Be vewy quiet; I'm adding geeky detail!

There are various schools of thought about adding historical detail to fiction. Sometimes you want more detail, sometimes less; partly, that depends on the book's genre. For example, in a Tom Clancy novel such as The Hunt for Red October, there is a lot--a lot--of detail about nuclear submarines. But if you're reading that book, it's likely that one of the reasons is because of all that lovely, crunchy technical detail.

Historical novels need historical detail. But how about historical erotica? How much historical detail does there need to be?

drumroll

There should be as much historical detail as I want. And the geekier, the better.

If the details I choose to include are not what the reader expects, that's all to the good. Those details will stick better for being unusual. (cf. the picture of a horse wearing a gas mask.) And because they stick in the reader's mind, they're more useful for building up a picture of the time period, and also a picture that feels deeper and richer than whatever generalized ideas the reader might have had. (What does World War One mean to you? Trenches? There was fighting in the mountains of Italy, as well. And in Africa.) I feel anything that brings the reader more completely into the story is a good thing.

The more geeky the detail, the more that detail feels specific. Specificity is important; the more specific, the more vivid and immediate the image becomes in the reader's mind. You can say, there were birds. Or you can say, she remembered the poignant cries of bitterns and the song of reed-warblers, and the occasional slow dignified silent soaring of a heron towards the far horizon.

The more specific the detail, the less often you have to use detail, and the more subtly you can use it.

Related Posts:

Historical Detail in Fiction.

Research: When to Stop.

Steampunk Research Books

I've begun basic research on the history of the American West for a western steampunk novel. My book isn't going to be a historical, but I want it to be informed by history and in dialogue with history.

I chose Frontiers: A Short History of the American West as my basic overview book.

The Encyclopedia of North American Indians: Native American History, Culture, and Life From Paleo-Indians to the Present was recommended by Debbie Reese at her blog, American Indians in Children's Literature.

Peoples of Color in the American West is a textbook and has a lot of material that's more modern than I need, but I think it will be a good guide to further resources.

I chose The Comanche Empire partly just because I wanted to read it!

Check out its awesome reviews. "In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, at the high tide of imperial struggles in North America, an indigenous empire rose to dominate the fiercely contested lands of the American Southwest, the southern Great Plains, and northern Mexico. This powerful empire, built by the Comanche Indians, eclipsed its various European rivals in military prowess, political prestige, economic power, commercial reach, and cultural influence. Yet, until now, the Comanche empire has gone unrecognized in historical accounts." So far, this book is just as incredibly cool as it sounds.

If you've got any more book suggestions for me, please comment!

Research - When to Stop

I actually stole this topic from a discussion I read...somewhere, a while back. The question was, "when do you stop researching?" I have two answers.

My first answer is never. You never stop researching because everything you read or look at might eventually find its way into your fiction. If you stop researching, I think your stories can grow stagnant.

My second answer is to stop when you have what you need for the story. It's very tempting to read every book you can find, watch every documentary series in its entirety, read a whole decade's worth of newspapers on microfiche. And you can do that, if you have infinite time available to you, or are a really, really fast reader. But for most writers' purposes, all that isn't necessary; research should be secondary to story, or else no one will want to read your novel. Though they might use it as a research source....

I think there's a difference between research for its own sake and research for the sake of fiction.

There are two facets to knowing when you've done enough. One is that there are things the writer needs to know that the reader doesn't need to see. I think of a lot of that as preliminary research: reading general books on the time period, making notes of possible items of interest.

After that, specificity is key. (Yeah, I know, I say that a lot.) When I'm writing about World War One, it helps me to know the political background of the countries in which the story is set, but the reader is more concerned with the lives of my original characters, and the details that are related to them. I think of it as a matter of focus.

Research what you're going to use, as much as you can; I skim through books, marking necessary details with post-it notes, or cut and paste from websites into a single document. I try not to research small items until I know for sure I'm going to include them in the story; instead, I keep a list of details I need to check, so I can search for all of them at once, perhaps on a day when I'm not writing.

I have to admit, I am constantly reining myself in. I buy research books related to a current project that I know for a fact I have no time to read until the novel is finished. I don't recommend it. Unless your apartment is bigger than mine.

Related posts:

Historical Detail in Fiction.

Reading for the Writer.

Synergy in Writing and Research.

The Research Book Dilemma.

WWI Wheels

French soldiers with a bicycle.


A bicycle ambulance.


Belgian soldiers on motorcycles.

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.

Women in WWI Picspam

Women served in many capacities during World War One.

Nurses.


VADs.


Drivers.



Radio Corps.


Fundraisers.


Factory Workers.

The 5th Seaforth Highlanders in the trenches

From The Great War Diaries of John Bruce Cairnie of the 5th Seaforth Highlanders, 1915, transcribed by James Bruce.

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06-Jul-15

A fine morning. Had to wait on after stand-to (3 a.m.) in case the Briggie comes along. Shaved, breakfasted and to bed. The redoubts were shelled while I slept and one high explosive landed just behind the parados beside the bomb supply. Fortunately they didn't explode. The can get a perfect enfilade on the redoubts so we are going to strengthen the traverses. I went up in the forenoon and underwent the next part of the bombardment which was not so trying as I expected. However the shells weren't coming within 50 yards but the splints sang and hummed overhead. I got one wee bit on the leg but only a scratch. It is shrapnel that plays the mischief as regards splinters.

At night again the fun started but Y got it worst. I don't know how they hadn't some casualties. Fortunately a lot of the shells didn't explode - duds. Later the Bosches started rapid fire, having spotted a work party of Argyles so we had a hot time, the bullets going cracking overhead. I wasn't excited, but it took some nerve to put my head above the parapet. The Argyles who were with us were a great asset. Donnie Morrison is a very useful and willing man. I'm glad to have him.

07-Jul-15

Stayed in Z Redoubt until after seven a.m. when I came down to HQ and got shaved. It was a pretty quiet day as far as the redoubts were concerned although they have been searching again for the sap head. In the afternoon there was fairly heavy bombardment of the rest of the line but no damage was done. Finlayson took over the redoubts at 8:30 p.m. and I moved my platoon down to the parapet opposite HQ. Am now fine and near the dug-out and more in the centre of things. Turned in at 11:30 p.m. so as to be able to relieve Finlayson at 3 a.m. I hear there was pretty heavy firing after I went to bed but never a thing did I hear.

08-Jul-15

Finlayson called me at 3 a.m. but as things were quiet I didn't get up till after 4. Went round the redoubts, shaved and had breakfast. Pte W Reid of my platoon was shot through the side while working behind the parapet. He died shortly afterwards. We thought at first it might have been an accident by a couple of Argyle snipers behind, but as another two bullets have come into same spot, I am pretty sure it is a German sniper. We hunted round behind for him unsuccessfully, but they are devilishly cunning.

Slept in the afternoon, censored some letters and went along the line to see Addie. I never feel as sad as when I see poor old Addie's face. I believe 'C' would put up a desperate fight but their spirit is clean gone at present.

Went out on reconnoitring patrol about 11 a.m. with Sgt J. Fraser and a man. Were out for at least an hour and a half but didn't see or hear anything. I was quite nervous and 'chattery' before going out but soon settled down once I was there. We got out a good bit. Went to bed at 1:20 a.m. The Germans have been sending over some big shells today and trench mortars. They are getting onto our new communication trench.

09-Jul-15

Wakened by Finlayson at 3 a.m. All quiet. Some trench mortars came over about breakfast time but did no damage. Lay in a ruined cottage for a couple of hours with my corporal to see if that sniper would come out, but no luck. Shells began to come over so we had to shift. Went out with Finnie and C. Serg. Major Miller and got some shell fuses belonging behind the lines.

Were relieved at 9:30 by incoming Brigade. Nasty jamb getting men in as they had far more than us. If the Germans had sent over some well aimed trench mortars they would have done tremendous execution but they were unaccountably quiet and probably being relieved themselves. Got down to the far end of Laventie without mishap although one bullet made the skin of my back creep. The men got tea and were led to their billets. Then we got to ours and had a grand supper with fried eggs, etc. in the Café Aux Voyageurs. Turned in at 1 p.m.

10-Jul-15

Breakfast about 8 a.m. - ham and eggs, sausages, tea, etc quite a good affair, with Steven D in attendance. Company parade at 11 a.m. for inspection by C.O. - rifles, bayonets, shaving, etc. The Colonel was unconsciously particular, as if men carried burnishers in their kit. Slept in the afternoon and wandered down town in the evening with little Willie. Rather colder today. A few shells falling not far away, watched apathetically by the remaining inhabitants from their door-steps.

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Non-White WWI Soldier Picspam

Today's post is picspam - these are all photos of soldiers from World War One. They weren't all white. Not by a longshot.

Picspam: Albert I, King of the Belgians

I have learned one very important thing during my recent World War One research. It is that Albert, King of the Belgians, was a total hottie. Particularly when he wore spectacles.

Also, he looked great in uniform, whether with helmet in this late photo

or kepi in this earlier one. Check out the differing details of the two uniforms.

His wife, Elisabeth, was pretty hot, too.

I love this picture.

Sometimes, research is more fun than you expect it to be.

Perfect Research Books Fall From the Sky

It is so satisfying with the perfect research material for a work-in-progress drops from the sky.

This blog is syndicated on Facebook, and after seeing one of my posts about World War One research, a Facebook friend recommended a couple of additional research books to me. One of them was already on my list, but the other wasn't, which gave me great joy.

French Women and the First World War: War Stories of the Home Front by Margaret H. Darrow will be a lovely complement to my other source on occupied Northern France; it looks at the war from a different angle which I can hopefully also incorporate into my novel. It's important to me to know something of how people of the time felt about the events they were experiencing, and since I don't have a time machine (alas!), research is the best method to help me feel my way inside the minds of the characters.

In Flanders Flooded Fields: Before Ypres There was Yser by Paul Van Pul didn't exactly fall from the sky - I searched it out myself. But after I'd made a note of it, I forgot I had it on my list! When I found the title again, weeks later, it certainly felt like the book had dropped out of the sky! It's from British specialty publisher Pen and Sword, which mostly focuses on military history; this book was translated from Dutch. Most scholarship on World War One skims over the Belgian Army's activities, so this in-depth book is a treasure for me. As a bonus, it reads very smoothly and has excellent explanatory maps.

You might wonder why I don't research from primary materials. Sometimes I do - memoirs, newspapers, etc.. But for the most part I would prefer to have a book, especially when I'm in the midst of writing the novel I'm researching. I am such a geek that even the slightest whiff of primary research can send me into ecstasies for weeks; I will emerge with beautiful urns full of the coolest information ever, but I will not have progressed on the actual writing of my novel.

I do, however, go to primary materials when I need details - how much did this cost in that year? What kind of hat was in style? The trick is escaping from the delicious black hole of research, and staying focused like a laser on what I need to know right now.

Roll Your Own - Anna Katherine Guest Post

Please welcome my guest, Anna Katherine!

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Roll Your Own

One of the biggest issues with writing any paranormal beastie is the need to bring something new to the table. With everybody writing about vampires these days, why should someone want to read about yours? Let's say you want to make your vampires stand out from the pack by being different from your everyday Count Dracula stereotype. Where do you start?

Well, there are lots of cultures out there with their own versions of vampires (one of my favorites is the Bulgarian vamp, which has only one nostril). You can add a lot of originality to your work by just exploring new (to you) folklore.

But what if you don't want to go the Western vamp route or the "borrowing from elsewhere" route? What if you want to make something all your own?

So let's say you want to make up something new and shiny. Problem number one with that is: If you make up something that has nothing in common with a vampire, what makes it a vampire? Why isn't it called a Thubmert?

(The secret answer to this is, there is no reason why you can't call something a vampire. "Vampire" is just a word we made up. Maybe in other universes, "vampires" are what people call post-it notes. You're an author; you can use whatever words you like. But authors don't write in a vacuum, and eventually you're going to have to do a major bit of hand-waving to get your reading audience to follow along with those sorts of shenanigans.)

Let's say that if you want to call something a vampire, you need some recognizable vampiric traits to build off on. Right off the top of my head, I can think of: Dead, drinks blood, pointy teeth, drive to create more vampires, can't go in sunlight, a stake through the heart kills them.

The next step is to twist these traits around -- make them mean different things, or take them a step further than tradition normally does. Some examples:

• This Dinosaur Comic makes an excellent example of the "taking extremes" method by categorizing most vampiric traits as just OCD, thereby letting people easily "deduce NEW vampire facts and weaknesses!"
  
  
• Stephanie Meyer's took the idea of "vampires can't go out in sunlight" and changed it from "because they burn!" to "because they sparkle and will reveal their true nature" -- while the sparkling thing is dopey, that's a pretty neat turn on the folklore. The basic fact stays the same, but the reason for it changes.
  
  
• Doctor Who's "Vampires in Venice" episode has vampires that don't really have pointy teeth, even though they appear to -- they're an illusion supplied by the human brain, to attempt to give some kind of warning of their being predators.
  
  
• Scott Westerfeld talks about the process of boiling down vampiric traits for his excellent vampire novel Peeps, taking on the sexual aspects as well as the unnerving reasons why vamps might want to create more vamps.
  
  
• And in my own book, Salt and Silver, vampires can suck blood... through their butterfly-like proboscis. When I first created these vamps, all the other demons in my world were insect-like, so I wanted to continue the theme. It wasn't until later that I discovered that Filipino folklore had butterfly-vampires. So I ran with it, and now, as I write the sequel (starring the vampires front-and-center), I'm trying to bring a little more juice to the creative processes. One of the driving principles of my worldbuilding is that to have a part of someone is to know them utterly. In the first book, true names were things to keep out of bad guys' hands -- but blood is just as much a part of someone as their name. So what does drinking blood do, if even a tiny sip can give you a world of knowledge?
  
  Ladies and gents: My vampires are academics.

Keeping vampires (or other mythological creatures) fresh -- but familiar -- is a tough row to hoe, but you'll be amazed by what you can come up with using a twist of thought and a little reductio ad absurdum logic. Have fun!

Note: I can't recommend enough the use of motif indexes for writing research (mine's the Stith Thompson Motif-Index of Folk-Literature, but others include Aarne's The Types of the Folktale and Uther's recent The Types of International Folktales). Vampires are tale type E251: "Vampire: Corpse which comes from grave at night and sucks blood", but there are a ton of little details and stories to follow up on in there.

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Thanks so much!

Wherefore the Poppy?

Decoration Day, renamed Memorial Day beginning in 1882, was first celebrated in the United States following the Civil War; it commemorates U.S. men and women who died while in the military. One of the most famous parts of Memorial Day, however, arose during World War One.

The practice of red poppies on Memorial Day originated in 1918 with Moina Michael, who was inspired by Canadian John McCrae's famous poem, "In Flanders Fields" (1915). The tradition spread from the United States to France via Anne Guerin, who poineered the selling of poppies, real or facsimile, as a way to raise money for various causes to benefit veterans and the victims of war. Through her advocacy, the sale of poppies for charitable causes spread to The United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand and Australia.

White poppies are sometimes worn in this context, and symbolize looking forward to peace, rather than back at sacrifice.

Gemma Files, "Everything Old is New Again" - Guest Post

Please welcome my guest, Gemma Files!

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Everything Old is New Again
By Gemma Files

Back when I was a kid, in much the same way that I would have been utterly startled to be told that even an incredibly mainstreamed version of Rap music would eventually occupy most slots on a computer-file equivalent of the Billboard Top 100, the idea that vampires would have become the go-to monster of the Milennium's turn would have amazed me beyond measure. And yet: Everywhere you look, these days, it’s a cornucopia of fangs--though usually coming firmly attached to a very specific type of vamp, ie the pale, sexy, mournful, conflicted kind so stringently popularized by books, movies and TV series like Twilight, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and True Blood.

Oh, every once in a while you get a throwback to the pre-Anne Rice tropes—-Steve Niles' 30 Days of Night graphic novel springs to mind, along with the movie it inspired. But in my chosen genre, the vampire--once a Horror mainstay--has become so much of a joke that when guidelines routinely warn against submitting anything featuring the "classic" monsters, vampires are assumed to go right up the very top of that list. Vampires, like werewolves (and, increasingly, fairies), have been relegated to the ever-expanding Paranormal Romance sub-genre, with categorical emphasis falling extra-heavy on the latter part of that compound, rather than the former.

So the question becomes not "Can one still write vampires and succeed?", because obviously, one can...but rather "Can one still write vampires which startle, discomfit, surprise, let alone scare?" Can one possibly keep the vampire fresh as both a monster and as a character, even now it's become so amazingly ubiquitous?

My thesis is that the best way to break free from the Bram Stoker/Anne Rice/Stephanie Meyer paradigm is by re-examining the roots of the legend--a creature neither dead nor alive, which subsists on something stolen from human beings, possibly conjured to explain the effects of various natural occurences and diseases--and simultaneously opening yourself up to alternate visions of "the vampire" from around the world: The Gaki of Japan, the Strix of Ancient Rome and the Bruxsa of Portugal, the Lamia of Ancient Greece, the Jiang Shih of China, the Baital of India, the Ekimmu of Ancient Mesopotamia, the Langsoir, Pontiannak, Polong, Pelesit and Penanggalen of Malaysia, the Civatateo of Mexico, the Obayifo of Africa and the Loogaroo of the Caribbean, etc.

What is it they take from us, and how do they take it? Maybe blood is too easy a substance, too intimate, to actually scare us anymore. In the Philippines, for example, the Aswang is a shapeshifter that delights in sucking unborn children straight out of their mothers' wombs using a long proboscis; ironically, an Aswang is often the result of a botched attack by another Aswang, which only succeeds in robbing the foetus of its humanity. But what if the vampire in question robs you instead of memory, or time, or ability--like the Leannan-Sidhe of Ireland, which inspires poets to do their best work while simultaneously sucking their life-force from them? And how are their table manners? The Ekimmu tears its prey apart, arriving and leaving through solid walls, while the work of the Lamia, Jiang Shih, and even the Strix or Obayifo can easily be mistaken for that of simple wasting diseases, tropical or otherwise—the same impulse which once conflated tuberculosis, or "consumption," with vampirism.

One way or the other, there's no mistaking any one of these alternate forms of vampirism for the pseudo-civilized, almost "expected" tropes of Sookie Stackhouse’s universe. Even something as apparently simple as the Bruxsa, a vampire-witch hybrid which seals its transition from human to monster by killing its own children, then becomes a type of night-flying bird like an owl or raven--think about the horrific impact of a woman sitting at her kitchen table whose head suddenly swerves ninety degrees, so she can confront the person sneaking up on her. Or the Langsoir, who also often travels in an owl's shape, whose beautiful black hair parts to reveal a "feeding mouth" on the back of her neck; in order to defeat her, her nails must be cut and stuffed into this same orifice. Sort of beats a stake all to hell for originality, doesn't it?

Each of these "new" types of vampire is actually A) not new at all and B) fairly easy to research, especially in the age of Google. So look around, and go to town; no one ever lost points for originality, that I know of. And the norm was made to deviate from...as all good vampires certainly know.

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Thanks, Gemma!

Gemma Files is an award-winning horror author who’s published two collections of short fiction and two chapbooks of poetry. Her first novel, A Book of Tongues: Volume One in the Hexslinger Series, is available from ChiZine Publications.

Occupied Lands in World War One

The novel I'm working on now, a sequel to The Moonlight Mistress, focuses on the main werewolf characters from that novel and their marriage of convenience. Tanneken, the female werewolf, was working as a spy in the previous novel, so I decided to make her activities central to the plot.

These are the books I've used so far. I recommend them all highly.

I mentioned Tammy Proctor's Female Intelligence: Women and Espionage in the First World War in an earlier post. I extensively used this book's bibliography to locate other sources, among them those listed below. The most useful thing I learned from it was how the underground spy networks in Belgium were organized, and some specific stories about women who worked in intelligence-gathering, and their fates.

Scraps of Paper: German Proclamations in Belgium and France reproduces actual posters and provides translations. Another of my books referenced this one, so I didn't need the material for the most part, but the coolness factor was important here. Primary source documents, or close equivalents, are great for giving me a feel for a period.

The Long Silence: Civilian Life under the German Occupation of Northern France, 1914-1918 is the most useful book I found. The author, Helen McPhail, points out that it's not a thorough academic study, but there was more than enough information for my purposes. I got a really good feel for what life was like in occupied Northern France, as well as the various problems and subterfuges of the people living there. I'm hoping the information in this book will help me to vividly describe the place and time without directly copying actual events.

Related Posts:
Synergy in Writing and Research

Research Books Whee!

What Does the Reader Need To Know?

Research is fun. Fun. Fun.

However, research for the writer's sake isn't always needed for the reader's sake. I get questions about this a lot.

The writer may need to know the mechanics of a specific task. For example, in 1901 in New Jersey, where does ice come from? How often does the ice man deliver? What does the heroine do with the ice after it's brought to her house? The reader, however, doesn't need every detail. The reader only needs what's relevant to the story.

If the key plot element is that the heroine is out of ice, the reader might need to know why (the ice man only delivers once every two weeks because the heroine's too poor to buy more, and the minister came to visit the day before the delivery). If the key plot element is needing ice to put on an injury, the reader might only need to know that the ice is kept in a box in the cellar, perhaps with some sawdust clinging to it to give the detail distinction.

Details are a good reason to research. When you're writing, it helps a lot to have details already in your mind, ready to slide into the story when needed: a woman in colonial America tested the temperature of her baking oven by how it felt against her hand; a dolphin's skin (and maybe that of a mermaid's tail) feels cool and rubbery; the smell of a fired musket lingers. The trick is not to include every detail.

It's usually better to explain less rather than more. Some things your reader will know already. To be really obvious, the reader knows that when it rains, things get wet. The writer doesn't need to tell them about cloud formation, weather prediction, and global warming. She only needs to let them know that Susie's clothing gets soaked and Joel offers to wrap her in his dry coat.

"Nation, Race, and Empire," George Robb

British Culture and the First World War by George Robb.

Chapter One, "Nation, Race, and Empire"
During WWI, "Nationalism attempted to focus conflict outward--against a German foe inevitably constructed as a degenerate, barbaric 'throwback'...As successful as such ideas were in garnering support for the war effort, they created problems of their own since 'the nation,' as defined, clearly could not accommodate the diverse citizenry of Britain itself, let alone its vast, diverse Empire," p. 5.

"For contemporaries, the Great War represented not merely a national, but a 'racial' struggle. After all, since the nineteenth century, the concepts of 'nation' and 'race' had bled into each other. Victorian anthropologists and ethnographers had formulated racial hierarchies which placed Europeans on a higher plane of evolutionary development than Asians or Africans, but within Europe itself there was further jockeying for position...The English, Germans, Irish...were all understood to be separate races unto themselves, who possessed innate mental qualities...that were carried in the blood and revealed in the lineaments of the face," p. 7.

"Britain's military and imperial competition with Germany was bound up with post-Darwinian anxieties of racial degeneration and 'the survival of the fittest'," p. 7.

"Eugenics, the psuedo-science of heredity and selective breeding, had gained tremendous influence among British intellectuals in the generation before the war. As such it lent a spurious scientific authority to racial and class hierarchies and reinforced social Darwinist notions of an inevitable struggle between the races...it is not surprising that British society became saturated with Germanophobia," p. 8.

"...the line between anti-German sentiment and hatred of all foreigners was easily erased," p. 9.

Against attacks on foreigners: see Westminster Gazette and Manchester Guardian. Inciting attacks: John Bull, East London Observer. Sympathetic to rioters against foreigners: Evening News, Daily Mail.

British colonies
"Unequal, even racist, treatment of imperial soldiers who fought and died for a British victory increased colonized people's resentment of the Empire. Likewise, Britain's authoritarian rule over its colonies proved difficult to reconcile with the claim that it was defending democracy and the rights of small nations like Belgium. The Empire called upon subject peoples to defend the institutions of their subjugation. That so many of them were willing to do so highlights the complexities of imperial relationships," p. 11.

p. 12
Germany pre-war population 68 million, fielded 13 million troops
Britain pre-war population 45 million, fielded 6 million troops; plus 1 million Indians; 500,000 Canadians; 300,000 Australians; 100,000 New Zealanders; 80,000 [white] South Africans. "In addition, hundreds of thousands of Indians, Africans, Chinese, and West Indians served in military labor units outside their nations."

"Germany, however, delighted in pointing out that the defender of Belgium was the oppressor of Ireland and India," p. 13.

p. 15 Extensive propaganda to promote idea of loyal colonists.

Dominions: Canada, Australia, etc.. Dependencies: India, African colonies, West Indies.

"The white colonial elite also opposed blacks joining the Army, fearing it would give them aspirations above their station and lead to the erosion of racial boundaries," p. 21. There was a segregated West Indian regiment.

By 1915 some 138,000 Indian soldiers on Western front--by end of 1915, withdrawn from France and relocated to Middle East, pp 22-23.

Irish rebellion, the Easter Rising, occurred during WWI.

"...imperial subjects who worked and fought for British victory were unlikely to simply resume their old 'subject' status once the war was over," p. 29. Postwar riots involving immigrants in Britain.

"Of course, colonized peoples hardly needed to take part in the war to experience racism, but their wartime service proved crucial in convincing many of them that no amount of devotion to their British governors would grant them the racial status apparently necessary for full citizenship in the Empire. Perhaps the war's greatest tragedy was its tendency to promote an exclusive concept of 'Britishness', narrowly defined along ethnic and racial lines, rahter than an inclusive 'Britishness' based on a common citizenship of shared rights and responsibilities," p. 31.

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.

Researching the 1970s - Gwynne Garfinkle Guest Post

Please welcome my guest, Gwynne Garfinkle!

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Researching the Jo Book

I recently completed the second draft of a novel about a soap opera actress in mid-1970s New York City who's haunted by the ghost of her best friend who died protesting the Vietnam War. (The working title of the book is Some Misplaced Joan of Arc, but through the writing process I've mostly referred to it as "the Jo book.") I already knew a lot about soap operas and the '60s-'70s anti-war movement before I began writing, and I'm not sure I realized just how much research I would need to do.

I was ten years old in 1975, and in some respects I remember the time period very well. Yet it is in many ways a different world (not to mention the fact that I spent that time in Los Angeles, not New York). When I was writing a scene in which my protagonist Jo goes to see the newly released Dog Day Afternoon, I assumed she could go to her neighborhood movie house--but research revealed that the film only screened in one (now defunct) Manhattan movie theater when it first opened: Cinema 1. A friend of mine with access to newspaper archives even found me a New York Times ad for Dog Day Afternoon that included showtimes! Cinema Treasures, an online guide to classic movie theaters, provided a lot of info on Cinema 1.

A number of historical events are referenced in my novel, notably the arrest and trial of Patty Hearst. The book Patty's Got a Gun: Patricia Hearst in 1970s America and the documentary film Guerrilla - The Taking of Patty Hearst were excellent resources on the media's portrayal of the Hearst case. Again, my friend with access to newspaper archives helped me with specific news items, and I was amazed to learn that the New York Times headline for Patty Hearst's guilty verdict was: "MISS HEARST IS CONVICTED ON BANK ROBBERY CHARGES." I made frequent use of The Vanderbilt Television News Archive, which contains detailed descriptions of U.S. national network news broadcasts--including commercials--going back to 1968.
For information about the movement against the Vietnam War, as well as other political activism of the '60s-'70s, Cathy Wilkerson's Flying Close to the Sun: My Life and Times as a Weatherman and Dan Berger's Outlaws of America: The Weather Underground and the Politics of Solidarity were useful, as were the documentaries Rebels With a Cause and The Weather Underground.

As for the soap opera aspect of my novel, 1970s daytime dramas were produced in a very different way than they are today. Fortunately my friends Lara Parker (who played Angelique on Dark Shadows) and Rory Metcalf (who wrote for Ryan's Hope) answered my questions, as did Peter White, who played Linc on All My Children at just the time period of my novel. I also consulted biographies of soap opera actors and soap opera reference books, as well as Eight Years in Another World (a wonderful memoir by former Another World head writer Harding Lemay) and We Love Soaps, a great source of interviews and archival material.

A number of soap opera actresses have penned soap opera murder mysteries, from which I gleaned some behind-the-scenes information amid the dropping corpses. Books in this little subgenre include Louise Shaffer's All My Suspects and Eileen Davidson's Death in Daytime and Dial Emmy for Murder.

The other sources I used for Jo book research are too numerous to mention, but a few highlights include a 1976 NYC TV Guide, the 1975-76 Trans World Getaway Guide to NYC, the Mr. Pop Culture week by week archives, and a webpage of '70s toiletries advertisements, Stuck in the 70s. Sometimes a tiny, half-forgotten detail, like Love's Baby Soft or Gee, Your Hair Smells Terrific, can help bring a scene--and the time period of a novel--to life.


Gwynne Garfinkle lives in Los Angeles. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in Strange Horizons, Goblin Fruit, Aberrant Dreams, Space & Time, and the Clockwork Jungle Book issue of Shimmer. She is represented by Diana Fox of Fox Literary.

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Thanks, Gwynne!