So, here’s a note on my progress this summer: write-a-thon or general, it’s kind of the same. This is just an update for anyone interested in a progress report.
Writing Progress This Summer
Tag: The Gin Craze
July/August Books
My last stretch of comments on books was really, really long. 5,400-odd words long, if I recall right. So I’m going to try for shorter and pithier this time. Should be easier, since I read less than I’d hoped I would, but even so… shorter. Pithier. Also: I have been feeling like I have been reading too few books by women, so I did something about it. At least on the fiction side I achieved parity—three female authors and three male ones—but I’m not so concerned about the nonfiction/research books, since you don’t get to choose who writes research books pertinent …
Tallow, The Baltic Trade and Filthy, Shadowy Georgian London
I was surprised, a while back, to discover that all isinglass in Georgian England was imported from the Baltic. But wouldn’t know you, that’s where they got tallow, too. Tallow, of course, was used to make cheap candles and soap. In the Georgian Era, tallow candles were the ones that got everyday use, while wax were fancy-pants stuff you lit up when you got guests and visitors: in other words, wax candles were the Georgian Era’s version of domestic bling-bling, which, well: given that you stood a good chance of being robbed if you actually wore jewelry around, made sense: it …
Distillers vs. Brewers: Tabulated Expenses from 1736
I know I promised a post on the South Sea Bubble next, but, well… it’s become a series, and the series isn’t done, so in the meantime, an interesting snippet from an anti-Gin tract. Take note: Thomas Wilson’s Distilled Spirituous Liquors The Bane of the Nation (1736) has a clear agenda. (Also, an amazing title. 18th-century people just did titles like nobody else!) The agenda was to get the trade in gin banned in England; with that in mind, one should be careful how seriously one takes its content, especially concerning anything about distilling. It is, after all, a pamphlet written to rebut …
And Called It… Macaroni?
Yes, even in Canada we know the Yankee Doodle song. But like everyone else, as kids we giggle and find that last line in the first verse: Yankee Doodle went to town Riding on a pony; He stuck a feather in his hat, And called it macaroni… Who the hell sticks a feather in his hat and then calls it “macaroni”? What in the hell is that about? Maybe everyone else knows, but I sure didn’t. Not till the other day, anyway. The answer, as for so much around here lately, lies in Georgian England.
Yeast, as Understood in 1736
I’m really glad I was able to get a second opinion on one little detail that has become of great importance to my ongoing novel project. That is: how well did brewers understand the function of yeast in brewing back in 1736? It might sound strange, but that detail is incredibly important in terms of a lot of things going on in the book! During my visit to Korea, I got a chance to read a fair bit of Jamil Zainasheff and Chris White’s book Yeast: The Practical Guide to Beer Fermentation. I wasn’t particularly blown away by the book: …
Back on Track With “The Company of Distillers”
So, I’ve finally figured out what the hell was wrong with the novel I’ve been trying to write, tentatively titled The Company of Distillers–why it was so damned stuck after I reached basically the halfway point or so. It means excising most of what I’d written since Christmas–about half the text I have on hand now–but that’s for the best, and I have a clearer picture of where it’s headed now. (And a clearer picture of what I was doing wrong, not just in this book but in the other one I’d been working on, too.) What helped me, besides …
The Economics of Beer and Brewing in Gin-Craze London
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 …
Research Springboard
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 …
Gin Craze Story Drafted…
As I mentioned on Twitter the other day, I recently finished a draft of a weird novella with the working title, “In the Company of Distillers.” I guess the best way to explain the story is that it’s set in London at that part of the 18th century Gin Craze just prior to the government’s second attempt (and the first serious one) at Gin Prohibition… As far as the makeup of the story, it’s probably easiest to explain it more like the way one does a gin-based cocktail, that is, in the form of a recipe: two parts alchemy one …