Often, while thinking about history or historical fantasy, it can be difficult to maintain a sense of scale and proportion. We might know about European cave painting, Saharan rock art, the founding of ancient cities, and the advance of domestication. We might have a vague sense of seas rising as Ice Age glaciers melted, fluctuating climate, natural disasters, and the march of extinctions. And, we might have a sense that the various ethnic groups and ideas familiar today were not always around, but when did they begin? When did the ancient people live whose descendants became today’s Jews and Arabs, Irish and Greeks and Indians, Zulus and Swahilis, Maori and Hawaiians,  Chippewa and Cheyenne, Iroquois and Cherokee?

This handy chart should help put a lot of these important historical trends, events, and persons into perspective. Of course, dates and figures in the distant past are always up for debate based on interpretation of the scientific evidence, and I have tried to include only those with the greatest support.

In fantasy role-playing games like Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, bards are notorious for being soft in combat. They can fluff the fighters, but otherwise function as second-rate thieves and third-rate mages.

However, Melville House reports on a Brit who has turned not a bard, but The Bard, into a weapon of mass destruction.

Apparently, Edd Joseph bought a PlayStation 3 online, but it never arrived. In retaliation, he cut-and-pasted the collected works of William Shakespeare to the scam artist’s cell phone, as text messages. Broken up into 160 characters at a time, that adds up to nearly 30 thousand texts.

Check out the full story at Melville House for a good literary chuckle.

A great article on the Revolution-era ironmaster’s estate at Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site in Elverson, Pennsylvania, is now available at Colonial Sense. 

The article focuses on reenactments of Christmas celebrations in the various Hopewell Village houses, including a visit from Der Belsnickel!

A great piece for historical fiction writers and anyone interested in the early American history.

In late November of 1183 AD, the Crusader castle of Kerak was beseiged by a Muslim army led by Sultan Saláh al-Dín, or صلاح الدين — better known in English as Saladin.  It was a retaliatory assault, in response to Christian knights attacking merchants.

During the seige, Saláh al-Dín made a very curious decision: he forbade his forces from bombarding part of the castle where he knew his enemies would be gathered.  Why?  Because he also knew they were gathering for a wedding.

Imagine the possibilities of an anecdote like this for advancing a narrative and/or character development.  In the actual event, the Sultan’s leniency was the result of negotiations between the Muslims and Crusaders but. as inspiration for fiction, the possible explanations for such a decision are as open as the writer’s creativity.

Even if you are not inclined to write historical fiction about the Crusades, or you don’t want to include a wedding in your novel, just imagine the literary punch of a powerful character (hero, villain, or otherwise) who withholds violence, refusing to press a clear tactical advantage, for reasons of sentiment or principle.

Is it a redeeming incident, one of Blake Snyder‘s Save The Cat moments, like when Al Pacino’s detective in Sea of Love lets the mobster get away because he’s with his kids?

Or, is there a deeper psychological reason, crouching like a spider in some dark corner of the psyche of your novel’s Saláh al-Dín analog, an emotional scar staying his or her hand?

In the larger narrative, does this incident function as a moment of weakness, a noble yet ill-considered gesture or a pained reaction to a nearly forgotten trauma, which ultimately unravels an otherwise mighty character’s plans … or sanity?

As a writer, one can never allow anecdotes like this to go un-noticed, un-tagged, and un-filed.  Note them, analyze them, and find ways to use them to deepen the emotional impact of your fiction.

HISTORICAL FICTION BACKGROUND

Underwater archaeologists in St. Augustine, Florida, have discovered a small, highly decorated, and surprisingly well-preserved pistol in a shipwreck believed to date back to the 1700s.

The dig has also produced several hand tools, a 15-inch tall cauldron, and a navigational divider.  Experts analyzing the artifacts hope that a maker’s mark on the pistol will help date the wreck.

Okay, so today is not the real birthday of the paperback, but it is the birthday of Sir Allen Lane, who gave us the paperback as we know it today.

Legend has it that (not yet) Sir Allen got bored waiting at a train station in 1934, and came up with the idea of printing paperback editions of already successful hardback literature which could be sold from a vending machine.  Soon after, when he founded Penguin Books, these paperbacks appeared in the aptly named “Penguincubator.”

Of course, paperback editions quickly moved from the vending machine to racks and newstands, and are now an integral part of the publishing business.

As promised, I am now posting from America’s desktop: the wi-fi connected National Mall in Washington, DC.  Specifically, I am having lunch in the Mitsitam Cafe inside the National Museum of the American Indian.  More specifically, I am having apple juice, tamarind-basted papaya, and pork pibil.

And, no, I did not shoot the cook.

There is, of course, a literary component of my visit to the museum.  At the bookstore, I purchased a Día de los Muertos figurine (for Halloween use) and Iroquois Diplomacy on the Early American Frontier by Timothy J. Shannon.

Can’t wait to read some, so I’m signing off for the day.  Have a good weekend!