Tag: history
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Shaking It Up
So my wife and I used the last of our groupons for the year. We’re fortunate that she acquired so many earlier this year because with our current financial hardships, none of this would have been possible. A year ago for my birthday, I drove up to the North Country. I had the day off…
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It’s the little details
I’ve said this before, and I’m sure I’ll say it again: To help your reader believe the fantastic, make sure they recognize the mundane. It’s an easy (lazy) hand-wave to excuse inconsistencies in fantasy by saying “this isn’t the real world” when so much of the book mirrors the real world. Rarely do we create…
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Music to My Eyes
So one of the exhibits at Old Sturbridge Village is a building full of firearms and textiles. It is interesting to see the evolution of muskets and eventually rifles over the course of two centuries, but what I really found interesting was a few items in the textiles section of the building. There used to…
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A New Adventure!
Groupon Queen discovered that we lived near the nation’s third largest living history museum, Old Sturbridge Village. This is a village as you would have found it in 1835 New England, and many of the buildings are actually from that period transplanted from one of the various states. Actors/educators are in period dress and conduct…
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August Wilson
If your education was anything like mine, the only plays you were exposed to in high school were the Shakespeare you read in English class (Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, maybe King Leer or Macbeth) and whatever your school performed for the yearly musical (Guys and Dolls again?). Maybe around senior year you got yourself a…
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Like Edinburgh, England
Let’s begin here: If you’re writing in a contemporary setting, referring to certain foreign nations can rip a reader out of your story if you incorrectly describe that location because you’re an American and you don’t really understand how X country works. Example: United Kingdom is a constitutional monarchy. It is not a republic or…
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Being Factual in an Alt History Story
I’ve been doing a lot of research for PATAPAN. I’ve nailed down most of what I needed (or what I didn’t already have). I am taken aback by how many people are shocked that I would do research for an alternate history story. I’m changing the history as it’s been taught to us. It’s important…
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GOO! (RE: He-Man)
I often site the original He-Man mini-comics that came with the toys as one of the largest influences of my writing career. It’s very true. I was five when I was allowed to buy my first He-Man figure and those comics stirred a creativity in me that I had never known before. …AND NOW THEY’RE…
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His Shadow Stands Over Us
Streaming Netflix over my Xbox (really, it seems that’s the only thing I use my Xbox Live account for any more1 2), I watched a miniseries with Daniel Craig called Archangel. Though I think I may have seen the ending before, the rest of it was quite interesting. Especially the first two episodes. General premise…