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The research I’ve been looking at recently reveals some surprising wolf mythology, a link, perhaps, to the popularity of werewolves in the Francophile lore.  Just today I found that the place I write about in my current novel, a village straddling Northwest Provence/Southwest Savoy, was home in the 18th cent. to a killing spree —…

  I just found a terrific article on the theme of Germany’s fairy tale ‘moss woman’ — a cozy dame if there ever was. My source has almost as good a name — a blog titled Huggin’s Heathen Hoff. So, direct from Huggin, here is the primer on discovering your Norse spirit guide among the creeping…

  Inventors of the Renaissance were a curious lot. Some painted, others robbed graves, numerous built bridges and domes, many tended to the sick, almost all were employed by governments and numerous wound up in prison, fearing for their lives. Among these inventor/artists were a number of alchemists. Members of this brotherhood tended to be…

Madness appears as a regular feature of period fiction, and not just in recent years. Notable titles with this theme include The Metamorphosis, The Awakening, MacBeth, The Yellow Wallpaper, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, The Secret History, Their Eyes Were Watching God.  History includes such crazies as Caligula (kicked wife to death), Ivan the…

Research brings me currently to the phenomenon of poison. There appear to have been many kinds and a great many practitioners of the toxic arts during Europe’s Early Modern period, AKA the 16th century. I have found a delightful number of poison objects and accounts of assassination, some of which I will borrow in The Peddler…

  I have been studying the art of falconry while researching my Renaissance-era book. There are scores of paintings, tapestries and etchings from the period of nobles hawking for pleasure, and posing with trained birds for portrait. Not a lot of what I’ve seen so far deals specifically with raptor training, however. So I was…

I’m all a-thrill over my recent photography discovery, Kristy Mitchell, who tells stories, both biographic and fantastic, through photography. You won’t believe what she does with cutouts, flowers, butterflies, and torn pages of text. Don’t miss a single link from three of her recent exhibitions: Wonderland Similarly, my cover artist, Jiamin Zhu, opens her own…

  Why wouldn’t you read a historical fantasy about witches and vampires? And when those witches are vintage book nerds — bring it on! I was looking for another historical title for this spring, and now I’ve found it: A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness. Here’s The Huffington Post’s blog descripton… http://www.huffingtonpost.com/off-the-shelf-/a-refreshing-discovery-of_b_10382610.html I’m hoping for…