I had the opportunity to meet Mr. Brown for the first time at the Seacoast Writers’ Conference in New Hampshire a few years ago. Right before The DaVinci Code came out. He taught a workshop on writing the series character, and I found him to be an excellent teacher whose workshop helped me to craft the character and concept that became The Dark Apostle. In fact, when Davinci Code broke not only big, but enormous, complete with death threats, one of my regrets was that Dan retreated from much of public life, including his teaching career. That was a loss for his potential students.

Some of you who have suffered my critiques or reviews have noted that I sometimes refer to an author as being a great writer “on a word and sentence level.” What I mean is that the prose is well-crafted, beautiful and smooth. The grammar is excellent, the style is strong without interfering with my enjoyment of the story it’s trying to tell. Not all writers are great on that level–and not all of those who excel at style and grammar can actually write a great book.

Dan Brown has written books devoured by millions of readers. Every time I see a critic jump on his stylistic quirks and flaws, I wonder if they realize they are not only trashing the author, but also proclaiming that yes, millions of readers *can* be wrong. I’ve found my own share of fault with some aspects of Dan’s work, but one of my touchstone sayings, from the lips of Tor editor and Making Light blogger Teresa Nielsen Hayden, is “What is important about a book is what happens in the mind of the reader.” Repeat that to yourself, authors (and critics). It’s important. Dan Brown makes extraordinary things happen in the mind of the reader. He takes them to distant, exciting places where they witness bizarre events, race to solve puzzles, and to stop crimes alongside a striking and unusual investigator. And 99% of his readers couldn’t care less about his style, as long as he delivers a ripping good yarn.

From the perspective of an author who aspires to the bestseller list (if not quite at the death threats and high fences level), rather than nit-pick the work of a popular author, I find it much more productive to ask what is he doing right? What does he create in these books, in this character, that makes readers return over and over? What elements are his readers thrilled by every time? In short, how can I once more be the student to this instructor?

If you want a start at discovering what Dan Brown, and many other big authors are achieving in their work, you might pick up a copy of Hit Lit, by James W. Hall, a recent work analyzing a group of best-sellers.

In the meantime, Dan and I have clearly been reading some of the same books–he typically spends at least a year researching his work–and I, for one, am curious to see what he’s made of them.

Many authors of historical fiction, or historically-based fantasy don’t do this. They read some basic history texts, secondary sources of the kind where a historian or general non-fiction author has assimilated and rearranged some information and presented it in a pleasing and intelligible form. Those sources can be a great place to start. They give you a solid grounding in the place or time you’re interested in, and can direct your interest to areas where you’d like to learn more.

But the real gold for understanding history is in the primary sources. One author suggested reading the books your characters would be familiar with, and that opens up some interesting avenues. For me, it meant rereading the Bible. Most of my characters wouldn’t have read it (they were illiterate, or were not allowed direct access) but the stories the Bible contains inform every level of Medieval life, including the art they would see in the churches they attended, not to mention the attitudes formed about everything they experienced. That’s an obvious example, but there are many more where this came from.

How about reading legal records? Laws and their consequences give us a good idea of the real priorities of the society. Nobody makes a law stating that you can’t hold a tournament inside a church unless someone’s been doing so–much less has to re-issue that law over a period of years. Repeated prosecutions of individuals for the same crime, say, homosexual prostitution, suggests that punishment was light, and social stigma did not deter the criminal: pointing out areas where the high-minded morality of the culture–the literature or sermons–might say one thing, but on the street, matters were much more open.

For my own work, I also examined medical texts. Guy de Chauliac, surgeon to Pope Clement VI, wrote a compendium of surgical techniques–how and why surgeons did what they did, the kind of things my protagonist, Elisha Barber, likely knew how to do. All the way back to the infamous Galen, the first century Greek physician responsible for all kinds of strange notions that persisted in medicine for centuries. Yes, these sources are crammed with useful information, but they can also provide the details that spark a scene or deepen the experience of a critical moment. Galen, for instance, highly recommends that students should skin their own apes rather than allow an assistant to do so. Why? Because, in getting that close to the subject, the student can examine and understand the connections between the surface and the substance of the matter.

Primary sources can be harder to use. They are sometimes abstruse, sometimes hard to find, sometimes written in a language you don’t read (I still lament and suffer for the fact that I don’t know Latin). They often strike the modern reader as boring. But they also represent the direct experience and understanding of people in times and places different from our own. They may serve to craft the fabric of that character’s society, like the Bible, or give you an idea of the actual labor and techniques he might employ, like Guy de Chauliac, but they provide layers of insight that a mere gloss of history cannot.

And so, my advice to you, if you would write fiction inspired by history: don’t just watch the History Channel, roll up your sleeves and skin your own apes!

Decoration on the stock of a Teppo, Japanese matchlock gun at the Higgins Armory.

As a researcher into the early history of firearms, I was startled. If firearms developed, along with gunpowder, in China early enough to migrate to England by the 14th century, how could they not have reached Japan before the 1593? The answer is, naturally, more complicated than that.

The entire Wikipedia section on this period in Japanese firearms is:

“Due to its proximity with China, Japan had long been familiar with gunpowder. Firearms seem to have first appeared in Japan around 1270, as primitive metal tubes invented in China and called teppō (鉄砲 lit. “iron cannon”) seem to have been introduced in Japan as well.[1]

These weapons were very basic, as they had no trigger or sights, and could not bear comparison with the more advanced European weapons which were introduced in Japan more than 250 years later.[1]“
footnote 1 refers to the text: Perrin, Noel (1979). Giving up the Gun, Japan’s reversion to the Sword, 1543–1879. Boston: David R. Godine. ISBN 0-87923-773-2

Implying that the guns were simply not good enough to bother with. Given that the Japanese were also known for archery, it’s probably true that these early guns couldn’t compete with a competent archer. However, that was true in Europe as well, and especially in England, home of the longbow. It would be centuries before guns became accurate enough to rival the bow and arrow as a killing device. However, those early guns had other uses. Their explosive power and potential often frightened the knights and foot soldiers who first encountered them, and there are medieval stories of troops who left the field when the guns were fired, not because they were hurt, but because of the “shock and awe” effect of the noise, smoke and flash, which were often compared with the presence of Hell.

For a consideration of the period after the Portuguese introduction of firearms (dated to 1543, according to most sources) check out this blog about Guns in Medieval Japan. (despite the title of this entry, he’s talking about the 16th century onward, what historians generally term the Early Modern period) This blogger makes some of the same observations I might, referring to my own period, including the fact that guns, like bows, were a weapon that could be used effectively by a peasant. And, in particular, that they could be used by that peasant to take down a knight–a Samurai, in the Japanese context.

Distance weapons like this constituted a threat to the landed gentry, not merely to their person (they are a threat to everyone in that regard) but rather to their status. The feudal system relied upon certain tenets, one of which is that an armed elite in power over others was a necessity. These people controlled the land, and absorbed much of the income from that land, theoretically in exchange for the protection they offered. So the warrior class became a hierarchy of wealth and status, codifying their prestige into laws and attitudes designed to defend it, with distance weapons being regarded as low-status, cowardly devices that removed the honor from combat.

Does this have implications for the present day, with our shared concerns over personal safety leading to conflicting agendas? The blogger above, Ryo Chijiwa, along with the author of the book cited on Wikipedia both point out that the strict gun control exercised by the Tokugawa Shogunate (which began in the 17th century) coincided with 250 years of peace. It’s hard to say which came first: did the lack of guns result in a peaceful society, or did the peaceful society reject guns because they were deemed unnecessary except in time of war?

It’s interesting to consider what the historical perspective can show us about our contemporary woes. What are your thoughts?

This book is a delightful journey through an unusual fantasy world where machines and magic co-exist. While I didn’t find the heroine initially engaging, her talent for spotting the flaws in structures and the phrase “clown engines” intrigued me enough to keep me reading–and it was fascinating to see how the author used both of those elements to her advantage.

Elena is on the run from the baron who founded a movement against the Gear Tourniers: skilled makers of marvelous and elegant devices. The baron claims to act on behalf of common people, to give them the chance to participate in the creation of the things they need by working in factories after overturning the domination of the Gear Tourniers, and the Curator who stands above them all.

Along the way, Elena meets a variety of interesting characters–a scarred maker, an actor, a silver stag, a woman with amazing control over her body language. The complex relationships among these people add layers of tension and build the reader’s engagement with the book as you wonder how they will achieve their objectives. With this three-dimensional and striking cast of characters, McDougal delivers a rooting interest for just about anyone.

So, the flaws. As I said, it took me a while to warm to the protagonist–that’s one reason it took me so long to finish. As the work progressed, she rarely seemed to be the driving engine of the plot, it was often the others in her group who were making the important choices and taking necessary action, so the effect is more of an ensemble. In the last third of the book, when the characters split up to undertake various missions, the timelines don’t match up in a way that was confusing to follow, and made me think that, if it had been worked out more carefully, some of the plot elements simply wouldn’t work. One group of characters had a more-or-less continuous scene (in terms of the time they spent) but it was intercut with the actions of another group of characters which appear to take place over a period of days. Also, there are occasional intrusions of modern words or phrasings which stuck out in this otherwise distinctive world, and I’m not convinced that her use of technology is consistent with the time period emulated.

But if you like automata and antique machinery, this book will inspire your sense of wonder, pretty much from beginning to end. McDougal constantly reveals new marvels of gear and steam. The true Steampunk fan might be put off by the inclusion of talents of magical origin, but the author describes this as a “Maker” book–and, as a celebration of marvelous creation, it is spot-on.

View all my reviews

cover image for Elisha Barber, from DAW Books, cover by Cliff Nielsen

“Elisha” is a prophet from the old Testament, the originator of some interesting miracles and wonders which add some resonance to my book. It’s pronounced with a long “i” in the middle, not too different from “Elijah,” another Biblical prophet, and Elisha’s master. Are you confused yet? Thanks to Elijah Wood, the actor, most folks know how to pronounce that one.

A fun source for disambiguation (to borrow a term from Wikipedia) of the Elijah/Elisha confusion, if you ever have the chance, is the Reduced Shakespeare Company’s production of “The Bible: the Complete Word of God (abridged)” you can hear the song on their album of the show, but you won’t get to see the flashcards.

Of course, you can always check out Wikipedia for either of these guys: Elisha, or Elijah. (I am vastly amused that the Elisha entry is flagged for relying on a religious work without examining the commentaries, BTW.) I’d like to point out that my character, Elisha, is not a prophet, though he has certain unusual. . . talents. . .you will learn about in the book.

How did I choose his name? Biblical names have been popular in Europe for centuries, especially for boys, with a few always at the top of those annual Baby Name lists they come up with. The names trade places up there over the decades, but a name from the Bible is a pretty safe choice for a Christian of European descent. They are mostly New Testament figures (apostles are always popular) or big name kings from the Old Testament. If you check out the most popular names of the 14th century in England, there, too, you’ll find the same names repeated over and over: John, William, Robert, Thomas, Richard, Hugh, Edward. And it’s here that the trouble starts. . .

I’m writing into history, relying on the milieu of the time, and sometimes on the people. And a very large number of those people are named William, Robert, Richard, Edward. . .so if I want to make the character my own, I need to choose something different, something unlikely, even, but believable. Looking down the rest of that list, I see a number of interesting names (Osbert, Wolfstan) but nothing that speaks to me about the nature of this character. It was to my own history I turned.

My father is a genealogy nut. He’s traced us back about as far as possible–yes, I’m related to Charlemagne (like a few million other people) and have a miniscule amount of African blood, thanks to a Roman consul who lived there. One of the families that fascinated me as a child hearing him speak about our history, were the Gores who came to America early on, and whose various children appear in battles here and there. What child of a certain bent could resist a name like “Gore”? And yes, one of those fascinating Gores was named “Elisha.” The name and surname, in my imagination at least, were tightly linked. What better name for a battlefield surgeon? From the moment I met Elisha, I knew his name.

While we’ve discussed and renamed some other key figures in the books, I am grateful, in spite of the potential confusion, that nobody ever suggested renaming Elisha. It was the name he was born with, from the fertile mind of that impressionable youth, when sowed with history, and sparked to write.

With the advent of social media, tribes of enthusiasts can gather as never before. Where an old-school Trekkie might have had to wait months for a con at which he could share his excitement about a new series, or perhaps set up a local fan group to meet on a more regular basis, the new fan merely has to open a browser and search for like spirits online. This offers both advantages and dangers for the author. For one thing, you can now eavesdrop on the conversations of fans the world over. If you’re deciding among projects to pursue, you can get an idea of what excites the kinds of readers you’d like to attract and see if one of your ideas will meet their needs.

Many in the trad publishing world decry the entire concept of “writing to market”, then, if you actually try to sell them a book, they will immediately turn around and ask you to define the market–what authors is your book like? what readers do you think will love this? And that’s all I’m really talking about so far. I’m a commercial author–I want to write books that will sell to a wide market, and it behooves me to have some sense of what that market is. It doesn’t mean I’m jumping on a bandwagon of urban fantasy about mermaids who live in the sewers of Denver, simply because some reader thinks they’d like to read that book. (would you? I’m thinking *not*) It does mean that I have enough ideas that I can cherrypick what I want to write based on what I think readers will be most excited to read. In that sense, the online focus group potential is a good thing.

It turns dangerous when it gets more personal. Because, of course, you can also learn what your own fans are saying. Whether you mean to or not, the author who works in series–unless all the volumes are out at once–is doing something similar to those Disney execs: showing a story-in–progress to an interested readership and receiving their reactions. What if they don’t like the direction it’s taking? What if they love a character you plan to kill off in the next book? Do you go all GRRM and kill him anyway? And will that make them more loyal because it raises the tension, or will it drive them away?

I know many authors who try to avoid the inadvertent focus group as much as possible. They don’t read reviews, participate in reader forums, or interact with fans who have ideas about the direction things might go. This was certainly a consideration for J. K. Rowling as the tension mounted toward the end of the Harry Potter series. I’m not aware of publishers being influenced by this sort of thing–they tend to adhere to the idea of the author as an individual creator, striving for a vision of the work which complies with internal rather than external ideals.

But there are also some interesting new authorial models online, things like fan-fic, in which fans literally write the plots they’d like to see for their favorite stories or even commercial ventures such as first chapters written by a pro author for books which will be finished by others. While an author might view the online commentators as a focus group on fiction, in this new world of empowered consumers, the focus group is no longer at the mercy of the author to provide its entertainment–if they get excited about an idea, they might just run with it, and wind up running the world.

A Physician examines a patient while a barber prepares for blood-letting.

Working primarily in larger towns and urban areas, the barber not only cut hair and shaved beards, but also, by virtue of his ready razor, performed bloodletting at the order of a physician, or as a routine practice for clients who understood their humors to be out of balance. He served as a first aid technician, patching up wounds and extracting bad teeth, as well as performing common minor surgeries like lancing of boils and removing gall or kidney stones. Barbers learned their trade through apprenticeship and practice, and were expected to join the guild that regulated their role. A barber’s guild in London existed prior to 1308 at least.

Above the barbers, one finds the surgeons. Nowadays, if you ask a hospital nurse, you’ll likely find that specialist surgeons have an unparallelled reputation for arrogance. During the Middle Ages, however, surgeons were considered to be craftsmen, skilled with tools and capable of carrying out a wide variety of tasks. Most surgeons at the start of this period also trained by apprenticeship, but some of the universities had introduced surgery as a discipline, much to the annoyance of the Physicians, who sat at the top. Surgeons like Guy De Chauliac (surgeon to Pope Clement VI) and the later Ambroise Pare compiled texts to educate others and clearly had the respect of their contemporaries, as their high-status patrons can attest. The surgeons of London did not have their own organization until 1368, and in 1540, the Barbers and Surgeons merged into a single guild.

Perhaps this dichotomy–the high position of many surgeons versus their theoretically low status–can be explained by the increasingly divergent course of learned medicine represented by the Physicians. Physicians attended prestigious universities like Paris, Bologna, and later Oxford, where they studied the classic texts of medical knowledge handed down by the Greeks. They genuflected at the altar of Galen, who lived in the first century AD and acquired much of his anatomical knowledge from the dissection of animals rather than humans. They ascribed to the theory of humors: the four substances in the body (blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm) that supposedly caused illness in both mind and body. Their prescriptions might take into account not only the comparison of urine samples to charts, but also the season of the year and the patient’s astrological sign which were considered to affect the balance of humors.

While the physicians commanded the highest prices and the esteem of their wealthy patients, they often relied on surgeons and barbers, along with apothecaries to provide and compound medications, to actually perform any recommended interventions. “Drain two pints of blood and call me in the morning!”

Cover of Kelpie, by T. J. Wooldridge

I can’t honestly say I was joking when I suggested to my best friend, Joe – Prince Joseph, eldest son of England’s Crown Prince – that we could probably find something the police had missed in regards to the missing children. After all, eleven and twelve year olds like us did that all the time on the telly and in the books we read…

With another child taken, time is running out to make things right.

To go along with sharing the simply gorgeous cover, author T.J. Wooldridge has enlisted several of her friends who have helped her in the journey of writing this novel to put together a special treat for you!

Each day of the week, search for individual components of the cover–with a bonus piece of art on Wednesday–at these blogs. Collect the right words per the instructions, and unscramble the line of poetry to be entered to win one of three prizes!

Prize 1
A handmade fused glass kelpie necklace from Stained Glass Creations and Beyond

Prize 2
A handmade necklace from Art by Stefanie of Vic Caswell’s rendering of the kelpie from the cover!

Prize 3
An 11×16 poster of the cover of the Kelpie signed by T. J. Wooldridge and artist Vic Caswell
5×7 cards of all the cover aspects featured in the Scavenger Hunt

So, how do you take part in the Scavenger Hunt? Here are the details:
Collect the words from the novel excerpts and put together a poetic phrase.

Monday 3/25

Visit the Faery Castle at Kate Kaynak’s blog: http://thedisgruntledbear.blogspot.com/
Scavenger Hunt Goal: first sentence, 10th word

Tuesday 3/26

Hop over to Scotland at Stained Glass Creations and Beyond: http://stainedglasscreationsandbeyond.wordpress.com/
Scavenger Hunt Goal: first sentence, 12th word

Check out an artist rendition of Heather MacArthur’s family tartan with Aimee Weinstein at tokyowriter.com
Scavenger Hunt Goal: first sentence, first word

Wednesday 3/27

Bonus Art!
Meet Heather’s dad, Michael MacArthur, at Valerie Hadden’s blog: http://valeriehadden.wordpress.com/
Scavenger Hunt Goal: first sentence, 12th word

Thursday 3/28

Cast your eyes upon the kelpie, itself, with Suzanne Reynolds-Alpert at http://suzannereynoldsalpert.blogspot.com/
Scavenger Hunt Goal: 2nd sentence, 2nd word

And feel the snark of Monkey, the fey cat with Justine Graykin at http://justinegraykin.wordpress.com/
Scavenger Hunt Goal: first sentence, 3rd word

Friday 3/29:

Meet Heather’s best friend, Prince Joseph at, who’s hanging out with author Darby Karchut at http://darbykarchut.blogspot.com/
Scavenger Hunt Goal: first sentence, 17th word

And finally meet Heather, herself, who’s hanging out with one of Trisha’s editors, Laura Ownbey at http://redpenreviews.blogspot.com/
Scavenger Hunt Goal: first sentence, first word

Collect all the words and put them together in a poetic sentence, and enter them into the rafflecopter giveaway for a chance to win one of the three prizes: http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/share-code/MTBiNjRkMDYwN2U2MWZjNzBmNmM4YWEwNTEyODI0Ojc=/

This book is full of marvelous science fiction elements, building not only a vision of a future academia on Earth, but also a society of termites and their distant world, and several other alien species already interacting with humanity.

I found it a compelling read, however, I also had some frustrations. The book begins with a biological expedition gone wrong: while exploring and collecting specimens, the party is attacked by a giant warrior termite. They succeed in killing it, and bringing home a smaller specimen. On the journey, one of the team leaders begins to suspect the creature is intelligent, and brings in a young linguist to study the termite in its dying hours.

The scenes between the doomed bug and its human interpreter are beautiful and moving, and they set me up to want more human/termite interactions. Alas, in this volume, that is not to be. The book alternates between scenes of Kaitrin and Gwidian, the other team leader who initially does not believe the creatures are intelligent, and scenes on the termite world, where the human incursion has caused turmoil which may lead to the equivalent of civil war.

Most of the book takes place in dialog. For a book about a linguist, that makes a certain amount of sense, but the dialog is serving every purpose: it provides backstory, exposition, conflict and even description. The trouble with dialog is that it reads in real-time, as if you are listening to a conversation. In a book consisting almost entirely of dialog, that makes it very hard to manage the pace–everything unfolds at the same rate.

Many of the conversations at the outset take place during committee meetings to plan the voyage. Some of this is vital information we’ll need in order to understand Kaitrin’s linguistic leaps–but often it’s simply too much. Also, most of the dialog is “on the nose”: it is about exactly what it says, with little conflict, tension, subtext or character development.

The author has made the choice to portray her termite characters entirely through dialog, with occasional stage directions, due to their sensory limitations. This is a choice that fits with their world, but also limits the author’s range in presenting them to the reader. The feel of these sections is almost like Greek drama. I think the effect could have been heightened by thoroughly investing in the sensory information in the human-narrated passages–showing the reader how different the two species are.

The science fiction content, especially the linguistic approach and the alien societies, is fascinating stuff and made me want to read on, in spite of the book’s stylistic flaws.

View all my reviews

Scout, a harrier, gets his reward from Master Falconer Nancy Cowan

Yeah, E. C., pretty cool, but what does that have to do with being a hack? Nowadays, the term “hack” as applied to a writer, means (to quote the venerable Oxford English Dictionary) “a literary drudge. . . a poor writer, a mere scribbler.” Ouch. But the origin of the term is much older, and referred to a lifestyle of wage service, if you will, the idea that the hack was for hire for any role suitable to his or her talents (yes, the writer definition appears just above “prostitute.”)

In fact, it owes its etymology to the feeding of falcons or eyas hawks (those in training). After their capture, the birds learn to trust humans during a training period in which the bird comes to expect meals from its master, rather than hunting freely. These meals were served on a board referred to as a “hack,” probably from the earlier meaning of the word relating to cutting or chopping. “Being at hack” spread to imply other sorts of limited freedom, in which the hack was supported by others, employing his or her skills on their behalf, and not fully at liberty to choose or refuse jobs.

Before the falcons or the writers, “hack” also refers to horses for hire–an abbreviation of the word “hackney.” Hey–that sounds familiar! As well it should. A horse-for-hire broke down quickly, showing its age, and, while serviceable, became progressively less desirable the more worn-out it was. Leading, in the 1700′s, to the term “hackneyed” for those worn-out phrases so many hacks still rely on today.