Linkgasm of Fun

...sounds naughty, doesn't it?

It's been a while since I posted a linkgasm, and in keeping with my recent week of vacation, here are some fun websites.

Paula's Art and Illustration includes links to a large number of Flickr groups for vintage photos and illustrations.

Old Time Candy from the 1950s on. I haven't yet ordered anything from them, but I have been tempted. It could be research.

Radio Guy. Just go look at all his pictures of cool vintage scientific equipment and masks and automobiles and, yes, radios.

Cool Tools. A blog, about exactly what it says.

Accents and Dialects of the UK has sound recordings of various United Kingdom dialects, some recent and some older.

Prose Architecture and Experimentation

Back when I wrote a lot more short stories, I used to use each one as an opportunity for experimentation. This was partly because I feel experimentation is one of the best ways to improve your writing, and partly so I wouldn't get bored.

I experimented with different aspects of craft and character. I wrote a story in first-person. I wrote stories in second-person present tense. I tried out a light-hearted, slangy character voice; I tried a dark, despairing character voice; I tried sounding like a fairy tale and I tried sounding like myth. This post isn't really about whether I was successful or not. This post is more about what you need before you can experiment.

I looked back at some of those stories recently, and realized I wouldn't have been able to write them if I'd tried to do so when, say, I was in college. At that point, I just didn't have the chops. If you don't have the basics of prose down cold, and have not yet found your own voice, it's a lot harder to experiment. I think, once I started to sell those short experimental pieces, that I was ready for them, and it showed.

You can experiment as a beginner, and I think it's good to do so, but I think it's a lot harder to sell those experiments when you're still getting control of your prose. I think, to make a style experiment salable, it needs to have some substance besides the experimental aspect. You have to be a good enough writer to play with more than one aspect of craft at a time. You have to be able to keep the basic architecture of your building from falling down while you layer on the gargoyles and little curlicues.

At least, that's what I think right now. Doubtless a few years from now, after (hopefully) I've reached a new level in my writing, I'll have yet another opinion.

One of the most useful blog posts I've seen this week:
Why you should blog to build your writing career even if you don't think you need to by Justine Musk.

Pirate Linkgasm

Before I wrote The Duke and the Pirate Queen, I didn't realize quite how many websites existed about pirates, especially pirates from the 1600s through around 1720, particularly in the Caribbean. That's the most common idea most people have of pirates, based on movies and novels such as Treasure Island.

Because I was writing a fantasy, I was able to use a mixture of ideas about "classic" pirates mingled with elements from nineteenth-century naval adventure novels and books about the pirates of Japan. In the course of all that, I found some fun websites.

The Port Royal Archives, which includes research papers, maps, and other documents.

The Queen Anne's Revenge Archaeological Project.

Maritime Museum of the Atlantic in Nova Scotia.

No Quarter Given, the website of a pirate magazine.

The New St. Augustine Pirate & Treasure Museum is set to open in November, 2010.

Music Linkgasm

And now for something completely different!

I thought I'd share a few of my favorite MP3 music blogs. It was hard, but I limited myself to five.

1. The Hype Machine is a blog aggregator - it's a great place to find links to a huge range of music blogs.

2. Motel de Moka has long been one of my favorite music blogs. Posts are organized into playlists, usually by mood or theme. The bloggers choose from a huge range of genres, including rhythm and blues, jazz, pop, ambient, indie, world music, and classical. I love that you're never sure what you're going to get in the next post.

3. The Hood Internet is a lot of fun. It's a blog of mashups, and sometimes of mixes. Amusing mashup photos of the two artists illustrate the posts.

4. I like Said the Gramophone for the stream-of-consciousness narratives that accompany the downloads.

5. Cover Lay Down is one of my favorite blogs ever. It features folk musicians covering, usually, pop or rock songs. I love hearing different interpretations of songs, and since the blogger often groups covers by original artist, it can be a really interesting experience to listen to all the different ways one artist's songs can sound. (Sometimes, the covers are all performed by a single artist, which is also fun.) I find a lot of interesting new-to-me folk artists here.

Let me know if you enjoyed these links, and I can do another post later on.

Contemporary Historical Resources Linkgasm

Here are a few links I've found useful in my historical research. These are all collections/archives of contemporary materials. Contemporary to historical periods, I mean.

Old Magazine Articles, edited by Matt Jacobsen. "OldMagazineArticles.com is a Los Angeles-based website; privately owned and operated, it is the effort of one old magazine enthusiast in particular who believes deeply that today's readers of history can learn a good deal from the old periodicals. It is a primary source website and is designed to serve as a reference for students, educators, authors, researchers, dabblers, dilettantes, hacks and the merely curious."

The Home Economics Archive at Cornell University contains full-text articles and books from 1800-1999.

The Life Magazine photo archive, covering from the 1860s through the 1970s.

The Early 1900s in Color. This was a blog post at Citynoise.org that features a collection of color photographs from around the world.

Readercon Linkgasm

For those who are interested, I've been collecting some links to reports on Readercon, which took place July 8-11, 2010. These are in no particular order, but grouped by topic. There are lots more than this. I recommend checking out Icerocket's Blog Search if you want more and have a few days to read.

General Reports and Comments

First, My summary report.

Rose Fox's report. Gwynne Garfinkle on her first Readerson; and reports from Barbara Krasnoff and Inanna Arthen and K.A. Laity and Matthew Kressel.

Greer Gilman on some joys of Readercon, and Michael Swanwick shares the coolest thing he saw at Readercon.

The best panel quotes from Readercon, and more quotes, collected by Caitlín R. Kiernan. Beth Bernobich offers possibly the best quote of the con when she reports on "The Closet Door Dilated" panel.

Reports on Specific Panels and Talks

Andrea Hairston on "Sexuality and Gender in Contemporary F&SF."

Kate Nepveu reports on "Fanfic as Criticism".

Andrew Liptak on "New England, At Home to the Unheimlich” panel.

Cecilia Tan's report on Alternatives to the Pay Per Copy System of Author Compensation.

Nora Jemisin on Brainstorming Immersive Inclusive Worlds.

Kestrell Verlager posted her talk on "What Writers Still Get Wrong About Blindness" in three parts as well as some panel notes.

Critic Graham Sleight's talk on And so.... "... it's remarkable that, in certain contexts, we put discrete entities like shots in a movie together into narrative. I think it's even more interesting when you consider sentences in a prose narrative."

Stacey Mason on the Non-Western Fantasy panel.

DXMachina reports on a number of panels.

Report on the Shirley Jackson Awards for horror.

Photographs

Ellen Datlow's photographs and Scott Edelman's photographs and Tempest Bradford's photos of attendees making sad faces.

I'm a guest later this week at the Novelists, Inc. blog. I'll have a direct link on Friday the 23rd, the date of the post.

Linkgasm of Writerly Business

It's been a while since I had a Linkgasm! Today's is concerned with the business side of writing.

io9 on "5 Ways The Google Book Settlement Will Change The Future of Reading."

Kristine Kathryn Rusch, who's written in a range of genres, has created an in-depth Freelancer's Survival Guide that all writers, full-time or not, ought to visit and browse.

Courtney Milan, romance author, crafted a program to generate bookstore links for a range of online vendors.

Looking for new ways to publicize your blog posts? Why not participate in a Blog Carnival?

Associated Content allows you to: "create original content (articles, videos, images or audio) on any topic you choose...earn money every time your content is viewed...establish your expertise by applying to our Featured Contributor program." A friend of mine has been writing restaurant and concert reviews for AC for a little over a month, and recommended the site to me.

Finally, just in case you've never tried Icerocket, it's a useful search engine for blogs and for Twitter, sometimes catching items that Google does not.

Non-European Vampire Linkgasm

In keeping with my run of guest posts on vampires, this is a special edition of Linkgasm focusing on our bloodsucking (and lifesucking) friends outside of Europe.

Vikram and the Vampire, translated by Richard R. Burton (1870). More about the Baital Pachisi. A more academic essay on the Baital Pachisi.

Article about Chinese vampire movies, "Horror, Humor and Hopping in Hong Kong," by Ian Whitney.

Vampire Anime Wiki.

The pontianak and the langsuir, from Malaysian and Indonesian folklore.

From the Carribean, the soucouyant.

Bonus vampire movie links!
Vampire Movie Database, with brief summary information. Searchable. Everything from Vampire Vixens to Sodium Babies.

The Top 70 Vampire Movies of All Time at Snarkerati.

Bonus vampire book review link!

Dead Sexy by Kimberly Raye at Read React Review.

Related Post:
Werewolves All Over The World.

Wordles for my novels!

I made some Wordles. Actually, I did this before, but I didn't save them. Click to see a larger version - you'll be sent to the main site. It's an application that transforms a large chunk of text (in this case, a novel) into a cluster of the most common words. Larger words appear more often in the text. You can then play with the layout to some extent, mainly the orientation of the words, the overall shape of the cloud, and the colors.

Researching WWI Uniforms - Linkgasm #5

Even if you don't have a library of World War One books, there are a number of useful websites that provide information about uniforms in that era. Here are some of the ones I've found useful.

The Sutlers Stores produces replica uniforms for museum display and docent use. Note the "grayback" shirt which I mentioned in The Moonlight Mistress.

Reenactor.net has a WWI section. It's not only useful for the information it provides, but as a gateway to making research contacts, if you should want to know what it's like to wear the uniforms. I love their Morsels of Authenticity, short articles about small details, like German underwear.

Military Headgear at Wilson History and Research Center.

I continue to recommend Osprey Publishing, particularly the "Men at Arms" series books, which feature detailed drawings of uniforms and equipment for a wide range of armies and time periods.

Digger History provides a long list of uniform photos and drawings from World War One and other periods, from all over the world. For example, infantry puttees.

For more idea-sparking material, you can search on WWI at Old Magazine Articles, if you're willing to spend a little time reading. For example, this Vanity Fair article on American uniforms for the well-dressed, October 1918. Their home page.

American Memory Film Collection

American Memory Film Collection at the Library of Congress.

Click on the title of the topic that interests you, then click on "List the Film Titles" for the individual film. That link will give you a choice of mpeg, rm, or QuickTime for most of the films. Which you can then watch. (Some of the topics are less straightforward, and you have to hunt a little for the list of available films.)

The coolness brings me near to weeping. These are real people I'm looking at, and it's a lot easier to realize that from film than from photographs.

These are mostly nonfiction films, out of copyright, very short. It's like magic. Like looking through a time machine.

You can also listen to some audio recordings. Ever wondered what Theodore Roosevelt's voice sounded like?

How to Write - Linkgasm #4

I visited Lauren Dane's blog yesterday for Writerly Wednesday, to talk about Dialog Tricks.

Also, Great War Fiction, one of my favorite blogs, reviewed The Moonlight Mistress yesterday! Here's the link. It's so cool to be meandering about, reading your usual blog feeds, and something like this pops up.

But enough about me.

The Magic Treehouse Writing Lessons. No, really. Have a look. Especially if you're stuck on something.

A really great post on Craft, Story, and Voice by Rachelle Gardner.

How to write a novel in 100 days or less, by John Coyne. It's a day-by-day guide with some excellent advice which bears repeating.

Anita Burgh has a lot of good, direct advice.

I don't think I'm organized enough to use the snowflake method of writing a novel, but it's an interesting approach.

If you've never read The Turkey City Lexicon, why not? It's not just applicable to writing science fiction.

An Insider's Guide to Writing for Mills and Boon in The Guardian.

History by Decades gives brief information about (mostly European) history, by decade, from 1650-2000. It's more a useful source to spark further research.

And just for fun, the Hollywood Plot-O-Matic.

The photograph is of Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.

How Publishing Works, via Charles Stross

I don't usually post a set of links from a single author, but in this case, I am, because I think these are excellent reference posts that go a long way to explaining common misconceptions to those who have not yet experienced the wonder and confusion and WTF that is print publishing.

Some very informative and useful posts by science fiction/fantasy Charles Stross about print publishing:

Common Misconceptions About Publishing, which talks about the hierarchies of publishing companies and companies that own publishing companies, and a bit about how all that works.

How Books Are Made. This post describes the process of turning a manuscript into a published book.

What Authors Sell to Publishers. Rights, and other legal matters, and why sometimes you can buy a book in one country but not in another.

Why Books Are the Length They Are, with some speculation on how electronic publishing might change that.

And one post speculating on the future of electronic publishing:
The Future of Web Publishing.

For Further Reading

This is a Post of Pimping. I really enjoy these blogs, to the point that I'm excited when there's a new post, and think some of you might like them, too.

Racy Romance Reviews. Great thoughtful reviews, and some wonderful discussions of romance novels from an ethics point of view.

Promantica. "After nearly a half-century of reading romances, I thought I'd write about them." And she does it really, really well.

Isn't It Romance. I enjoy reading her opinions on books, and her reading often overlaps with mine.

The Misadventures of Super Librarian. Source of many useful recommendations for category romances.

Two Nerdy History Girls - authors Loretta Chase and Susan Holloway Scott. "We talk about who’s wearing what and who’s sleeping with whom. We try to sort out rumor or myth from fact. We thought there must be at least three other people out there who think history’s fascinating and fun, too. This blog is for them."

Looking Backwards

I've been looking at the statistics for this blog, and selected some of the year's most-visited posts for your delectation.

My Favorite Girls Dressed As Boys - romance edition.

Nifty Stuff That Ought To Be In Romance Novels.

Normative Heterosexuality and the Alpha Male Fantasy.

Georgette Heyer Recommendations.

The Intricacies of Marriages of Convenience.

Online Promotion - Is It Worth It?

The Romance Formula Myth.

Erotic Journeys and Bodice Rippers.

Where's the Sexual Line in Shapeshifter Romance?

Writers Never Run Out of Blog Topics.

Edwardian/Belle Epoque Research Links

The Edwardian period in England officially lasted from 1901-1910 but is often extended through the end of World War One in 1918; another term, more applicable to the rest of the Europe, is La Belle Epoque, which stretches slightly longer. A great place to start reading about the period is the blog Edwardian Promenade. Be sure to check out the links.

Simple factual research is all well and good, but for story purposes, I think the little details are more important: what people wore, what they ate, what they did for fun.

Internet Archive on Great Britain, 1901-1910.
London Times Archive.
New York Times Archive, 1851-1980.

Victorian and Edwardian Photographs. This site has a huge range of photographic portraits that, to me, inspire a great many character ideas.

The Museum of Childhood has a section on Edwardian Lives from childhood on.

An enlightening article on womens' fashion 1900-1909. Check out fashions in clothing here, here, and here. A useful fashion links page.

This new site looks increadibly useful: East London Theatre Archive, which I found via Great War Fiction.

An overview of kitchens and cooking and some recipes. More recipes can be found here, divided by genre.

Neat information from World's Fairs, 1901-1910 at the National Fairground Archive, that I've always thought would make an original background for a novel.

Finally, though the design is cluttered, this site gives lyrics and/or sheet music and listenable links to a number of period music-hall tunes. For classical music of the period (and others), some available for download, visit the music library at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

And for fun as well as research, Suffrage on Stage. "Woman suffrage is the reform against nature. Look at these ladies sitting on the platform. Observe their physical inability, their mental disability, their spiritual instability and general debility! Could they walk up to the ballot box, mark a ballot, and drop it in? Obviously not. Let us grant for the sake of argument that they could mark a ballot. But could they drop it in? Ah, no. All nature is against it. The laws of man cry out against it. The voice of God cries out against it--and so do I."
--Marie Jenney Howe, "An Anti-Suffrage Monologue"

Related posts:

Basic Historical Research Online.

Historical Detail in Fiction.

Synergy in Writing and Research.

Real People as Fiction - Linkgasm #3

Timmi Duchamp on representing history in fiction, particularly using real historical personages in fiction. Here's Part Two.

Are novelists entitled to use real-world characters? by Guy Gavriel Kay, an essay for The Guardian that's linked from the above post.

This also brings to mind Real Person Fiction, which is not at all a new practice - for example, the Brontë juvenalia includes historical figures and variations thereof.

How about Reverse Historical Fiction? (via Creating Van Gogh) "[Shumaker]'s story is an epistolary one in which a literature professor describes the troubled history of a (deceased) colleague's doctoral dissertation, one that the colleague was forced to drop. The long and short of it is that while a graduate student, this man discovered that Huckleberry Finn was no fictitious character but a real person who wrote down his life story and gave it to Samuel Clemens, merely hoping for assistance in getting the memoir published."

And these sound interesting as well: The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Bronte and The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen by Syrie James.

I haven't read either of those books yet, so here's a review of The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Bronte at the BronteBlog. Review of The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen at Bookstack.

Here's another interesting post: Redefining Historical Fiction, Amazon-style at Reading the Past.

Then there're cartoon characters of a real person that take on a life of their own, in this post from Henry Jenkins, back in April 2008: My Life as a Cartoon Character.

Sometimes, the details of reality just won't work, no matter how hard you try. 2D Goggles: The Style Edition.

And on a completely different note, How Being a Theater Geek Improved My Writing by Barbara Barnett.


Linkgasm 1.

Linkgasm 2.

Spooky Book Recommendations

In honor of Halloween, I offer recommendations of creepy, scary, horrifying fiction.

The Bloody Chamber, a collection of short stories by Angela Carter, all explicitly based on fairy tales. Warning: these stories are not for the squeamish! Really, they're not. At all. But they're powerfully written and well worth rereading and pondering.

Cherie Priest is a contemporary author often placed in the Southern Gothic subgenre. Her first novel is Four and Twenty Blackbirds. Here's an interesting review of it from a Bulgarian blogger at Temple Library Reviews. "Perhaps the biggest strength here at play is the writing itself, since the author possesses this quality about her prose that entrances the reader and erases all perception of time."

The Haunting of Hill House or We Have Always Lived in the Castle are classics of New England Gothic by Shirley Jackson. Did you ever have to read her creepy short story The Lottery (direct link to story) in this collection in school? That story creeps me out to this day, and has kept me awake at night, thinking. I've often wondered if it would be good for a compare and contrast with Ursula LeGuin's The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas. (Link leads to a PDF of the story.)

Children of the Night by Dan Simmons is one of the most interesting vampire novels I've ever read. The setting is roughly contemporary, with a science fictional approach to vampirism. It's not scary, exactly...or rather, the scary feels more like real-world scary. It reads like a mainstream book that happens to have vampires.

A book I loved as a kid is Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury - the movie made from it introduced me to actor Jonathan Pryce for the first time, in the role of Mr. Dark. I love Bradbury's style.

Brrrrrr.

Linkgasm #2

A Writing Revolution at Seedmagazine.com. "Nearly everyone reads. Soon, nearly everyone will publish."

That's not a new idea. "Consumers" who write have been around for a long, long time. I was reminded immediately of The Organization for Transformative Works. And Henry Jenkins' Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide as well as Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers: Media Consumers in a Digital Age, published in 2006.

I was recently looking for an online newspaper article, and found useful link amalgamation sites: Online Newspapers (U.S.) listed by state, and HomeTown Free Press, which features links to newspapers worldwide.

LibriVox "provides free audiobooks from the public domain" by volunteer readers (sometimes a single book might feature multiple readers). They're also looking for volunteers!

Finally, Cybereditions "publishes quality non-fiction books as ebooks online or as print-on-demand paperbacks available through bookshops or online suppliers, including Barnes&Noble and Amazon. As an independent publisher, we specialise in academic works or new editions of out-of-print works updated with new introductions, supplementary chapters and revised bibliographies. We welcome submissions by authors."

Related post: The Desire to Publish.

Linkgasm 1.

The Basics - Historical Research Links

I usually prefer researching through physical books - I just like to carry them around. But the Internet is a wonderful resource, especially if you don't feel like trekking out to a library.

The Internet Public Library is always a great starting point. "The IPL is many things: 1) the first public library of and for the Internet community; 2) an experiment, trying to discover and promote the most effective roles and contributions of librarians to the Internet and vice versa; and 3) a group of highly talented, creative, strong-willed people, working hard."

If you do want a physical book, for instance if you can't find what you need online, WorldCat can find library books for you, both locally and internationally. "You can search for popular books, music CDs and videos - all of the physical items you're used to getting from libraries. You can also discover many new kinds of digital content, such as downloadable audiobooks. You may also find article citations with links to their full text; authoritative research materials, such as documents and photos of local or historic significance; and digital versions of rare items that aren't available to the public. Because WorldCat libraries serve diverse communities in dozens of countries, resources are available in many languages."

This site is amazing: The David Rumsey Map Collection. "The David Rumsey Collection...focuses primarily on cartography of the Americas from the 18th and 19th centuries, but also has maps of the World, Asia, Africa, Europe, and Oceania. The collection includes atlases, globes, school geographies, books, maritime charts, and a variety of separate maps, including pocket, wall, children's and manuscript."

Eyewitness to History offers a vast selection of first-person accounts of historical events, some written, some audio. There's also a selection of historical film clips. I often find this sort of information more useful than anything else when I'm looking for ideas for fiction.

Finally, the Historical Text Archive "publishes high quality articles, books, essays, documents, historical photos, and links, screened for content, for a broad range of historical subjects." Their Links Page, organized by geographical area or topic, is incredibly helpful in locating further internet resources.

Have any suggestions for me?

Eliza Tucker's post at Unusual Historicals on some of her favorite 19th and 20th century research websites was an inpiration for this post.

Related posts:

Synergy in Writing and Research.

Historical Detail in Fiction.

The Research Book Dilemma.