From my Fantasy Writing Desk:
An Interview
A fellow writer of fiction set in the ancient world, Elisabeth Storrs, featured me on her blog this week. I talked about the connections between “real” ancient history & my fantasy writing, the search for just the right word & the art that inspires me (hint: I use it as my logo).
Elisabeth’s books, set among the Etruscans, are first-rate immersion into an exotic part of the ancient world usually left out by fiction writers.
A Conversation
Lesa Holstine, the author of the Poisoned Pen Bookstore’s blog, has featured my upcoming book launch for Priestess of Ishana, Feb 24, 2-3 pm. The Poisoned Pen’s Pat King will host a conversation with Judith Starkston and Beth Cato. I’m looking forward to this event and I hope you’ll join me. The address: 4014 N Goldwater Blvd #101, Scottsdale, AZ 85251 USA
Here’s what I said to Lesa about the book: “The world-building in Priestess is inspired by the Bronze Age Hittite Empire, a lost culture that works well for epic fantasy with its combination of international intrigue, military dominance, and beliefs in magical rites and supernatural powers. The priestess of the title is based on a remarkable queen who ruled for decades but has been largely forgotten. These days, women in leadership seems like a good topic for exploration in fiction. So, politics, magic, and a dead body to sort out while exposing an empire-wrecking conspiracy, all on the shoulders of one young woman who must navigate in a patriarchal world.”
Click here for the Poisoned Pen Blog’s “Judith Starkston in Conversation”
Archaeology I enjoyed:
What an archaeologist learned from medieval sewage
We’ve been taught to think of Medieval cities as dirty, smelly places with chamber pot contents flung out windows onto unwary walkers below. A Dutch archaeologist shows that is not quite the truth.
She’s studying medieval sewers and cesspits in Leiden (isn’t archaeology glamorous?), and undoing some misconceptions brought to us by the Victorians.
In early medieval period, a highly organized system of waste removal by “nightmen” from household cesspits kept Leiden and other cities clean of human waste. The regulations regarding this job were intricate and highly monitored.
Then big business stepped in. Textile barons insisted that sewage pipes carry away waste and dump it into the canals. Far cheaper than hiring the nightmen to do it. (And here we have the “technological” sounding solution, seemingly the step forward—sewage pipes!) But, of course, it left the waste in the canals inside the city. And diseases followed fast.
But not in the cities of beer brewers, who had the clean water issue sorted out and refused to abandon the old system of individual household cesspits. No disease in their cities. Doesn’t this echo our current pollution crises?
What we could apply from history if we just paid attention. Of course, the stench involved in some of this archaeologist’s work sites is a significant downside of gathering in the lessons.
Click here for Archaeology Magazine “Letter from Leiden, Of cesspits and sewers”