Category: WRITING

The Fascinating Victoria Yankovsky

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UPDATE (26 Feb. 2017): Some fascinating commentary, and even a new photo, can be found in the comments section below. Don’t miss it! ORIGINAL POST: So, since we got back from Korea, I’ve been struggling to get back to work on my novel(s), but I have managed to do some editing and send out a piece that I wrote earlier this year. I’ve also started editing another into shape, and have been knocking together bits and pieces that will become stories at some point. One of the more dark and harrowing stories concerns one Viktoria Yankovsky—well, not real Victoria Yankovsky, …

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When It Rains

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One thing that happens when you get busy trying to write a novel or two is that short story publications slow down, so I haven’t had a lot of publication announcements to make recently, but when it rains, it pours. (As I’m about to rediscover when the rainy season strikes us again here in Saigon.) In any case, I finally do have some publication news, all of which struck basically at once a month or so ago. (I waited till the ink was dry on all the contracts before announcing anything, though.) Firstly, I have a novella forthcoming soon in …

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Ale & Beer in England in 1722, the Hop Fair at Stourbridge

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In his book A Tour through the Eastern Counties of England (1722), Daniel Defoe writes on hops and the hope trade at Stourbridge Fair in 1722, but also discusses some details of the brewing industry, such as the difference between ales and beers (as the terms were then used). He marveled at the woollen goods on sale, but also at other commodities that interested him more… namely, hops…  More beneath the cut.

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Mammoth!

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Well, I got word last week about this, and I was very excited, but I was also traveling in buses with seats of unusual size (not to mention, inhumane design–shudder)… But now, well: “The Clockworks of Hanyang” is being included (as a reprint) in Sean Wallace’s upcoming The Mammoth Book of Steampunk Adventures. The whole TOC is here, and it looks like the story will be in excellent company, a delightful and flattering turn of events indeed! (The timing was especially delightful and encouraging as I’d just finished drafting another story (novelette, actually) in the same world that I’ve mentioned working on… …

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A Brief Word About Historical Terminology

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Just read a wonderful piece over at the excellent beer history blog Zythophile on the historical changes undergone by the terms “ale” and “beer”: I used to think that their merger into synonymity was pretty much complete in Georgian England at the latest, agreeing with the historian WH Chaloner, who wrote in 1960, reviewing Peter Mathias’s great book The brewing industry in England, 1700-1830: “By the end of the seventeenth century the terms ‘ale’ (originally a sweetish, unhopped malt liquor) and the newer ‘beer’ (a bitter, hopped malt liquor) had come to describe more or less identical products following the victory …

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Beer and the Habsburgs, Plus Lager Confusion

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In my recent post about the economics of brewing and the consolidation of breweries in London in the wake of the Gin Craze, I mentioned that I’m searching for sources on beer under the Habsburgs. I haven’t found all that much, but maybe that shouldn’t be a surprise: after all, wine was preferred in Habsburg Vienna, and the kind of taxation that marginalized wines in England only affected wine consumption in the Habsburg Empire more slowly… though the eventual stratification we see in England does eventually appear in the Habsburg domains as well, and for the same reasons: ‘Modest’ is …

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The Economics of Beer and Brewing in Gin-Craze London

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I’m trying to get a handle on London Brewing during the 1700s (especially during the Gin Craze), as part of the research for the novel I’m writing set at that time. What’s interesting is how English brewing transitioned from being primarily a small-scale industry, to being a large-scale industrial business with international reach, during this precise time. I found an interesting bit of information about the transition which is worth talking about: From 1748 to 1830, the transition is massive: brewing went from almost 60% smaller business, to 15% smaller business, even though the scale of production (and, presumably, demand on …

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Back in the Saddle

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I’m working on a couple of novels at the moment, but, well… I should actually say, I’d been working on a couple of novels lately. Around Christmas or so, I got stalled on both, and stopped making forward progress. I couldn’t figure out why, so I took some time off and worked on shorter stories, and on getting some of my short stories sent out. (I have a large stock of finished/polished-up short stories I need to send out, but always seem to procrastinate about actually sending them anywhere.) But soon, stuck turned into stalled, turned into Steam. Anyway, Mrs. …

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The Altarpiece of Ghent

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The first truly great masterpiece to demonstrate the possibilities available when working with oil paint, so they say, was the van Eyck brothers’ Altarpiece of Ghent. (The elder brother, Hubert, apparently did the general design, and his brother Jan painted it after the brother’s death.) I ran across a reference during my studies of the history of Belgium, and found it interesting, though it is (at present) very unlikely to turn up in my novel. A little research turned up a few worthwhile links, though: Here’s an NPR piece on it (supposedly) being the most stolen artwork in history, and …

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Research Springboard

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I’m currently bouncing back and forth between two major writing projects that are so different that they really do serve as a break from one another: the language of each is quite distinct, the characters and their trajectories rather different, and so it works for me, right now, to switch from one project to the other when I start to run out of steam on whichever one I’m currently working on. At the moment, I’m working is about alchemy and conspiracy, a story that begins at the height of the Gin Craze; that is, a time period I used to …

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