Summer Ramblings

Summer is the time when you think you'll get lots of writing done. Summer is also the time when life accelerates and time fills up with pool wading, berry picking, and family vacationing. I know that I'm not the only one procrastinating on my WIP. My writers' group, The Inkblot Society, meets on Monday at my house and no one has submitted anything for critique this month. I guess that means the meeting will be short--maybe that'll give us more time to have a campfire in our backyard and roast some s'mores. 

Oliver and Adam, just sittin'

Sidewalk chalk on the 4th of July (Adam)

At the spray park with the Aunties (Adam)

So cold, but so fun (Oliver)

Too cool for school

Little climber (Oliver)

Marcus -- stuck at home with Mom

William the Conqueror's Coming of Age Story

I took a history elective in college titled "Norman Conquest," a class taught by the incomparable Christopher Schlect. He was a busy man, and he had a hard time fitting that class into his schedule--our classes alternated between 6:00am lectures in the student lounge and 8:30pm recitations at the professor's house. We studied through nearly every primary source relating to the Norman Conquest. It was one of the most exhaustive and rewarding bouts of research that I have ever done, and it was a tribute to both the topic and Professor Schlect's teaching that hardly any of the students dropped the course. Because of that class, the history surrounding the Norman Conquest remains one of my most favorite pieces of the past. It's another one of those time periods that I'm determined to turn into a novel someday.

Today I have something a little shorter than a novel to offer you on this fascinating topic. I have a post up on the English Historical Fiction Authors blog called, "William Before He Was the Conqueror."

He was born William the Bastard, illegitimate son of Duke Robert of Normandy, but history knows him as William the Conqueror, first Norman king of England and compiler of the Domesday Book. Many historians focus on the year 1066 and the legitimacy of William’s claim to the English crown. But how did an illegitimate boy across the Channel become powerful enough to make that claim in the first place? What did he accomplish before he invaded England? What did he win before the Battle of Hastings?... (read more)

Great Gatsby and Great Libraries: Saturday Links

F. Scott Fitzgerald's novels are some of the most beautiful writing I have ever read. I remember being awe-struck by the opening paragraphs of Tender is the Night, and The Great Gatsby is a book I have read three times and would still wish to read again. This week, Letters of Note featured an exchange of letters between Fitzgerald and his editor after Fitzgerald had finished writing Gatsby and was submitting it for publication. I completely agree with the editor's opinion:

I think the novel is a wonder. I'm taking it home to read again and shall then write my impressions in full;—but it has vitality to an extraordinary degree, and glamour, and a great deal of underlying thought of unusual quality. It has a kind of mystic atmosphere at times that you infused into parts of "Paradise" and have not since used. It is a marvelous fusion, into a unity of presentation, of the extraordinary incongruities of life today. And as for sheer writing, it's astonishing.... (read more)

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Where better to read writing like Fitzgerald's than in a library that rivals its beauty? Last month, The Art of Manliness featured "The Libraries, Studies, and Writing Rooms of 15 Famous Men." Here are two of my favorites:

Rudyard Kipling's Study

William Randolph Hearst's "Gothic Study"

Why Romance Is a Modern Phenomenon

Many people like to read the opening chapters of the Iliad as if it were a romance. Achilles falls in love with his war bride Briseis and is heartbroken when Agamemnon takes her from him. But, as my college literature professor pointed out, the text shows that Achilles is heartbroken about something else entirely. He's heartbroken because Agamemnon has made him look bad. The loss of Briseis is nothing compared to his own loss of face before his fellow Greeks.

The ancient world was obsessed with glory and the importance of being remembered by posterity. "My fame will be secure to all my sons," is the constant refrain spoken by Gilgamesh, one of the great heroes of Mesopotamia. But in our culture--where romantic love is celebrated in nearly every song, book, and movie--such a worldview is entirely alien. One has only to look at the 2004 film Troy starring Brad Pitt to see how the ideal of romantic love has been foisted on the ancient epic. Either the screenwriters were oblivious to the worldview of Homer's contemporaries or they recognized it and "fixed" it so that the story would appeal to moderns.

Katharina Von Bora
(Martin Luther's wife)

How did we get from here to there? When did romance become so important? A couple years ago I heard Rich Bledsoe give some lectures, and in one of his tangents he mentioned that the Reformation was instrumental in developing the idea of romantic love between husband and wife. Before that, marriage was seen as much more of a "business".

The Reformation put marriage at the center. I suspect that Luther’s marriage to Katie is one of the most important and central relationships in the history of the world. Beyond Luther and the Reformational emphasis on the centrality of marriage, C.S. Lewis makes the case that it was the Puritans who virtually “invented” or made normal the very idea of “companionate marriage.” Indeed, the affection and love between husband and wife in Puritan and Reformed households was quite remarkable. Jonathan Edwards' famous marriage is only one outstanding example.

Martin Luther

Bledsoe's assertion is one that I would like to explore further someday. The chivalric romances of the Middle Ages definitely placed importance on the love between a man and a woman, but most of the relationships sung by the troubadours tended to be outside marriage and adulterous in nature. The pages of nearly every novel set during the Middle Ages dwell upon the fact that marriage of that time period was generally not undertaken for the sake of love. Yet nowadays, it would be hard to find two people who married for some reason other than love.

Was it indeed the Reformation that began to normalize romantic love between husband and wife? When Martin Luther rescued his future wife from a convent in a fish barrel, was he beginning the great romance that would change the modern world forever?

Christmas in July?--My Amazon Wish List

My birthday is not coming up soon, and it's a long way off till Christmas. But, nevertheless, my Amazon Wish List is still stuffed to the gills. And yes, *sigh* most of the items on the list are on the expensive side. If they were cheaper, I would have bought them already.


If you ignore the cookie press, the serving platters, and the white tablecloth, what you see on my Wish List are books--books that I'd like to research my various writing projects. Some of them are for my current WIP, Flower of the Desert: Book II of the Chronicles of Tancred.


The book that's been on there the longest is Jerusalem Delivered, a sixteenth century Italian epic that tells a very romanticized version of the First Crusade. Tancred plays a good-sized role in the epic, along with Clorinda and Erminia, two Muslim princesses who form a love triangle with our doughty hero. I've been able to access a free Kindle version of this book, but the translation of that one leaves something to be desired, and it's not as easy to flip through as an actual paper copy.


Another book needed for researching Flower of the Desert is The History of the Seljuq Turks. This is a translation of a twelfth century Turkish historian that chronicles the reigns of all the Seljuk sultans. I currently have this book out on interlibrary loan, but it's due back in a week and I'm far from finished with it. It would be a hassle to go down the library to renew it, but it may be easier than scraping together $190 to purchase the book.


The next book on the list is more for curiosity's sake than for research. The First Crusade: The Call from the East is a new book by historian Peter Frankopan. From what I've heard, Frankopan argues that Emperor Alexios had a far greater role in the First Crusade than is traditionally acknowledged. Although it's too late to change anything in Road from the West, I'm interested to see how Frankopan portrays Alexios and his appeal to the West for help.

It's hard to stay focused on one period of history when there are so many interesting eras to be studied. One person who has always piqued my interest is James Stewart, the Earl of Moray, half-brother of Mary, Queen of Scots. James turned Protestant under the tutelage of John Knox, but because of his illegitimate birth was unable to claim the crown of Scotland. There's not much information on the man, but this book, James Stewart, Earl of Moray: A Political Study of the Reformation in Scotland, looks like a good--albeit expensive--source for more study.


The book that first introduced me to the Earl of Moray was James I: The Fool as King, by Otto Scott. The Earl of Moray, who became the regent of Scotland after Mary's imprisonment, plays an important part in the early life of James I. The copy I read as a teenager is still sitting on my mother's bookshelf. I'd like to have my own--especially if I write a novel about the Earl of Moray, as I plan to in the far off future.

What books do you have on your Amazon Wish List? Are you waiting for someone to buy them for you for a birthday or for Christmas, or is your Wish List more of a shopping list of books you'll eventually buy for yourself?