Weekly Roundup of History, Archaeology and Writing Wisdom Dec 8-14
Around the web this week: Doggy humor, HF author news fr James Rollins, Rebecca Cantrell, Jess Steven Hughes, Shona Patel, Odysseus’s journey & why historical fiction matters.
Judith Starkston has spent too much time exploring the remains of the ancient worlds of the Greeks and Hittites. Their myths and clashes inspire her fiction and open gates to magical realms. She has degrees in Classics from the University of California, Santa Cruz and Cornell. She loves myths and telling stories, and her novels imbue fantasy with the richness of ancient worlds. The first book in her Trojan Threads Series, Hand of Fire was a semi-finalist for the M.M. Bennett’s Award for Historical Fiction. Priestess of Ishana, the first in her historical fantasy Tesha series, won the San Diego State University Conference Choice Award. Judith is represented by Richard Curtis.
Around the web this week: Doggy humor, HF author news fr James Rollins, Rebecca Cantrell, Jess Steven Hughes, Shona Patel, Odysseus’s journey & why historical fiction matters.
My finds on the web: Gate to the underworld found, history makes you happy and Pompeii is tumbling from corruption.
“Intimacy amidst the giants”– Stephanie Dray’s novel about Selene, Cleopatra’s daughter, set during the Augustan Age, ranges between Rome and the kingdom of Mauretania in northern Africa. My review published in the New York Journal of Books.
My “Meet the Contributor” post is up on Unusual Historicals.
E.L. Doctorow, Bloody Mary, Egyptian love story on a tomb, blogging medievally, getting it together with Scrivener, “Selfie” word of the year?!
Priscilla Royal’s latest mystery finds Prioress Eleanor and Brother Thomas on a pilgrimage to Walsingham to mend Eleanor’s troubled soul. Royal takes on the notion of self-righteous religiosity that’s used to cover personal failings and sins. She also deals with a more subtle theme that she’s explored before—how to live true to oneself when who you are is rejected by your world.
Medicinal plants and Bronze Age medicine.
Mummies, hemlock & other poisons, ancient libraries, tracking folktale origins and an excellent WWI book by Elizabeth Speller. Everything that caught my interest on the web this week.
At age fifteen in 1002, Emma came from Normandy to marry the much older King Aethelred. Bracewell brings back to life this often forgotten English queen through Viking invasions and jealous rivalries.
Here’s what I found interesting this week–a varied assortment from good historical fiction reading to foodie history to writing advice to archaeology, and a bit of humor thrown in.