research – A. L. Lester

#RAtR: Weird Internet Searches

This month’s topic for Read Around the Rainbow is the brainchild of Addison Albright—and I’m really looking forward to her post revealing whatever prompted this suggestion! As some of you already know, #RAtR is a blogging project I am doing with a few friends who also write LGBTQIA romance. You can find everyone by clicking here or on the image to the right, and I will link to everyone’s post on this month’s topic at the bottom of this page.

So. My weirdest internet search? For this question, I usually talk about researching butter lamps for The Flowers of Time and making my own butter from scratch and then rendering it to ghee and making a lamp in a jam-jar with a bit of string. I got a bit obsessed. I’ve downgraded that particular search to ‘only mildly obsessive’ over the last few years though, as things have moved on!

photo of brown metal cage with lighted candle — Photo by Craig Adderley on Pexels.com

I’m pretty sure that everyone who writes about murder or death has a disturbing search history story; and for The Quid Pro Quo I joined the team. I researched what a body would look like after being submerged for twenty four hours. I don’t recommend googling this for fun—I can still see some of the images in the articles I read and it was deeply unpleasant and upsetting.

When I’m researching things I know nothing about I find it very easy to get sucked into a rabbit-hole where I spend an unnecessary amount of time on subjects that are only going to be mentioned in passing in the story. I need to get the background straight in my head in order to be able to drop a couple of colourful details in there. If it’s something I know a bit about already, even if that’s only incidental knowledge, it’s much easier to know what it is I don’t know, if that makes sense?

For example, Out of Focus is set in the world of contemporary theatre. I know quite a bit about how the technical side of that works and I knew what I didn’t know…I went off and found out about scissor lifts and health and safety regulations and it took me a couple of hours. In contrast I spent two days searching and reading up on how eighteenth century women dealt with menstruation for The Flowers of Time—not because it featured in the story particularly, but just because I felt as if it was something that would impact my characters even if I never mentioned it.

I think that’s partly why I’ve set seven books in the post-WW1 period now. I’ve done my research and I feel confident with the background colour of the era. Yes, okay, I have to toddle off and read up on what treatment you’d use for migraine, or whether medicals were required by then to join the army. But I’ve got all the building bricks in place, I know where to find the resources and I’m comfortable.

It’s a very nice feeling, being able to hunker down in a setting you’re reasonably knowledgeable in and just get on with the narrative. I think that’s why I’m enjoying writing my short contemporary stories so much—the only searching I did for Surfacing Again for example, was to use Google Earth to walk the old pilgrim route to Lindisfarne.

When I have the time and inclination I try to gather my research sources together for particular books and time-periods. You can find them under the menu Interesting History Stuff at the top of the page. It’s a bit of a work in progress and it’s not comprehensive, but it also serves to remind me what I looked at 😊.

So what am I going to leave next in my browser history? Honestly, I don’t know. This year I have crashed and burned a bit as far as longer projects are concerned, but I had planned to write the final book in the Bradfield trilogy, so if that happens I’ll be going back to the 1920s. And perhaps a companion book to The Flowers of Time, which is going to take a bit of a jump-start as I’ve forgotten quite a lot about the 1780s. I feel as if I want to get those done, interspersed with contemporary Celtic myths and the Theatre Fach world, before I begin a completely fresh project. However, it might be that I just stick with the contemporaries for now rather than forcing myself to concentrate on anything longer.

Watch this space and you’ll be the first to know!

http://www.amyspectorauthor.com/blog2To find out what’s in the internet search histories of my Read Around the Rainbow colleagues, visit their blogs here! K. L. Noone, Addison Albright, Nell Iris, Ofelia Grand, Holly Day, Fiona Glass, Ellie Thomas, Lillian Francis, Amy Spector.

Read Around the Rainbow. Writers and bloggers of LGBTQIA+ Romance.

Trans people in history

This morning I want to talk a little bit about trans people in history. Transgender is a word that can only be traced back to 1974, but that didn’t mean trans people didn’t exist before that date! Walter, one of the main characters in The Quid Pro Quo is transgender—he’s caused me all sorts of plot issues, but has sent me off to do lots of really interesting reading, which I’m delighted to share here!

One of the things that gender studies academics all agree about is that it’s almost impossible to know how people in the past that we now see as trans would have seen themselves. The records are very sparse, often sensationalised and are usually other people’s view of the person rather than their own. Who wanted to put that sort of thing down in writing when it would get you prosecuted or put in a mental hospital? So it’s hard to tell whether past figures were transgender; or whether they were passing as a man or woman in order to access spaces and privilege they would be otherwise denied. This is particularly true of people who were assigned female at birth and lived the bulk of their lives as men.

The most famous of these cases is Dr James Barry, who after his death in the mid-nineteenth century was revealed to be AFAB (assigned female at birth). I won’t write much about him here because this is the article I would write and Rebecca Ortenberg has already done it better than I would. Suffice to say that after he began his medical education at Edinburgh, Barry never presented or referred to himself as female again. He was only discovered to be AFAB after the person laying his body out for burial spoke about him. In recent years he’s been absorbed by the ‘plucky girl breaking the glass ceiling by putting on breeches’ narrative, which I personally feel is wrong.

This article at the British Library about Transgender Identities in the Past is fascinating. It focuses on two people, Eliza Edwards, who on her death in 1833 was discovered to be AMAB. And in 1901, someone we’d now understand to be a trans man who at the age of sixty and after several marriages and a career as a cook on P&O liners was revealed to be AFAB. The newspaper article calls them by a woman’s name. It completely erases the life they lived. The article has audio clips of a 2018 discussion between E-J Scott, curator of the Museum of Transology; Dr Jay Stewart, the chief executive of Gendered Intelligence, and Annie Brown, an activist, artist and GI youth worker. It’s worth your time.

In The Flowers of Time, my story set in the late eighteenth century, Jones the non-binary character eventually decides to present as masculine because it makes their life with Edie easier. They fudge the record, more or less blackmail close family into accepting them and that’s that. However, it’s not unreasonable to suppose that as time went on, communication became quicker and easier and records of births and marriages became more common it became much more difficult to pass. British army records mention Phoebe Hassel, who was discharged in 1817 when she was flogged and discovered to be a man (bottom of page seven, you have to register, but it’s free). We don’t know whether she was a passing woman for financial or social reasons or whether she was what we’d understand today as trans. Her male name is not mentioned. However, she must have passed well enough or had enough support by her peers to have concealed her natal gender for some years.

However, The Quid Pro Quo is set a hundred and fifty years later than Phoebe’s flogging and The Flowers of Time. By the time Walter joined up in 1898, there were medicals for army recruits. This was such a sticking point for me that I bottled it and I honestly tried to write the book with him as cis. However, he just wouldn’t play…he’d been trans in my head as I was writing The Fog of War, right back as far the planning stage of the trilogy. But when I came to write it, I couldn’t make the story work with him as trans because of the army regulations; and I couldn’t make the story work with him as cis because he’s not cis.

I threw the question to some of my lovely friends at the Quiltbag Historicals facebook group (join us, we’re cool!) and they immediately began working out ways I could fudge the story. So Walter begins his army career as his twin brother and has a little help from the people around him to keep his origins concealed. And I reassured myself that if people are prepared to suspend disbelief about the paranormal aspects of my stories then they can allow me this tiny (enormous) stretch of possibility to get it off the ground!

I love Walter. He’s so very pragmatic about his life and his place in the universe. He’s just getting on and doing his thing. I wanted him to have a happy ending so badly all the time I was writing The Fog of War and I was very pleased to be able to give him one here in The Quid Pro Quo.

I like to think of my stories as realistically historical first and paranormal second. My characters are just getting on living their lives—which have greater or lesser levels of complexity—and the paranormal comes and whacks them round the back of the head with half a brick in a sock. I try and make the history as accurate and the paranormal as twisted as I can! I think I’ve done Walter justice, as he’s one of my favourite people. I hope you like him too.

Lastly, here is a brilliant collection of books about trans history and trans issues, curated by Christine Burns and available from independent bookshops.

The Quid Pro Quo

Village nurse Walter Kennett is content with his makeshift found-family in tiny Bradfield. However one midsummer morning a body is found floating in the village duck pond, dead by magical means.

Detective Simon Frost arrives in Bradfield to investigate a inexplicable murder. The evidence seems to point to Lucille Hall-Bridges, who lives with doctor Sylvia Marks and nurse Walter Kennett at Courtfield House. Simon isn’t happy—he doesn’t believe Lucy is a murderer but he’s sure the three of them are hiding something. In the meantime, the draw he feels toward Walter takes him by surprise.

Walter is in a dilemma, concealing Sylvia and Lucy’s relationship and not knowing how much to tell Frost about the paranormal possibilities of the murder. He isn’t interested in going to bed with anyone—he’s got a complicated life and has to know someone really well before he falls between the sheets. He’s taken aback by his own attraction to Detective Frost and angry when Frost appears to twist the spark between them to something transactional in nature.

Will Walter be satisfied to stay on the periphery of Lucy and Sylvia’s love affair, a welcome friend but never quite included? Or is it time for him to strike out and embark on a relationship of his own?

Add The Quid Pro Quo on Goodreads

Killing your pretties

crop unrecognizable person with bright eye and rare eyelashes — Photo by lilartsy on Pexels.com

Content warning for this whole post: I’m talking about writing about death, bodies and the dead. There are no photos here, but there are disturbing photos in some of the articles I link to at the bottom of the post. I detail this after each link so you can exercise your own judgement.

The Fog of War by A. L. Lester, First in the Bradfield Trilogy, part of the Border Magic Universe

I’ve sent the manuscript of the sequel to The Fog of War this week…The Quid Pro Quo will be out on the 20th of November. So now it’s time to blog about all those interesting things I found out whilst I was writing it. And I’m starting with rigor mortis. Yay!

The book begins with the discovery of a body in the village duckpond and the characters need the time of death in order to work out people’s alibis. I’ve never written a body for which I’ve needed time of death before, so I went googling. The number of writers who do this must be extraordinary–presumably we’re all on some sort of watch-list somewhere.

When it came down to it, there’s only a page or two at most about it in the actual book, but I felt that I needed to know a lot more about the subject before I could move on with the story. This is standard for me. One of the things I find most frustrating about my own creative process is that I need to find out a lot more about subjects like this than I put in the book. To illustrate how easily I over-research, I always use the example from The Flowers of Time where I made my own butter, then clarified it to make a butter-lamp as a light source.

I didn’t go that far this time. I’m not so dedicated to my art that I’m prepared to create a corpse and observe the stages of decomposition in order to write about it properly. For both moral, practical and legal reasons. I did do a lot more reading that I probably needed to though, and squicked myself out thoroughly in the process.

Up until that point, my body, Charlotte Fortescue, had been a narrative tool–she gets offed very early in the book and she wasn’t a terribly nice person. We’re not really supposed to spend much time feeling sorry for her, she’s just the doorway for us to get into the actual plot. However, after I read all these truly gruesome accounts of what happens to a body after death, I began to feel very sorry for her indeed.

It was most uncomfortable. I didn’t want to feel pity for her…and I didn’t want reader not to feel for her, exactly, but I didn’t want people to feel they had to waste their emotions on her when she’s effectively a means to an end. I’m now stressing slightly whether I’ve struck the right balance, but it’s too late now, it’s gone off for edits and that’s that.

Here are the resources I found most helpful, whether you’re a writer looking for information, or just an interested bystander. I’ve given additional info about how distressing they are, so please do take heed. I felt wonky for a few days after reading the final one.

For an overall summary, I recommend the lovely Ofelia Grand’s blogpost, For when the poor sod needs to die. No gruesome pictures, respectful approach with a light touch, very helpful.
I then moved on to the Wiki article about rigor mortis (which has one photo of bodies in rigor, exercise care) and has a broad overview of technical stuff–also links to articles to all the other stages a body goes through after death. It’s very well-referenced.
For the forensics part of the story, I read Methods of estimation of time since death (no pictures) from this very in depth NCBI* article. Interesting, mentions maggots, don’t read at lunchtime.
However, I needed to know about bodies found in water. So I ended up at Decomposition changes in bodies recovered from water also at NCBI*. This comes with a very serious content warning, I’m not kidding people. There are photos of people who died in very unpleasant circumstances and I found it very upsetting.

*National Center for Biotechnology Information

Next time I plot something out like this I’m going to try and avoid needing forensics as a time of death because I really don’t want to have to read all these again!

Guest Post: Ellie Thomas, Artistic Inspiration

Thank you so much, Ally, for having me as your guest today! I’m Ellie Thomas and I write Historical Gay Romance. In this blog, I’ll be chatting about my latest story with JMS Books, released on July 10th. It’s a Hot Flash entitled A Roll of the Dice. It can be uncanny how inspiration comes out of the blue from an unexpected source. The idea for this tale started when watching an excellent three-part tv documentary on the story of Welsh art – of all things!

I love all things eighteenth century and especially writing about that period of history. So, when the programme focused on artists of that particular time, I was completely rapt. I heard for the first time about the landscape artist Richard Wilson (1713-82), who was one of the first of his peers to popularise the landscape genre. I was not only fascinated by his story and his artwork, but it also got my imagination whirring.

In the same way, my main character Joshua has Jones as a surname in honour of the Welsh artist Thomas Jones (1742-1803). Like his namesake, Joshua studies in London under the great Richard Wilson. While writing about Joshua’s experiences, I couldn’t resist including a real-life humorous anecdote about students misbehaving in class which Thomas Jones had recorded in his diaries.

So, as I had sketched in the artistic backdrop for my story, my next task was to devise my characters. When the story started unfolding in my mind, I happened to come across an article on influential black composers and musicians in Europe in the eighteenth century, including the Chevalier de St. Georges (1745-1799) who was dubbed ‘The Black Mozart’. This inspired me to make Joshua both an aspiring artist and a man of colour.

Many artists at that time, including Richard Wilson and Thomas Jones, were drawn to London to study, exhibit and establish their names in artistic circles, so that city seemed the ideal setting. In my story, Joshua leaves his home city of Bristol in the West of England to stay with relatives in London to try to make his mark on the art world.

Towards the end of the eighteenth century, although a major city and growing fast, London was not endless urban sprawl familiar to us now, but could still be crossed on foot. This relatively short distance made me consider in which specific districts to place my characters and how to arrange their first meeting.

Since the Royal Academy of Art in London was based in Old Slaughter’s Coffee House in St. Martin’s Lane in those very early days, that got me thinking about nearby Whitehall and the St. James’ Palace area, lined with exclusive masculine gambling and drinking clubs which were a core of political power and influence at the time.

These qualities embody the character of Frank, Joshua’s love interest, who moves easily amongst influential diplomatic circles. As Joshua funds his daytime art studies by working as a waiter in a gambling club by night, this seemed an ideal meeting point for my couple. In such an intensely male, hot-house situation, I could easily imagine how a spark of mutual attraction could flare into romance.

A Roll of the Dice

Joshua Jones is in London to pursue his dream of becoming an artist. As a young black man from a modest background, he works hard to pay for his painting classes, both as a fencing master’s assistant, then as a waiter in an exclusive gaming club, which his uncle manages.

During the London Season when the club as at its busiest, the last thing Joshua expects is to find romance. But when mesmerising older man, Frank Bartlett, is determined to seduce him, how can he resist? Joshua now finds he has another problem. How can he stop himself falling for the object of his desire?

Buy A Roll of the Dice

Read an Extract from A Roll of the Dice

As they sat by the fireplace, Joshua looked around him with interest, noting the shelves of books and the writing desk piled high with correspondence. Pouring them both a glass of wine, Frank sat back and smiled at Joshua’s observation.

“Does my home meet with your approval?” Frank asked.

Joshua grinned. “I was expecting more of a palace,” he replied, which make Frank laugh, revealing that strong column of his throat that made Joshua catch his breath.

“I’m sorry to disappoint you,” Frank said, smiling.

“Oh, I wouldn’t say I was disappointed,” Joshua said with a tinge of flirtation, knowing he was playing with fire. Frank glanced at him with a knowing flickering glimmer that set Joshua’s pulses racing. He was achingly aware that the consideration and snatched conversations of previous evenings would escalate in this intimate setting.

“If you are in the mood,” Frank said silkily, reaching for a pack of cards and moving a nearby side table between them, “I thought we might play a game.”

Joshua almost blurted out that he did not gamble, when he suddenly realised that the stakes were far riskier, or rather risqué, than money. “Pick a card,” Frank invited him. Breathlessly, Joshua did so and putting it down on the table, he saw he had selected the Ten of Hearts. Frank followed suit, placing down the Two of Spades. “I lose,” he said, smiling as he shrugged off his coat.

Joshua’s eyes widened. “I think I like this game,” he said, picking the next card. As it was his turn to select a lower card, he chose to remove his neckcloth as slowly as possible, his adversary glued to his every movement. Then Frank lost his waistcoat, his large body visible under his linen shirt which made Joshua’s mouth go dry. He gulped his wine before picking the next card. They chose an equal number and in accord, both removed their shirts. Joshua could not take his eyes from that massive chest and brawny torso and Frank seemed equally breathless at the sight of Joshua’s lithe and sinewy brown body.

“Perhaps we should take this into the bedroom?” Frank suggested, rising and holding out his hand. Joshua followed willingly and as soon as the bedroom door was shut behind them, they were in each other’s arms.

Buy A Roll of the Dice

Meet Ellie

Ellie Thomas lives by the sea. She comes from a teaching background and goes for long seaside walks where she daydreams about history. She is a voracious reader especially about anything historical. She mainly writes historical gay romance.

Ellie also writes historical erotic romance as L. E. Thomas.

Website : Facebook

Fashion Museum, Bath

Firstly apologies for the lateness of this post. However, I’ve been collecting blog material! We’ve been on holiday near Bath and we went to the Fashion Museum earlier in the week. I was primarily focused on looking at clothing from the 1770s and 1780s for Edie and for Jones.

The trouble with collections of historical clothing is that you only get the really expensive things or the things their owners didn’t like much that survive. And you don’t get a great deal of working people’s clothing, because they literally wore it until it had holes and then it got cut down and repurposed. Clothing was so much more expensive and energy-intensive than it is today. Everything was woven and sewn by hand.

These gowns and petticoats from the 1770s and 1780s are much more Edie’s sort of thing than Jones’, although I do imagine Jones stuffed in to the one with the blue quilted petticoats when she was visiting her aunt in England. And perhaps the one with the yellow gown and stomacher for more formal occasions. I can definitely see Edie in the pale pink effort with all the embroidery on the front when she first meets Jones at the ball. (High waists a la Jane Austen only came in around about 1794 as far as I can make out).

Once the pair of them are travelling, they revert to much simpler clothes. I imagine Jones wearing something like this… it’s based on a working man’s coat from about 1780, made of wool.

I am still in debate with myself over whether Jones would wear local clothing once she gets home to the mountains. I think she might need to stay in western garb because I am not confident enough to write about regional clothing without getting it wrong and that seems disrespectful.

Edie doesn’t feel right going for breeches, however comfortable they might be. So she compromises by wearing ‘stays’ or ‘bodies’ (which is what she calls them) that lower class women, who had no help getting dressed, wore. They lace up the front rather than the back, so you can do them yourself. This is really interesting little video of a working woman getting dressed.

The little things… how you deal with menstruation, what pins you use in your hair, how often you change your stockings… those are all things that tend not to get referenced in contemporary texts because it was all such normal stuff that you didn’t need to. Everyone knew about it. There’s a good blog post about Georgian personal hygiene by the Word Wenches and I think I may have mentioned Madame Isis’ blog before.

Next week I am back to regular scheduling and I am interviewing Naomi Aoki!

PS: As we came out of the museum and went to find the old fashioned sweetshop, we fell over a coach and four. Netflix are filming the Bridgerton series of books by Julia Quinn.