(no subject)

I'm tired of complaining, so no health updates today. sartorias has an interesting post at the Book View Cafe, and it reminded me that I need to do much work. I need to finish this doctorate and finish the Beast so that I can get on with my other project.

People nag me about my other project, but I don't know how many of them know I'm partway through it. It's the project people tell me they want me to finish, even when they have no idea it's well underway.

I'm halfway through a study of how writers use history in their work (not a literary study, a study of techniques) and how writers can access history to write fiction without spending 20 years doing basic groundwork.

I've been thinking for a while that this could be something I write up after my doctorate. It was what I had intended to work on when the doctorate intervened, after all. It won't take that long, because I was partway through it when I detoured (all those interviews I did with writers, looking at their relationship with the Middle Ages, for instance) and I've done basic research on parts of it when it overlapped with the doctorate*.

It would make a good companion for the Beast. One book on how to use the relationship of history with fiction, specifically for writers, and one introduction to the Middle Ages in France and England for writers and others. I needed reminding, though. I also need (not quite yet, I suspect - first finish the doctorate) to find a publisher.

It's going to be a much better book than if I hadn't done this second doctorate, for my time travel novel was a testing ground for a lot of the stuff I derived from the research.


*It's not the same as the doctorate, but sources overlap. It's going to be a lot of fun pulling *those* sections together, I suspect.

Hot chocolate

I promised rachelholkner an oldish recipe the other day, on the open question thread. I wanted to convince people of the importance of chocolate, from the time of its first major wave of "we must drink this!" in Europe*. When you're convinced it will be a wonderful elixir and that you must have some, then I'll give you a recipe. Our starting date is 1660, and our starting place is Oxford. If any of you live nearby, I would love to know what is now sold (if anything) where that drink was once bought, which was, according to this leaflet at 'James Gough at M. Sury's neare East gate'.


THE VERTUES OF CHOCOLATE East-India Drink.

BY this pleasing drink health is preserved, sicknesse diverted, It cures Consumptions and Cough of the Lungs; it expells poyson, cleanseth the teeth, and sweetneth the Breath; provoketh Urine; cureth the stone and strangury, maketh Fatt and Corpulent, faire and aimeable, it cureth the running of the Reins, with sundry other desperate Diseases; It causeth Conception according to these Verses,

Nor need the Women longer grieve,
Who spend their oyle yet not Conceive,
For 'tis a Help Immediate,
If such but Lick of Chocolate.
Beauty gaind and continued, as this verse speaketh,

The Nut-Browne Lasses of the Land,
Whom Nature vail'd in Face and hand,
Are quickly Beauties of High-Rate,
By one small Draught of Chocolate.
It is impossible to innumerate all new and admirable effects then producing every day in such as drink it, therefore I'le leave the Judgement of it, to those who daily make a continuall proofe of it.


And now, for methods of making this wonderful liquor, just click on this link. Report back on any interesting tastings!




*which doesn't answer mikandra's question on Twitter, but maybe helps explain why I found it a difficult question to answer.

(no subject)

For those who were so enthusiastic about the Phryne Fisher series, I didn't make it to the last episode. I just called it up on iview, for completion's sake, and couldn't be bothered. The historical backdrop wears thin at times, some of the more regular characters (ones I liked) were turned into appearances or bit parts and there was the impossible-to-get-round problems of the tin ear and some really curious directorial choices. It wasn't a bad series, but it wasn't a brilliant one, either. For me, the best part was Phryne's costumes and the worst was when brothers had two different European accents.

I still think that Kim Wilkins would make a perfect Phryne Fisher, but that's not really relevant to me not watching the series.