Medieval Days of the week 1100-1500 AD
I just discoverd a web page (http://www.medievalgenealogy.org.uk/cal/medcal.shtml) where some hearty soul has calculated the dates/days of the week from 1100-1500 AD. Thus, for the book I’m writing now, I discovered that 11 December 1282 was a Friday. It was also the 3rd day before the Ides, which was a Roman way of figuring the days. The Roman calendar was originally based on the first three phases of the moon, with days counted backwards from lunar phases. The new moon was the day of the Kalends, the moon’s first quarter was the day of the Nones, and the Ides fell on the day of the full moon. (Thus, Julius Caesar was murdered on the Ides of March, or March 15) December 11th was the Feast day St. Damasus, who commissioned the translation of the Bible from Greek to Latin in 366 AD. Read more…
National Novel Writing Month
Yay! NaNoWriMo is one of the most insane-yet-exhilerating things I’ve done, certainly as a writer. Maybe as a person. Writing 50,000 words in a month is a lot. This year, I did it the smart way and paced myself. Last year, I wrote 15,000 words in four days, gave up on the book as a lost cause and abandoned it for 2 1/2 weeks, and then picked it up again with only 6 days to go. Fortunately, those 6 days occurred over Thanksgiving, which we spent at my sister-in-law’s house. You know the part about how you wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving, and then bolt your food to go hide in the corner and be anti-social so you can write? That was my tactic last year. This year, I didn’t sign up the day before the contest started, I actually Read more…
Writing Historical Fantasy: A Magical Balance
Today, Anna Elliott, the author of the wonderful Twilight of Avalon (Touchstone: May 2009) is here to talk about blending history and fantasy when writing historical fiction. Welcome, Anna! —— Ever since I wrote Twilight of Avalon, based on the Trystan and Isolde legend in the larger cycle of Arthurian tales, I’ve often been asked for thoughts on the enduring appeal of the King Arthur story. Why should that legend, perhaps more than any other in Western culture, have captured our imaginations for more than a millennium, have engendered countless retellings and reworkings of the old tale? The answers are legion, of course. But for me, the unique enchantment of the Arthurian legends lies in their blend of fantasy and history. The world of the legends is a recognizably historical one, part of our own past. Many scholars have explored the Read more…
Writing when it’s hard . . .
“Here’s what it starts to be like for me somewhere in the midsection of a novel: (1) I’ve written the beginning, but I’m pretty sure it’s a pile of crap. (2) The end, when I even dare to contemplate it, feels as far away as Uranus. (3) The prose I’m writing right now, here in the middle, sounds like a stiff little busybody who’s sat down too hard on a nettle. (4) I’ve discovered that my plot, even if it’s an engaging plot, has sections that are not engaging to write, and I’m bogged down in those doldrums sections, when all I want is to move on to the exciting parts that are just ahead —but I can’t, not until I’ve written the parts that will get me there. Boring! (5) The house is strewn with post-it notes on which Read more…
Dark Age and Medieval Armor
The Arthurian knight in plate mail, jousting on his horse, is the classic image of a medieval knight, but is totally inaccurate. Armor has evolved over time and that plate mailed knight was a relatively late development in the evolution of warfare. Dark Age warriors wore a range of leather and chain mail armor, properly referred to as simply ‘mail’. This was standard for the next five hundred years, until the gradual shift to plate mail during the fourteenth century, particularly for high status warriors. From: http://historymedren.about.com/library/weekly/aa041500a.htm “The construction of mail was begun by hammering a sheet of metal very thin and flat. The sheet would then be cut into narrow strips, and each strip would be wound around an iron mandrel or rod. (Later, when the technique of drawing wire was developed, soft iron wire would be used instead.) The wound wire or strips Read more…
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