Book of Lost Nights

So this last weekend was Easter, and Easter means Eastercon, which was in Heathrow once more.

 

I didn’t spend too much time there this year, as I am in a sort of a white heat on the book at the moment after weeks of it being stalled, but I did catch a couple of panels, hear a reading, and for the first time I did a crit workshop there with my writing group, the T Party.

 

I missed the Friday, but on Saturday morning I came in for the How pseudo do you like medieval panel with George R. R. Martin, Juliet McKenna, Anne Lyle and Jacey Bedford, moderated by Anne C. Perry from Pornokitsch. The discussion centred on the balance writers strike between historical authenticity and what makes a historically set story palatable to a modern audience. This is a huge problem when you’re writing in a historical setting, or even a fantasy setting with a historical basis. Going “full medieval” can be a little like going “full retard” to quote the immortal Kirk Lazarus. There are many readers who would be put off by the rampant sexism and classism, the endemic physical violence to maintain social and gender distinctions, and the absolute and all-permeating religious devotion which directed every last detail of people’s lives. It’s hard to sympathise with people who think something like the Crusades would not only be a great idea, but who would race each other to join up.

 

On the other hand, there are lots of fascinating culicues and crooked alleys in the past which you turn up in your research, but which would stop your story dead if you paused mid-text to explain them in your text.

 

Still, it’s undoubtedly true that many fantasy novels have a pseudo-historical setting, and the most popular, particularly in epic fantasy, is the medieval one, with knights and wizards duelling it out against a Dark Lord in a magical feudocracy. I plucked up the courage to question the panel on this and why they thought this particular milieu was so popular. Personally, I suspect it is because the idealised version of this setting seems remote enough to cast our own dreams and desires for a simpler, more chainmailed time upon and yet not so remote as to seem alien and alienating. For example - there used to be a lot of literature on whether space aliens built Stonehenge - but you don’t see much about ET building York Minster, though the relative ratio of labour to technology is pretty similar. This fantasy medieval setting is served in fiction as a mix of savage splendour and violence, a notional frontier where men are real men, women can fight in tin bikinis, and people that spend all day in dark rooms reading can turn out to wield unstoppable cosmic magical power when it suits them. Which is enormous fun for everybody involved, of course, and I’m not complaining.

 

 The next thing I saw was the Mainstream published SF&F panel, which I really wanted to catch as I had never heard Nick Harkaway speak – I loved The Gone Away World wholeheartedly, and his latest, Angelmaker, is saved as treat for me on the Kindle when I get two minutes together to actually read a book for pleasure. He was on a panel with Jo Fletcher from Jo Fletcher Books, Maureen Kincaid Speller and Damien Walther, moderated by David Hebblethwaite. The panel debated the usual problems of genre ringfencing which seems to go on in the literary community at large, but observed that despite some holdouts, this seemed to be breaking down in places. Essentially to publish a genre book out of its comfort zone and into the mainstream is to take a risk – it may fail in the mainstream arena, and then also fail with its natural demographic as it was never marketed to them. On the other hand, success in the mainstream arena means big rewards in terms of sales and opportunities. 

 

I drove home for a few hours then and came back for fellow T Partier Tom Pollock’s reading from The City’s Son, the first in his forthcoming Skyscraper Throne series. But my satnav, Darth, was sulking with me and the room it was happening in appeared to be in the middle of the sort of labyrinth, so I missed the first few minutes (though was not eaten by a minotaur, so that’s a result I guess). This was a shame, as it was a great reading – featuring a new scene that had changed from the workshop draft I’d read – and delivered with great dramatic panache.

 

I had to get back to work, as things had been painfully slow on my book and the sudden rush of creativity needed riding out, so I didn’t return until Monday, when I was down as part of the T Party Writer’s Workshop, and we were critting work submitted prior to the con by attendees. It was divided into two halves – the SF and the Fantasy sets, and I was in the fantasy half with Francis Knight (who has just sold the Pain Mage trilogy to Orbit) and Martin Owton.

 

The set up is similar to the actual T Party meetings, and you read the work beforehand, makes notes, and then everyone goes round the table and talks about the work. It was a really interesting thing to do and the work was great – hopefully some will consider joining the group!

 

It overlapped, so I missed the YA Dystopia panel moderated by Caroline Hooton, also of the T Party, and had Tom on the panel  – I don’t write YA but I do do dystopia – and Gaie Sebold’s Performance for the Petrified: Giving a reading workshop, but I got a chance to have a drink and a mini-catch up with the rest of the crew before I got back to the slave galley and picked up the oars again on the book. It was too bad I saw so little (didn’t even make it to the Dealer’s Room this time), but managed to turn that into considerable word count, so swings and roundabouts I guess. Hopefully I’ll be able to indulge more at Fantasycon this year…

 

No Comments | In: Books, Events, Readings, Writing | tags: authors, eastercon, francis knight, gaie sebold, george r r martin, london, martin owton, medieval, nick harkaway, t party, tom pollock, workshop. | #

So I tried my hand at a little medieval cookery. More specifically, I wanted to do a medieval feast, but it seemed wilful madness to attempt to cook the whole gamut of an ancient meal full of unfamiliar recipes, and then expect people to eat the results of the experiment. I mean, I know, I know, that if there is a total systemic failure, Domino’s is only a phone call away… but still. In the end it seemed smartest to do it in occasional stages.

The first thing I tried was an hors d’oeuvre/supper dish, “frytour of Pasternakes, of Skirwittes, & of Apples”, which basically translates as carrot, parsnip, and apple fritters, served with an almond milk and saffron sauce. 

 

 

The recipe I used is taken from Pleyn Delit: Medieval Cookery for Modern Cooks by Hieatt, Butler, and Hosington. This particular recipe is a translation from one of the same name in The Forme of Cury, a famous medieval cookbook compiled by the “Chief Master Cooks of King Richard II” and committed to vellum around 1390.  

 

 

 

 

 

“Frytour of pasternakes, of skirwittes, & of apples. Take skyrwittes and pasternakes and apples, & perboile hem. Make a batour of flour and ayren; cast þerto ale & yest, safroun & salt. Wete hem in þe batour and frye hem in oile or in grece; do þerto almaund mylke, & serue it forth.

 

The recipe implies that you can use all fruits and vegetables and cook them together, but I decided to start small and begin with parsnips. Later, I tried it with apples.

The ingredients are as follows (the measurements Hieatt and Butler give are in US cups, I’ve converted them to metric here):

• Almond milk (optional – see below)
• 10 saffron threads soaked in a very little boiling water (optional)
• 2 – 4 parsnips (or the same amount of carrots, or 4 – 6 apples)
• 1 packet of yeast
• 155ml (2/3 cup) lukewarm ale or beer plus another 60ml (¼ cup) to dissolve the yeast in
• 2 eggs, beaten
• Additional saffron to colour the batter (optional – Hieatt and Butler omit this in the modern recipe, but it is present in the medieval one)
• ½ tsp salt
• Oil for cooking (if you want to go full medieval, this can be butter or lard or dripping)

 The first step is to make the sauce, if you decide to have it. To be honest, the sauce was quite bland and much more and messier work than making the fritters, so you can comfortably skip it. But in the interests of completeness, and because I did it, dammit, I’m including the instructions.

 

Almond Milk

Almond milk turns up a lot in medieval cookery, and it’s a direct consequence of the fact that dairy products were forbidden during Lent. I’ve baked using ground almonds instead of flour, and that’s always been fabulous, but I’ve never used it as a liquid before.

If you are having the fritters with the recommended sauce – a thin almond milk affair coloured and flavoured with saffron – and unless you’ve managed to pick up a carton of that new almond milk for the dairy intolerant (I certainly didn’t see it at my local Sainsburys today, and odds-on it’s pre-sweetened anyway) you’re going to have to make almond milk from scratch. Lucky you.

To do this you’ll need the following:

• 60g (2 oz) of ground almonds
• 120ml (½ cup) of boiling water
• Clean cheesecloth or muslin

To make the sauce:

1. Put the ground almonds in a jug or bowl and pour the boiling water on to them. 
2. Give it a stir, and then leave it to thicken. How long is up to you, but probably at least an hour and the longer the better – ideally overnight.  
3. When you are ready for the milk (I did this while the batter was left to rise), set up a jug or bowl and drape the cheesecloth over it (I used a thin tea towel).
4. Pour the almond mixture into the centre of the cheesecloth and gently wring the liquid out of it into the jug. Try to get as much liquid out as you can without forcing the almondy bits through the cloth (you can keep the almondy bits to reuse for another pass at a second, thinner almond milk, if you wish).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can now flavour and colour the milk with a little saffron. Put the strands in a tea cup, pour a tiny amount of hot water on them, and then swirl them about and leave them for five to ten minutes. Then chuck the lot into the milk and stir.

One thing I found with the sauce is that it is extremely bland – I added a sprinking of salt and white pepper (the medieval pepper of choice) to raise its profile a bit.

 

 Making the Fritters

To make the fritters:

• Dissolve the yeast into 60ml of lukewarm ale or beer in jug (I used pale ale I warmed slightly by pouring into a pan and leaving it on cooling hob on the stove – removing it when it was blood warm). Mix the flour and salt into a large bowl.
• Pour the yeast mixture and the rest of the ale into the flour mix and stir with a wooden spoon. 
• Add the beaten eggs, stirring them in, but not too much – just enough so that all the ingredients are thoroughly combined.

 

Pouring yeast mixture into the flour

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

• Now cover the bowl with a tea towel or pierced cling film and put it somewhere warm and draft-free to rise for an hour, or until it roughly doubles in volume.
• While this is happening, get on with your fruit/vegetables. Put a pan of salted water on to boil.
• Wash, peel, and slice your parsnips or carrots into round chunks about ½ inch wide (if using apples, peel and core them and do the same, so they come out as rings).

Parsnip chopped for tossing in batter

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

• Pop them into the boiling water, and boil the parsnips for ten minutes, the apples for about six. You will not be frying them for long, so you want them with a slight bite but not too much.
• Drain the fruit/veg in a colander and let cool.
• When the batter is risen, put a frying pan on for a medium high heat and add oil. Be generous, it is a fritter after all and there’s no point pretending it’s health food – or you could deep-fry them if you have the kit.
• Drop the slightly cooled veg/fruit into the batter and stir to coat all the pieces generously. With your fingers, fish each piece out and drop it carefully into the frying pan, so the oil doesn’t spit at you. Let each piece get golden on one side before turning it over. The fritters should puff up around the filling.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

• When both sides are done, take them out and drain them on a paper towel before serving with the sauce, along with the medieval staples of bread, butter, radishes and olives. Pour the rest of the ale into a glass and drink with it.
• Feel exponentially fatter.

 

Was it nice?

The parsnip fritters were easy to make and looked lovely, though for a modern palate, quite bland and required a lot of seasoning – I suspect, subconsciously, that I’m expecting fried foods to be a lot saltier and sweeter. I kept thinking that these would be awesome with a sweet chili sauce. There’s a real statement there about how our tastes have changed without us knowing it.  

 

That said, the batter really came into its own with the apples – there was something about the beery, sour batter and the sweetness of the apples that just hit the spot. Yum. Sadly, I didn’t take any pictures of the apple ones because I was too busy eating them. That’s really all you need to know.

 

No Comments | In: Food, History | tags: cookery, medieval. | #

This summer I took a research trip out to a charnel house.

The plan is this: by checking out peculiarly medieval Christian institutions – monasteries, painted churches, anchoress’ cells, shrines – I can maybe get a physical sense of how a world with an overwhelmingly universal and permeating hardcore Christianity would feel, and to try and reproduce it in the book for the planned extensions.

Plus, you know, it was summer and a jolly out is a jolly out:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So I jumped in the car and drove out to St. Leonard’s Church, Hythe in Kent, where there is a particularly good example of a charnel house:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A charnel house (or to use its less evocative name, “ossuary”) is a place where you store disarticulated bones that turn up in a graveyard while you’re either

• digging other graves
• extending church buildings and know you’ll disturb human remains (which is what is thought to have happened at St Leonards)
• deconsecrating ground that has people buried in it.

These remains need to be stored on holy ground, but you’ve no way of knowing who they belong to or where they should go by the time they’re dug up. You could rebury them, but odds are good in a crowded graveyard that there simply isn’t room.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is a common problem. It’s worth remembering that in most ancient graveyards, the graves and monuments you can see represent just a tiny fraction of the people buried there. For instance, I did a little research survey on St. Mary the Virgin in Prestwich. The graveyard had been in continuous use for about a thousand years*. It was the chief church of larger parish, and huge numbers of people were being reported in the register of deaths every year, and yet until the earliest tombstone (dated 1643), not a single one of these was accounted for in the surviving grave monuments. That’s thousands of people we’re talking about, gone without even a marker.

The Charnel House at St Leonard’s is home to over 2000 skulls and 8000 long bones, mostly thighs:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Not sure what I expected when I went in – darkness, a kind of musty smell, fetid rags and strings of decaying flesh, you know – the usual.
Instead the whole room gave off this light, almost airy feel. The bones were clean and white, and uncoupled from their individual owners and piled in neat nubbly stacks against the walls, they looked not so much human but more like some very avant garde wall decoration. It’s not until you see the skulls that it hits you:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The bones are not only fascinating and somewhat moving in their own right, but they are also a library of how people lived back then. Some of the more interesting bones (and in one case, hair buried with the owner) are picked out in display cases:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The bones below show healed fractures, and the one riddled with holes represents a nasty case of osteomyelitis (an infection of the bone – those holes would have been filled with pus and bacteria when its owner was alive):

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So recently I was having a conversation with someone about bones, bodies, and cremation – in particular ashes, and the long, ritualised conversion of something that is unclean, liminal, and taboo into something that is handle-able, if you like, and thus within the pale (here is a very interesting video of the modern version of the process). I felt this very strongly in the charnel house, where the dearticulated bones, sorted by type, suggested not so much hundreds of dead individuals as much as a dead crowd, and their bones not so much intrinsically part of them but rather furniture, or grave goods.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They had been reduced to signs of themselves, if you like, rather than their essence.

All said, it was very interesting, and I’d definitely recommend a visit – Hythe itself is quite charming on a beautiful summer’s day, and the volunteers working on the door were super-helpful.

CURRENTLY READING: For Honour and Fame: Chivalry in England 1066 – 1500 by Nigel Saul

 

*Archaeology Geek Footnote: Possibly far, far longer. I met a man, an amateur archaeologist who’d done a bit of digging and found some ditch and bank remains, who maintained that St Mary’s was potentially a rare Northern example of a causewayed enclosure. In addition to the earthworks, the fact that the original churchyard site was circular until relatively recently was also extremely telling. It’s a fantastic idea.

No Comments | In: Archaeology, History, Research, Travel, Writing | tags: charnel house, hythe, medieval, st leonards. | #

• Thu, 23:50: Am watching Ironclad. Enjoying James Purefoy. And enormous gouts of fake blood.
• Fri, 00:00: Though what on earth is the lady of the castle wearing. She looks like she’s wearing a punk balldress rather than a medieval gown.
• Fri, 01:04: @McDougallSophia @pornokitsch Indeed, always thought that was the point – R&J play for very high stakes, and lose.
• Fri, 01:05: @McDougallSophia @pornokitsch Much higher than would be possible in modern western idiom, at any rate.

No Comments | In: History, Movies, Technology, Theatre | tags: ironclad, james purefoy, medieval, reviews, romeo and juliet, twitter, william shakespeare. | #

So, something that has been exercising me a lot lately is this: what shall I work on once Sleepwalker is finished?

Not that Sleepwalker is anywhere near done, mind – but the fact remains that one morning in the not too distant future, I will be waking up in a post-Sleepwalker world.

I’d had vague plans to write a sort of secular possession story – you know, The Exorcist as chick-lit – but I wanted one without vomiting, spooky interiors, and intense men in cassocks shouting “THE POWER OF CHRIST COMPELS YOU!”. However, increasingly I wonder how you would dislodge a supernatural being without supernatural means, and whether the whole idea is just muddle-headed.

I also had a kind of SF novel about a woman who has the power to read minds who performs a ceremonial role in her divided, warring society, told from the point of view of her naive and besotted bodyguard, who then gets an extended education in conspiracy and realpolitik when he suspects she’s colluding with the enemy leader. But managing a character whose practically omniscient presents its own difficulties.

And I also fancy having a bash at an archaeological thriller of some sort. Something I discovered in writing Sleepwalker is that I really enjoy writing historical fiction, though I don’t yet know how that I’m proficient enough to write a whole book of it. I’d ideally like to entwine two plot strands, a present and a historical one, into a single whole. As for subject, I have a couple of ideas, but too vague to mention out loud, for fear that disturbing the air would be enough to make them vanish in their current tenebrous form.

Hmm. I shall think on.

Today’s pet peeve: Makers of Robin Hood, please take note. Medieval Europeans did not burn their dead on pyres. The prevailing belief at the time was that you would need your body on the Last Day as it would rise up again, and burning it was something pagans did. I know Max von Sydow does cut a splendid figure on his burning bier, but really. No. Just no.

CURRENTLY READING: Hostage To The Devil - Malachi Martin

 

2 Comments | In: History, Movies, Writing | tags: max von sydow, medieval, robin hood. | #

It’s a truth universally acknowledged, that trying to get your book picked up by a publisher is all about patience.

Being patient will not get you published one second quicker than anyone else, of course, but it will prevent you from tearing your own head off and eating it in a fit of frantic angst. This, presumably, is its virtue. As someone that has terrible philosophical and practical problems with delayed gratification, it’s an easy virtue to overlook.

In relative terms, my book has only just gone out the door. It’s been a few weeks. It’s not even a month. And this is the busiest time of year for publishers. Frankfurt is only next week. Christmas is coming up in months. It’s all going on; I just have to settle down and be patient. However, telling yourself to be patient is a bit like commanding yourself to go to sleep when you’re an insomniac. It’s a doubtful enterprise at best and shouting at yourself into the bargain won’t help matters.

Clearly what I need to do is start getting back into some exercise. Lots of running about in the fresh air and tiring myself out will presumably leave me too exhausted for impatience. And it was with this in mind that I took myself back to sword class tonight.

The first thing that became apparent in sword class is that I have now forgotten everything I ever learned about fighting with longswords. This is a nuisance. However, it was fun and I did feel better for going. Gaie showed up as well, as she’s getting back into it too.

The class is held in a gym next door to RADA, and whenever I pass RADA I always remember my abortive audition when I was sixteen (two years younger than their recommended age, but even then I could never learn to wait). I had to catch the train to London, and stood in RADA’s illustrious halls in my cheap C&A dress, doing Abigail’s speech out of The Crucible and Imogen’s speech out of Cymbeline (why did I choose that one? Dear God.)

It’s always seemed to me that actors have it easy in comparison to writers. They turn up, they audition, they get told “We’ll call you later,” or  ”Thanks but no thanks.” But never mind. I’m not sorry I turned out to be writer instead.

I am sorry, however, that I can’t get a better handle on this whole “patience” thing…

EDIT: If you’re interested in learning how to become a medieval warrior, or researching a novel where people have had prior careers in being medieval warriors, or learning how to become a source of anxiety for your neighbours, or even just in watching me flail about with a piece of roughly sword-shaped wood like a half-wit, check out the Schola Gladitoria here. They do classes in London on a Thursday night (7:30, but they congregate from 7 onwards) on Gower Street.

6 Comments | In: Archaeology, History, Research, Writing | tags: authors, gaie sebold, london, medieval, swords. | #