy and adventure and flying women, I can see it. But is it really the first? The article cites works by Kepler and More as possibilities. What do you think?
    • Margaret Cavendish, the long-ignored godmother of science fiction, gets her due in Margaret the First – “The Blazing World” is novel in 17th century literature for including alternative worlds and talking animals, but it seems the author was at least as interesting as her story. Privately ambitious but publicly apologetic for it, this review suggests a tale of female frustration at dreams thwarted that’s maddening in its familiarity – and therefore looks like a cracking good read.
The Description of a new World, called The Blazing-World, written by the Thrice Noble, Righteous, and Excellent Princesse the Duchess of Newcastle.
Cover of Cavendish’s “The Blazing World”, courtesy Wikipedia

Rudolf II supplementary materials

I was on a podcast!

I talked with Roejen and Lobo over at Project Archivist about one of Dee and Kelley’s great patrons, Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II.  He provided material support and political protection for alchemists, astrologers, scientists, and artists of all stripes. Perhaps not the most glittering court (he was a melancholic recluse who preferred the world to come to him), but he created a golden age of early modern science in Prague.

Here are some images of the Mad Emperor himself, some of the art he favored, and a disturbing family tree. All images Wikipedia Commons unless otherwise noted:

Portrait of Rudolf II
Rudolf II by Joseph Heinz the Elder, 1594, at the peak of his power as Holy Roman Emperor and art/science/occult studies patron.
Archdukerudolf
Archduke Rudolf when he was about 15, by Spanish court painter Alonso Sánchez Coello, 1567. I’d love to know what’s up with the long red nails – some odd Spanish court fashion? Kids those days…
Habsburg family tree
An illustration of the Habsburg intermarriages and the end result. Anna of Austria was Rudolf II’s sister; they lived over 100 years before poor Charles II. From http://the-history-notes.blogspot.com/p/genealogy.html

 

Arcimboldo Librarian Stokholm
“The Librarian”, 1570 by Giuseppe Arcimboldo. His inventive portraits influenced Surrealist artists 400 years later.

Bartholomäus Springers Venus and Adonis
Bartholomäus Spranger’s “Venus and Adonis”, 1595-1597. An example of the mythological-themed art with bonus naked ladies of which Rudolf was so fond.
Selected Bibliography:

Evans, R. J. W. (1973). Rudolf II and His World: A Study in Intellectual History, 1576-1612. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Fučíková, E. (1997). Rudolf II and Prague: The court and the city. Prague, New York, and London: Prague : Prague Castle Administration ; London ; New York : Thames and Hudson.

Marshall, P. (2006). The Magic Circle of Rudolf II: Alchemy and Astrology in Renaissance Prague. Walker & Company.

Nummedal, T. (2007). Alchemy and Authority in the Holy Roman Empire. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

biweekly links 5-18-2016

  • I lived in Georgia half my life so of course I’d never heard of Lake Lanier’s legends until I read about them on an Australian paranormal news site. Evidently its got a giant catfish and ghosts, the latter the paranormal result of leaving entire towns (and cemeteries?) intact beneath its muddy waters.
  • The Ghost Rockets Investigational Portal is a searchable database of Swedish military UFO reports. It’s also the starting point for a crowdsourcing effort to tag and translate the documents into English.
  • The original Globe Theater is long gone, but The Curtain has been found. It seems the archaeologists are rushing to outpace impending new construction over this Shakespearean theater, but there will be a visitors’ center for the dig once excavation is complete.
  • More London: “A series of talks on alchemy and magic” are planned for June 4th and 5th to support the restoration of Brompton Cemetery. Featuring all the hits: Dee, Faust, Paracelsus, and even a theremin concert. Ah, to be in Merrie Olde…
A theremin - a box on a pedestal with an antenna on one side, a metal loop on the other
A theremin – the instrument used to create creepy music associated with 1950s sci-fi films. Courtesy Wikipedia

why I do the weird stuff

No, not that weird stuff!

I mean my biweekly link dumps of witches, occultists, strange/obscure history, and academic papers. Why do I post these (apart from their vague relevance to the work in progress)?

Well, I was a strange child. And I had help.

I grew up on an irregular diet of “Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World” and the occasional surprise “In Search Of” when it aired at odd times on TBS. Also one side of my family nurtured an interest in UFOs, ghosts, cryptozoology, and other Forteana/paranormalia: I remember reading my grandmother’s back issues of Fate Magazine from around age 8, and books got passed around through the mail and at holiday get togethers.

I think the cryptozoology thing grew out of the usual childhood fascination with dinosaurs. My interest was intense enough that by elementary school I was making papier-mâché Loch Ness monsters and a faked plaster cast of a Bigfoot footprint for school projects.

I can’t remember my teachers’ reactions.

shelf of books with titles about UFOs, poltergeists, hidden animals, conspiracies
A “shelfie” of my weird collection. The old Fate mags have long since worn out and been thrown away.

Various family members expressed everything from skeptical interest to full on belief – dinner table conversation could go on for hours. As a child I was fairly uncritical about it all; as a teenager I became more skeptical but sought out anything that made my eyebrows jump – conspiracy theories, alien abduction, prank religions – for the sheer WTFery, if nothing else. I can’t remember how many times I checked High Weirdness by Mail out of the library (oh hey, now there’s an online version!).

And yes, in the 1990s I was a dedicated X-Phile. So many of the stories were already familiar, and the writers did a wonderful job with the source material!

As an adult I’m more detached but my interest remains, though I’ve grown so hard-headed it’s difficult to believe in anything I can’t hit with a hammer, so to speak. At the same time I recognize that subjective experience is relevant to the experiencer, objectively provable or not. In the end it’s not about aliens or ghosts or witches, but about people and how they integrate the unexplained into their lives.

Still, my inner curious child still aches to know: what really happened? What did they really see/experience/find? Through writing fiction I can speculate with the luxury of  not having to prove anything, and I have the freedom to make up answers.

I could (maybe I will) do a whole separate post about growing up as a history buff. Suffice it to say I’m not terribly surprised that two lifelong interests collided to have me writing about Elizabethan magicians ~30 years later.

What about you? Do you have any childhood obsessions that still inform your creative pursuits today? Tell me in the comments!

 

 

biweekly links 5-4-2016

mid-17th century leather shoe in poor condition
Shoe found in a cottage in Stockbridge, England. From the Deliberately Concealed Garments Project website.