I’ve been talking about medieval myths for some time now, that is, those tired saws that many people believe about the Middle Ages. And they keep showing up, even on Bluesky. Two of my personal favorites have got to be chastity belts and iron maidens. Though they sound like something that would go together, trust … Read more
A late Victorian/early Edwardian newspaper with female reporters. “A lady journalist, it is reported, has been informing an interviewer, that she makes by her profession, and by working no more than an hour and a half everyday, the very respectable income of a thousand pounds a year…a thousand pounds a year! Hark! Do you hear? … Read more
A lot of folks don’t know about this, that it was a real railway system that ran from 1854 to 1941. Necropolis, by the way, is translated as “City of the Dead”. And indeed, this is what it was. No one in the Middle Ages could have imagined that London — the second biggest city … Read more
Back in the days before I was published and I was trying to peddle my own brand of medieval mysteries to agents, I came upon an astonishing bias. One agent rejected my manuscript because she couldn’t get past the notion that my protagonist would be intimate with someone with all that “lack of hygiene.” She … Read more
Do you know what I like about researching the late Victorian period for my An Irregular Detective Mystery series, my Sherlockian pastiche? It’s the stuff I can come across easily in antique shops, things that I can touch. Things that I can buy. And one of the most ubiquitous items that most people don’t even … Read more
As I was researching my King’s Fool Mystery series, where Henry VIII’s real court jester Will Somers is the reluctant sleuth, I couldn’t help but notice some parallels with what was happening today. My series focuses on Will Somers and is told through his eyes, so there may be a little softening of the view … Read more
In the third of my King’s Fool Mystery series, REBELLIOUS GRACE, Will Somers, Henry VIII’s real court jester, finds himself called upon to use his skills to solve murders during Jane Seymour’s reign. But this was my conceit, because solving murders is not something that a jester ever would have done. So what do jesters … Read more
It’s Valentine’s Day, and though it has become a secular holiday in the most banal of ways, let us not forget that its roots are in the Catholic calendar of the communion of saints. It is the feast day of Saint Valentine, though which Saint Valentine exactly are we talking about is the big question. … Read more