Guest author Anne Louise Bannon: The Hard Part of Historical Research

Anne Louise Bannon

One of the things I love most about writing historical fiction is the research. I love reading old newspapers, poring over old maps, trying to decode old hand-writing, trying to determine if I’m getting an accurate understanding of something.

But the toughest part of any historical research is figuring out the day to day minutae of people’s lives. That’s the stuff that seldom gets written down or kept. Even in these days of tell-all social media, we seldom post about the baloney sandwich we had for lunch, the button we sewed back on our shirt, or even bother to describe how we make a baloney sandwich or sew a button on. Why should we? We all know what baloney is. Most of us get the idea of needle and thread going through the holes of a button.

The problem is, that’s exactly the information I need to bring an era to life. When did doctors start using plaster casts? (Doctors in Europe started using them in the 1840s and ‘50s, American doctors knew about them, but didn’t like using them for a long time – no idea why).

That was one of the biggest problems I had when writing my latest novel, Death of the Zanjero, a mystery set in Los Angeles 1870. The medical stuff was reasonably easy to find (my main character, Maddie Wilcox, has medical training). The politics of the then small town? A snap – there are scads of city council minutes I could draw upon, as well as newspapers from the time on microfilm.

However, there’s a lot about daily life in Los Angeles that was not in any of those sources or many others, as well. The story involves the town’s irrigation system, which was a series of ditches, or zanjas (pronounced zahn-ha), that had been dug off the main ditch, or Zanja Madre, which brought water from the Los Angeles River. The opening of the sluice gate to Maddie’s vineyard zanja is a major scene. Could I find anything referencing how the gates opened or what they were made of? Not in the city council minutes. There were several references to monies given to the Zanjero, or Water Overseer, for materials, but zip on what those materials were. Why would they write that down? They knew what those materials were.

One of the primary crops in the area at the time was wine grapes. Yep. The California wine industry actually started here in sunny SoCal (sorry about that, Napa). So, it made sense that Maddie made her living as a winegrower and winemaker. Yeah, but how did they make the wine? I had plenty of information on crop rates, who was making and selling the wine, stuff like that. But even one of the most prominent experts in the history of wine in the city, Dr. Thomas Pinney, couldn’t tell me what the process was. No one had written it down. They knew how it worked. Why should they?

I did actually find the answers, thanks to the doggedness of a couple librarians, one from the public library and the other from the wine industry archive at California State University of Pomona. And you know where both of them found those answers? In the tourist literature of the time.

Of course! Outsiders will write about what we think of as mundane. It’s new and strange to them. The other fun thing about tourist literature is that it goes back a way long ways, even to ancient times. You won’t always find information on cooking and what went on in kitchens and how houses were cleaned. Tourist literature, like most things in our planet’s history, does tend to be written by men and with their perspective. That which was written by women was usually written by women with the means to travel, which means they weren’t paying attention to what the servants were doing.

Diaries remain an excellent source of information. But don’t forget to check the tourist literature when you’re looking for daily life details. It sometimes has what nothing else does – and that’s a lot of fun.

~Anne Louise Bannon

Papyrus, Paper, Pixels...and Life

I had planned to write a sober assessment of the paper versus digital publishing situation, and the ramifications for traditionally published, indie and hybrid authors. I was planning to write about the way Amazon's Kindle Unlimited subscription programme all but killed my sales on the Zon since its launch last year. After reading several depressing essays on the issues in sources such as The Economist (The Future of the Book) and Smashwords (2016 Book Publishing Industry Predictions--a must read for anyone in the indie publishing business), I decided to give it a rest.

Since my first novel was published in 2008 there has been nothing but turmoil and upheaval in the industry. I'm tired to the bone of it all. I've come full circle and I'm back to the basics: my love of reading and my love of writing. Reading has been the mainstay of my life, my escape, my therapy, my delight, my muse, my great teacher. And writing? I no longer fuss about what I 'should' be doing. I do what I want, zipping back and forth between genres, between novel and novella and short story, between editing and formatting my own work and doing the same for other writers.

Late last year I discovered the pleasure of writing in a totally new, fun historical niche (new to me as a writer, not a reader) when a short story turned into a novel which I serialized and which now outsells my twenty-something other indie titles. I'm now reading up on the history because I'm about to start another series set in the same period. Plus, I'm back at school and one year into a graduate programme. The taught courses are behind me (or will be when I turn in the last paper on Friday) and then the real work begins for the vivas and thesis that will absorb much of the next two years. I see a lot of juggling in my immediate future: school-related research and writing, fiction writing and publishing, editing jobs.... I've also been invited by one of my lecturers to tutor her UG courses. I have to make time to enjoy my two awesome grandkids...and to do this every now and then:

Me just chilling on Maracas Beach, Dec. 2015

So, let the publishing battles rage. Let the players--the giants like Amazon and the ocean of tiny authors trying to eke some cash out of making up stuff--duke it out. Let others sweat and swear and worry. Me? I'll be busy doing...other things.

~Liane Spicer

Guest Post - Anita Seymour Davison

Researching the 17^th Century

It might sound a strange thing to say, even for a writer, but the English Civil War was something I have always been aware of, its highlights and some of its tragedies - not all of them of course as it was a very involved conflict - but I seem to have absorbed the flavour of the times - like osmosis.

Every English historic country house I have visited, and I have been to lots, was involved in that war in some way, either as a Royalist stronghold or a Parliamentarian garrison. Many of them still have musket balls lodged in walls, and ditches, or shadows of ditches, dug to repel invaders outside the boundary walls. I like to walk the floors they walked, look through the same windows on the same landscapes where those events happened.

Ham House, for instance, is a classic example. Built in 1610, it is located about five miles downriver from Hampton Court Palace. The mansion has been restored to reflect the days when it’s most famous owner, Elizabeth Murray, lived there between 1638 and 1698. Much of her original furniture has been reclaimed, as have the paintings that hung there during her day.  In this setting, with no other houses close by and a frontage straight onto the River Thames, it’s not difficult to visualise Elizabeth moving through the rooms, issuing orders to servants, arguing with her family and rushing out of the front door to confront Roundhead soldiers lined up at the gates.

Research for me begins by placing an historical character into which space they occupied in history. My current work in progress requires me to keep track of the young King Charles II as he travelled through Europe between 1653 and 1660. As one by one, Holland, France and Spain signed treaties with Lord Protector Cromwell, Charles was forced to leave those countries, and move elsewhere, appealing for monetary handouts from royal relatives to support his entourage, and often hampered by reluctant ministers of those same relatives who held the purse strings.

I found a two-volume book online by Eva Scott, where Charles’ days of exile are written in impressive detail, together with letters and conversations between him, Cromwell’s spies and members of the European royal houses transcribed almost verbatim. My problem now is how much of this engrossing history should I include in my novel and which to leave out.

One interesting and amusing snippet involved Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester, who was King Charles’ youngest brother and who tragically died of smallpox at 20, a few months after Charles regained his throne. Apparently a sweet and charming young man, at thirteen, his sister the Princess Royal, Mary of Orange was asked by her ministers to request her brother leave the palace at The Hague because of his habit of mounting his horse at the bottom of the grand staircase rather than in the courtyard! According to Ms Scott’s account, their discreet request was ignored by Princess Mary, though Charles acceded and Henry left soon afterward for Cologne.

I love it and wish I could include it in my book - maybe the king could mention it as an aside in one of his letters to my heroine?

Only a few of these facts, absorbing though they are, will find their way into my book - unfortunately - it’s easy to get bogged down by the trivia of these characters. However, they help me understand how twelve years of King Charles II’s nomadic life, the humiliation, penury and a constant nagging uncertainty about his future affected not only him, but the Cavaliers, those reckless, pleasure-loving men who formed the decadent values of the Restoration Court.

Anita Seymour Davison Bio

Born in London, Anita has always been fascinated with the history of that city. She began writing historical family sagas, then experimented with Victorian Gothic romance, though now she feels she has found her niche with 17th Century historical biographical novels with her latest book, 'Royalist Rebel' released by Claymore Press in January 2013.  She writes for several blogs, including English Historical Fiction Authors, [http://englishhistoryauthors.blogspot.co.uk/] Hoydens and Firebrands [http://hoydensandfirebrands.blogspot.co.uk/] and also reviews for the Historical Novel Review Blog.  [http://historicalnovelreview.blogspot.com]

Latest Release

Royalist Rebel,  Please leave a comment at the end of this post for a chance to win a copy of the paperback [after publication naturally and I could have trouble with the signing bit as I will have to send it via Amazon direct to the recipient - but I could organise a bookplate or something.]

Royalist Rebel by Claymore Press, an imprint of Pen and Sword, is released in January 2013

For a little background on the novel and it’s era.

http://royalistrebel.blogspot.co.uk/

The National Trust Website of Elizabeth Murray’s former home, Ham House, at Petersham near Richmond, Surrey

http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/ham-house/

Anita’s Blog

http://thedisorganisedauthor.blogspot.co.uk/

Ancient Grist for the Mill

About a thousand years ago, a series of earthquakes in the Andes shifted the course of the rivers that drained into the Pacific.  Along the coast, the great pyramids, from which the Moche lords watched over their irrigated fields, fell into ruin.  

No longer alongside the rivers, these palatial structures of the divine lords bore witness to a people losing their religion.  The age-old problem with divine kingship: if the weather kicks you in the teeth, how much of a god are you?  All-powerful and you can’t even bring in the crops?  One by one, as the fields dried up, these Moche kingdoms fell into ruin.

About five hundred years later, Spanish soldiers arrived, intent on redistributing the wealth of ancient Peru.  Armed with Toledo steel swords, Bibles, nearly-useless guns, and fighting dogs, they began the decades-long process of robbing a continent as they simultaneously went about converting the population to Christianity.  

Those old pyramids, ruins even then, were still powerful.  They’re still powerful today, drawing shamans and spiritualists by the thousands.  And the images on those pyramids, images of divinities unknown to the Spaniards, had never been forgotten.

About five hundred years later, I joined a team of archaeologists excavating one of these pyramids.  Like a three-day-old sand castle, it held some ruined sway over a swath of coastline.  Called El Brujo, the sorcerer, this pyramid was especially interesting because it was here that the Spanish built one of the first Christian churches in South America.

El Brujo - the ruins as they look today, with roof tents to keep the images safe from weather

So what was that like?  A few priests out here on the edge of the known world, the inquisition burning hotter than molten Toledo steel, what would it have been like to convert the natives?

El Brujo Pyramid after a thousand years of neglect, and a little excavation

Place on Pyramid We Were Pretty Sure We'd Find Something Really Interesting

Really Interesting Image We Found on the Pyramid - 

CHECK OUT THOSE GOGGLES - THEY'RE LIKE SQUARES WITH DOTS!

Not so hard, if you read their reports.  The archives are filled with storied accounts of effort, of sermon, of initial disbelief, and of eventual acceptance of this powerful new faith.  But that’s not the way it happened.  

A few priests, out here on the edge of the known world, would very likely have been scared nearly out of their minds.  Fail, and the inquisitors might cast an eye your way.  You don’t want that.  So you must not fail.  And if conversion means you turn a blind eye now and again when one of your new converts paints an image of an old god next to your old god, then you dare not cause a fuss.  

Aerial Image of the Ruins of the Church - as taken from my photo balloon

Over the course of our excavations, we found evidence that suggests that these priests, in order to get their job done, had to extend an extraordinary courtesy to their converts -- they allowed their own native religious imagery to sit alongside Christian imagery.  And that was not a decision they would have taken lightly.  If the inquisitors caught a whiff of that, these priests would have been burnt alive.

Moche Imagery found on the walls of the church - THOSE SAME SQUARES WITH DOTS!!!!!

We learn more about the past with each each shovel of dirt.  As as we learn more about it, we unearth more opportunities to illustrate our shared history by populating a corner of time and space with our fiction.  This is the moment in time I was exploring in my archaeological mystery AMERICAN CALIPHATE.

Guest Author Mia Marlowe: The Naked Truth about Pirates (or Why Research is So Desperately Important!)

Mia Marlowe writes historical romance for Kensington and Sourcebooks. Her work has been featured in People magazine and one of her novels is on display at the Museum of London Docklands next to Johnny Depp memorabilia. Her books have been translated into 8 different languages. Publishers Weekly has named her Touch of a Rogue one of the Top Ten Romances for Spring 2012! Mia loves to connect with other writers and readers and invites you to visit her cyber-home, http://www.miamarlowe.com ! 



Pirates? Arrg! There’s just something about a man who takes what he wants and makes us like it! When the Pirates of the Caribbean movies came out, with the charmingly spacey Captain Jack and devastatingly attractive Will Turner, I was moved to write a swashbuckling hero with a saucy heroine to match.

In order to make my pirate believable, I had to do more than watch Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom (though I’ll confess to doing a little of that, too!). Getting the facts right is important, so I researched the pirate era and the fascinating characters that sailed the seas in search of plunder. So here’s the naked truth about those Caribbean bad boys.

1. They weren’t all in the Caribbean. Piracy was common to every sea on earth. Barbary corsairs plied the coast of Africa. Malaccan pirates preyed on pilgrims bound for Mecca. Chinese junks join together to form massive pirate navies. Where ever you sailed, there were those with a cavalier attitude toward property ownership.

2. They weren’t all boys. While it was generally considered bad luck to bring a woman on board (and the penalty for sneaking one on could be death or marooning!), there were a few notable female pirates. Both Anne Bonney and Mary Read sailed with Calico Jack and were reputedly fierce fighters. When his ship was finally taken by the British navy, the two women were the only ones who put up any resistance. The rest of the crew was too drunk to fight. But when Anne and Mary were convicted of piracy, they “pleaded their bellies” and escaped the noose because they were pregnant. Calico Jack wasn’t so lucky. When Anne Bonney visited him while he waited for the hangman, she comforted him with, “if you’d fought like a man, you needn’t be hanged like a dog.” Talk about being an “I told you so!”

3. They weren’t all bad. Or at least, they didn’t start out that way. Like Gabriel Drake in How to Please a Pirate, some honest seamen turned to piracy because they had no choice. Black Bart Roberts began his career as a naval navigator, but was pressed into piracy when his ship was taken. He went on to become one of the most successful pirate captains in history.

4. They weren’t all naked. Though pirates went barefoot at sea, they enjoyed dressing well on land. Since they often took prizes of silk bales or rich brocade, pirates delighted in devising flamboyant costumes to wear once they hit port. Buccaneers had plenty of free time during long days at sea to sew. Since women were not welcome aboard ships, what else did they have to do?

5. They held to their own code of conduct. Pirate crews practiced a rough form of democracy, electing their captains and signing articles defining their goals and expected behavior. In How to Please a Pirate, Gabriel Drake’s first mate reminds him that according to the articles he drew up himself, ‘meddling’ with a woman of prudence is strictly forbidden. Good thing my heroine isn’t the prudent type.

6. They took care of their own. Pirates were often maimed in the course of spreading mayhem. As part of the articles they signed, payment for loss of an eye or a limb was agreed upon ahead of time. What a way to fund your retirement!

7. They were only deemed pirates if they stole from the wrong people. A privateer—one bearing a Letter of Marque—might commit the very same acts as a pirate, seizing goods and ships, with the blessing of his Sovereign so long as he shared the booty with the Crown. However, if he made the mistake of attacking the wrong ship, even a Letter of Marque couldn’t save him. Captain Kidd mistakenly attacked a British vessel and though he possessed a Letter, it wasn’t enough to save him from the noose and the gibbet.

8. They didn’t just hang a convicted pirate. They made an example of him. First, he was hung with a short rope, so his neck wouldn’t break. Death for a pirate was a protracted public strangulation. His body was left to be covered by three tides, then tarred and put on display in a gibbet as a warning to other seafaring men who might be tempted to piracy. Pirate hangings were treated as holidays by the public. When Gabriel Drake is led to the gallows in How to Please a Pirate, there’s much jostling to secure the best place from which to view the spectacle. These people seriously needed cable TV.

9. They didn’t all fly the Jolly-Roger. Each pirate captain devised his own version of the skull and cross-bones in an effort to appear as fearsome as possible. But if he really wanted to scare the living lights out of his prey, he’d run up a solid red flag. It was a signal that he’d neither give nor accept quarter. He intended to kill every soul on board.

10. Pirates didn’t bury their treasure. A few pirates might cache their goods from time to time (and in How to Please a Pirate, a treasure is rumored to be hidden somewhere in Dragon Caern, Gabriel Drake’s castle). But pirates would never leave a map to indicate where their treasure lies, lest it fall into the wrong hands. Besides, they were more likely to spend their ill-gotten gains in riotous living than to salt it away for their unlikely retirement. There were very few old pirates. “A merry life and a short one” was their motto.

Which just goes to prove what I suspected all along. Pirates just wanna have fun! And as a writer, my way to have fun is uncovering all these facts. Do I use everything I learn in my stories? No. What reader wants an info-dump? But a thorough research of the period lends a flavor of authenticity to a historical romance that readers are looking for. Disappoint them at your peril.

I'd like to offer a chance to win a How to Please a Pirate in the winner's choice of either Kindle or Nook format. All you have to do is leave a comment or question for me to be entered in a random drawing.

Blurb: After earning a royal pardon for his wicked ways, Gabriel Drake decides to play the prodigal and come home to the life of a gentleman. But a change of station doesn’t change his pirate’s heart. And what a pirate wants, a pirate takes.

Mia loves to connect with readers and other writers. Find her at MiaMarlowe.com, Facebook & Twitter!

Still in Love with Paper

Computers and the Digital Age have made the life of a writer easier in too many ways to count. Yet, after trying new digital tools, I often return to my original paper and analog methods.

For example, after I got my new color Kindle, I bought a few background books for my next novel because they were cheaper as e-books. Yet I immediately forgot the names and authors of those books. It wouldn't surprise me if I one day buy some of them again in paper (if I haven't already), not knowing I already own them.

Other books I would have been willing to buy as e-books I didn't because for some reason the illustrations weren't included in the e-book, only the paper book. 

You might object that those are technical issues; that once Kindles allow one to tag books and then sort books by multiple tags, that once Kindles have bigger memories so they can easily hold many image-heavy e-books, these problems will disappear. True, and if those advances happen, I will reconsider my decision. In the meantime, I buy only pleasure reading in e-book form.

Some of the downsides of new digital ways of doing things are intrinsic. For example, software improvements so far have been inevitable. Twenty years from now, I won't be able to access the books currently on my Kindle or any files that are now on my computer because the software and possibly the hardware will have advanced too far.

Another example: office recordkeeping. I've found Quicken worse than useless for recording my business expenses. I don't like using Microsoft Excel, either. It's much faster and more convenient to keep records of expenses by hand. With an old-fashioned paper ledger, I can work on my account book anywhere, not just at my computer. For another, I can see all my expenses and their categories for the year with only three or four glances (or with a single glance if I tear out the pages and spread them out). I make fewer mistakes when I write numbers in by hand, and it's easier to notice and correct mistakes in a paper ledger.

These aren't the only areas in which I've decided to be a Luddite. Recently I decided to return to using a paper address book as my master list of addresses, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses. I loved having a Palm Pilot, with all data collected in one place and accessible in 30 seconds from anywhere I was. But my newer-model computer doesn't support such old technology. Contact data are now scattered through several different programs, and they're not accessible when I'm away from home. So it's back to a portable address book for me until smartphones and smartphone data plans drop drastically in price.

And it hardly needs mentioning that even if one makes many backups of computer files and stores them in more than one physical location, one can nevertheless irretrievably lose important information.

As a result, I'm still in love with paper. Where do you fall? Does your office and business depend entirely on computers and digital devices, does it still run entirely on paper, or is it somewhere in-between? And why?


I'll be blogging again on May 6. I hope you stop by again then.

—Shauna Roberts

Historical Novel Society Conference

I attended my first Historical Novel Society conference this past weekend and had a blast. The Historical Novel Society has a broad definition of historical fiction that includes historical romance, historical fantasy, and alternate history. Thus, the master of alternate history, Harry Turtledove, not only was there but was also a guest of honor.

I'm not going to name any of the books I bought or heard about at the conference, both because I haven't read any yet and because I'd be afraid of offending an author by forgetting to mention their book, but I will make an exception for Dr. Turtledove because he spoke in his entertaining keynote address about the role of serendipity in finding cool book ideas.

Turtledove was looking through some stamp-collecting materials of his daughter's and found a reference to a false king of Albania who managed to reign for five days before skedaddling right before the rightful king arrived. Turtledove's interest was piqued. He researched wily circus acrobat Otto Witte and decided to write a book about him. However, because Otto's life was too strange to be plausible, Turtledove wrote the novel, not as historical fiction, but as a comic fantasy, Every Inch a King.

What a great reminder to look for story ideas everywhere! And I came home with a cool book I probably would never have heard of otherwise.

The hot topic at the conference was "marquee names." The historical novels that get the big publicity push from publishers not only tend to be set in a limited range of places and time periods, but also they increasingly feature people with "marquee names" such as Tudor, Borgia, and Cleopatra.

Anxiety about marquee names dominated many conversations and some panels. Although most authors wanted to write what they wanted to write, one editor on the "Selling Historical Fiction" editors' panel said outright that an author could not sell a historical novel nowadays without a marquee name unless she or he was "an amazing writer." On other panels, authors revealed that they had included a famous person as a minor character in their novels solely to make them more marketable. Other authors had been pressured by their agents to write a book starring a marquee name so that they could move up from the midlist to the big leagues.

I'm tired of reading about the same people over and over again, and many of the other historical authors I spoke to were as well. As a matter of principle, I no longer buy novels about Tudors, no matter how interesting the books look, and I do buy historical novels that are about everyday people or that are set in less-popular time periods or places.My tiny message to publishers that enough is enough.

Luckily, that editor did not speak for every publisher. I came home with many novels set in ancient times; who knew there were so many recent ones? I also bought many novels published by major publishers that were set in unusual times or places or that did not feature a marquee name.

The HNS conference was particularly fun because there were only 300 attendees. The small attendance made it easier to meet people, reduced the crowds at panels, and allowed you to run into people over and over again.

I could go on and on, but I'll just mention some of the highlights for me. •Having in-person conversations with my long-time friend and mentor Lynna Banning. •Being on a panel and making some good contributions to the discussion. •Seeing the look of excitement on the face of the person who won Like Mayflies in a Stream in the raffle after the panel. •Sitting next to fascinating people at meals and having interesting conversations about topics as diverse as Jewish mysticism and the Civil War. •Attending panels on YA books and talking to people who've written YA, which has convinced me to write a YA novel.

To learn more about the Historical Novel Society and how to join, visit http://www.historicalnovelsociety.org/. Membership fees include two magazines, one that reviews new historical novels and one that features interviews with authors and articles about topics of interest to writers, as well as some marketing help. Next year's conference, to be held in London in September 2012, sounds as if it will be a real treat.


I'll be blogging again on Sunday, July 5. Until then, enjoy your summer!

—Shauna Roberts

Researching Ancient Times

Several people have asked me how in the world I researched Like Mayflies in a Stream, which is set in 2750 BCE in Sumer (what is now southern Iraq). So today I thought I’d briefly talk about the various types of sources I consulted to learn about such a distant time and place.

Mayflies was inspired by the “Epic of Gilgamesh,” so the first place I started was with a translation of the epic, as well as the footnotes and commentary, which were more useful than the epic itself.

One of my first purchases was Mesopotamia from Eyewitness Books. The Eyewitness series consists of brief books for kids with several high-quality photos or drawings on every page. They’re invaluable for writers because they cover hundreds of topics from NASCAR to Judaism to epidemics. If your novel requires you to learn about something, Eyewitness Books probably has a book about it.

I also consulted several “everyday life in ancient Mesopotamia” books aimed at adults. There are “everyday life” books for many historical periods. They can be more useful for a writer than history books, because they focus on subjects such as food, types of jobs, housing, religion, clothing and other details you will certainly need in your book, whereas histories tend to focus primarily on political change and warfare.

A vast literature is available on ancient Mesopotamia. If I had had two years to research and a $100,000 advance, I would have read as much of the literature, particularly scholarly papers, as I could. But with a short time frame and no six-figure advance, I depended heavily on books that summarized various aspects of ancient Mesopotamia. I did read a history to get the overall picture of major events in Sumer and a historical atlas of Mesopotamia to understand the shifting geography and physical layout of Sumer. Otherwise, I focused on specific areas: cooking, works of literature, art, language.

If you do have the time and money to delve deeply into the scholarly literature, there are several ways to find useful articles. Google will bring up pertinent articles—along with 8,103,339 irrelevant ones. More useful is to start with bibliographies in the books you read and the live links to articles at the end of Wikipedia articles and then “leapfrog”—use the bibliographies of each round of articles you find to hop to another round of articles. You can also search Google for academic articles by starting at this page: http://scholar.google.com.

To read the articles you locate, visit a nearby university library or look for them on the Web. Some journals will charge you to view an article; other journals will allow you to access articles for free. Some professors provide links in their online C.V. (academic résumé) to copies of the articles. As a last resort to get an important report, contact the professor who wrote the article and politely inquire whether you could get a PDF of it.

Google, despite casting such a broad net, still was a great resource for me. I often used http://images.google.com/ to answer questions such as "What does an oasis in Iraq look like?" "What does early cuneiform look like?" and "What do Iraqi reed houses look like?"

Although sometimes I forget that search engines other than Google exist, there are plenty of others, including scholarly ones. A list of scholarly search engines can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_academic_databases_and_search_engines.

I hope my experiences help you research historical details for your own stories. Thanks for dropping by. I’ll be blogging again at Novel Spaces on October 23.

—Shauna Roberts