Baking Blogfest!

So the other day I was thinking about how sad it is that we, as writers, never really get to write The Happy Stuff. I mean, you can have happy moments in your book, but they can never last-- happiness doesn't drive stories forward, and it certainly doesn't keep readers interested. I figure, maybe for blogfests, I can get away with giving them some happy times without the threat of everything blowing up in their face...

The Baking Blogfest is being hosted by Charity Bradford at My Writing Journey and you should be sure to hop over there and see who all else is participating! My scene takes place in Asgard. It does not take place in any of my books. Consider it a self-contained moment, outside of real continuity! I've left the narrator unnamed purposely, so I guess there's still a little bit of mystery involved. I apologize if it isn't up to the level I usually produce!

The kitchens of Bilskirnir were enormous. She would never have any reason to complain about counter space or room to work, and certainly there was plenty of storage space. The pantry alone was twice as large as her dorm room had been, and the root cellar was just as large. There was just one problem, which Thor had promised to remedy, and she couldn't really blame him for not having found the time, all things considered. They'd barely been together before he'd been exiled, and she didn't really expect him to wire the halls in Asgard for electricity just for her convenience, anyway.

She kneaded the dough on the floured table. She had gotten a later start this morning than she meant to, but it had been a very long time since she had last been required to milk a cow, or hunt for eggs among the chickens.

It wasn't really that she minded doing things by hand, but she did miss having an oven which could be set to a specific temperature, and a solid electric mixer would have made bread making a much less time consuming activity. There were, after all, no grocery stores, no 7-11s, and no deliveries. If she wanted bread for sandwiches, or toast, or breadcrumbs, she had to make it by hand first, and Thor might have been able to live for decades off no more than mead and golden apples, but she certainly wasn't going to starve herself for the next millennia.

She wondered if it had been fifteen minutes yet. That was how long it usually took to knead the dough. But of course, along with electricity, Asgard also lacked clocks and timers. Normally she didn't mind it so much, but she had scorched three loaves of bread in the last week for having lost track of the time while in the garden, picking herbs and vegetables and waiting for it to bake.

Thor had teased her for it, and eaten it without complaint, telling her it was much better than anything he had made in the last 500 years. If it were even 300 years ago, she'd perhaps have been proud, but it wasn't, and in the modern world, there really was no reason why she couldn't produce bread of reliable quality!

"I know," Thor said, stepping in from the garden. He set a bucket of goat's milk on the counter and reached over her head into a cabinet. "A proper oven is on its way, I promise. And Ra said he would come tomorrow to help with the wiring."

"I didn't realize he was an electrician."

"He isn't. But he's closer to it than I am, and I can hardly bring a mortal here." He shrugged. "It's a shame that Hephaestus left, though. He would have loved a project like this."

"Were you friends with Hephaestus?"

Thor smiled, withdrawing a collection of cheese cloths and shutting the cabinet door. "Not exactly. Aphrodite was always trying to seduce me, and I think he appreciated the fact that I never took her up on it, but I was rarely on Olympus, and he rarely left it. There was no bad blood between us, though, and that is probably the best that can be said for a relationship with any god."

She grimaced at the thought of Aphrodite as competition, studying Thor as he sifted through the milk, drawing out curdles in the cloth, his red-gold hair falling into his eyes. She folded the bread once more and set it to rise before putting it in the brick oven beside the hearth.

"I didn't think Aphrodite took that kind of rejection well," she said, trying to keep her tone mild. There was so much she didn't know about his past. So many things he had experienced without her. And yet, she did not doubt her understanding of who he was, for all the mystery.

"Mm." He looked up from the milk and met her eyes. The blueness of them still startled her after all these years. "Then it was a very good thing I was not much on Olympus, wasn't it?"

"But how did you escape when you were there?" she asked, ignoring the way his eyes had crinkled in the corners with amusement. "And for that matter, why would you want to?"

"She was married, and so was I. It would have been dishonorable, and I had no desire to cause trouble for anyone, least of all myself." The smile left his face and he turned back to the milk, fishing for more curds. "Perhaps it was foolish of me, but I never had much interest in sharing a bed with someone I did not care for, no matter what their reputation might have been."

She touched his arm, feeling the muscles working beneath the warm skin as he rang the extra whey from the cheesecloth. So much strength. So much restraint. For so long. She rested her head against his shoulder. He paused in his work, some of the tension draining from him. No longer. They were together, now.

"The oven doesn't matter, Thor," she said.

He chuckled softly and she felt him kiss the top of her head. "All the same, you'll have it. And the mixer too."

Hope you enjoyed it! I'm spending today at the art museum, and meeting my new nephew tomorrow, so I will be reading everyone's entries slowly but surely over the next couple of days. Happy Blogfest!

Hair dye in Homeric Times

In my book, Helen dyes her hair twice to disguise herself. The first time with a home-made concoction that turns it black or brown, and the second time a proper dye which turns it red. The challenge is finding a home-made dye which Helen, as a child of twelve, would be able to get her hands on, mix, and apply without help. Now, she does have access to information that a normal twelve year old wouldn't, and so her knowing how to make dyes isn't my problem. My problem is that I personally have no idea what went into producing a good dye during the period in which Helen would have lived, which means that I have to do research.

And the process that was used during antiquity to dye hair is mind-blowingly awesome in its simultaneously simplicity and complexity. You see, during antiquity, Greeks and Romans and Egyptians dyed their hair using nano-technology without even knowing it! Of course the downside is that it required lead oxide, which probably didn't do much for their health. The other problem is, how the heck would Helen get her hands on lead oxide or lime? And that kind of dye process is absolutely permanent--which is, of course, what Helen is going for, but not at all helpful to ME for later events, and Homeric Greece was certainly not Antiquity. I can believe that these kinds of techniques were known in Egypt, however, and in the east. Troy by all accounts seems to be very rich in these kinds of things-- a center for trade. But Helen at age 12, working under the radar, can't really engage in trade at this juncture.

Now there are a variety of pigments that were available to people in those times. Umber and Ochre for browns, reds and yellows, Bone and Carbon blacks, for, well, black for certain. (Incidentally, this webpage is kind of AWESOME for tracking pigment use through history.) But could any of these pigments be made into dyes? I'm thinking it would require some kind of solvent (and I'm totally wishing I had blond hair of my own that I could trim and try mixing dyes in my kitchen sink about now), vinegar would be a good one, or possibly even just wine or water. Helen could easily get her hands on any of those, but I have no idea how permanent that kind of dye might be, if at all.

But the only information I've been able to find on making ochre based dyes involves soy milk as the bonding agent. Earliest records of soy milk do not stretch back to Mycenaean times, even in China. I know cow's milk has a similar amount of protein to soy milk, but I'm not sure it has the same enzymes to allow the bonding-- or it might require the addition of an acid to activate them (like Vinegar or wine, I'd imagine, though I have no idea how the chemistry would all work out), or maybe egg would do. I have a feeling that even Helen, with her working knowledge will be spending quite a bit of time engaging in trial and error tests. I hate when my character is smarter than I am!

Late in the game I did finally find something that could be a practical and easy to make dye for Helen's hair, mostly by luck and persistence through wikipedia--walnuts! Boiling the fruit of the walnut tree apparently makes a dye which will darken as it oxidizes. Somehow I have a feeling that the adventures in milk and vinegar are now over for Helen. All she needs is to collect some nuts! Believe me-- the answer to this question did not come soon enough.

After all this, the second instance of Helen's ventures into hair dye is much, much simpler to handle. Henna makes a very simple red dye, no tricks involved, and it's something that she could easily buy or trade for now that she's not doing it in secret. In fact, it's probably something she could get from Troy, which works conveniently with the rest of my story when all is said and done.

On the plus side, I did learn how to make Casein Paint. Seems pretty simple, when all is said and done. Hooray for useless information I will never use found in the search for the information I actually NEEDED.

What was your last research time-suck? Is there anything that you tried to learn for a book, but could never find the information for?

Prep for the Dream Sequence Blogfest!

For all of you guys who have signed up to take part in the fabulous Dream Sequence Blogfest coming to us on June 4th, I have a very special link!

Valerie at As The Moon Climbs has put together a discussion of fortune telling in writing, and how it can be used effectively, including but not limited to, the prophetic dream! Definitely check it out-- if not for the info she presents (which is excellent) than for the examples she uses, including a short excerpt of a dream from one of my books! Head on over and talk about the trials and tribulations of fortune telling in your own books, or books which you have read! Fortune telling is a tricky thing to do well and right in a book, even trickier to do it in a way that isn't cliche.

And don't forget to sign up for the Dream Sequence Blogfest, either! :)

Oh, Aphrodite!

The trouble with writing about mythical figures, is that so often people already have an idea of what they should look like, and when you try to describe them as a writer, you risk putting off your readers by clashing with their already defined mental images. To offset this, I tend to avoid overt description of the major players outside of what is commonly accepted. For example, we don't really have a cultural concept of what Adam and Eve look like (outside perhaps, of a standard white-washing), so I keep my descriptions of them very limited-- to allow my readers to fit their own Adam and Eve into the blanks (and really, Adam and Eve, to my mind, ought to look like everyone at once, and no one at the same time). In regard to Thor, I try to keep to the standard descriptions: Huge, neatly-bearded, muscular, I even hedge my bets by giving him red-gold hair, instead of a true red or a real blond so the Marvel fans won't argue (mythologically speaking, it really should be red, but Marvel's Thor has skewed the cultural impression).

I spent the evening recently trying to find a good reference and source of description for Aphrodite. I hadn't had to do much with her before now, because she's only a tertiary player in my other books, and I hadn't realized she was going to make an appearance in HELEN at all until she literally sat down next to her in the book. And then I started researching. What did Aphrodite look like to the people of Mycenaean Greece? Helen already has blond hair, and it seems to me that this is a key element of her beauty-- that the reason she is so beautiful, is because her coloring is so unusual. If I give Aphrodite blond hair also, does this diminish Helen's uniqueness? Would the Greeks really envision their goddess as a blond, when they were probably dark haired for the most part? Maybe more importantly: How have other people already illustrated Aphrodite? What is our cultural opinion of her coloring?

I googled her. After talking to a few Classics-oriented people on twitter, and realizing that I could not for the life of me remember any lines in the Iliad which described Aphrodite's hair color, it seemed the best recourse. But the wiki entry didn't give me anything about her hair-color, and the other less reputable (yeah, I just said that) sources seemed to ignore physical description as well. At that point, I turned to the wiki-commons for the masterworks.

The Masters from the Renaissance may have fooled with their myths, giving Pegasus to Perseus when they don't belong together, and re-interpreting other stories as needed for artistic convenience, but they were influential. Our ideas of these major mythological figures are, like it or not, informed by these pieces of artwork. What I didn't expect to find in my search through the commons was art dating back to antiquity. I'm not sure why it didn't occur to me until I saw it, honestly, but what better reference than art from the culture which spawned the myths? (image: Birth of Venus, by Botticelli from wiki commons.)

There are images of Aphrodite on pottery-- of course, that kind of art is usually fairly stylized, and the red and black Attic style (dated to about 410 BCE) especially seems kind of unhelpful. In that medium, Aphrodite is bound either to have red or black hair, regardless. Still, it's worth noting that her hair was colored black. It seems like if she was a blond, the artist would have gone with the natural red tone of the clay instead. But I'm no art historian, and that's just my personal conjecture. It isn't proof enough to give her dark hair in my book, that's for sure. (Image © Marie-Lan Nguyen / Wikimedia Commons)

So I kept looking. And man, why did I not even think of frescoes?! There are a couple of good ones in the wiki commons where I can clearly identify Aphrodite in the picture. Both of them show her with dark hair, not blonde. One image is from a wall in Pompeii, dated to roughly 79 AD. Aphrodite is the smudged woman in the background, dressed in white. (I'm not posting it here because I feel like I'm going overboard with the pictures here.) This image seems to also be from Pompeii, but wiki information dates it to about 25 BCE. I can't explain the difference in the dates here, as I said I am no art historian, and so I can only give the the information that wiki has given me-- dubious though that may be. Aphrodite, of course is the woman in the blue dress, and I might argue that her hair is almost an auburn color. Certainly, it is a rich shade of brown at the least.

The trouble is, while these older images may be more valid as representations of Aphrodite, giving her dark hair goes against the more recent cultural memory, so to speak. So I'm still left with a choice to make-- do I risk alienating my readers by choosing to give her a darker hair color which might clash with the idea they have of Aphrodite in their mind's eye? Or do I follow the historical images, and hope that my readers absorb it as information they didn't know, or at the very least ignore me if they find it personally problematic? When it comes down to it, is our image of Aphrodite informed MOST by the current perceptions of what is beautiful?

My followers, what about you? When you envision Aphrodite, what color is her hair?

It's almost enough to make me wish she wasn't going to appear in the book. :)

The Dream Sequence Blogfest, In Honor of 100+ Followers

Guys, I wish that I had announced this blogfest last week when I thought of it, because there is a glut of blogfests going on in the blogosphere in the month of May, most of which were announced this week. But! I will not be derailed! I will, however, adjust my schedule to give you all some elbow room.

So, I will be hosting the Dream Sequence Blogfest on Friday, June 4th! Inspired by the bajillion and two dream sequences I have had to write for HELEN, and in honor of the 100+ folks who think I have something interesting to say. Because, let's face it, dream sequences? They are tricky buggers! Getting them right, and inserting them in a way that works for your book is a challenge! Like flashbacks, sometimes the dream sequence gets the stink eye, too. But done right, and done well, they can reveal amazing things about your characters. So why not give it a try, or at least get some practice in! Tell your writer friends, and we can whoop the Dream Sequence once and for all!

In addition to being a blogfest, I also want to give something back. One lucky Follower who participates in the Dream Sequence Blogfest will be chosen at random to receive a 10 dollar gift certificate to Amazon.com. In order to be eligible for the prize, you must 1) be a follower of my blog, and 2) post a dream sequence on June 4th on your blog. You must also 3) comment below to enter the drawing in addition to signing up for the blogfest with Mister Linky. I will post the name of the winner on my blog on Tuesday, June 8th, at which point they will hopefully provide me with an email address to which I may send their Electronic Gift Certificate.

Any questions? Awesome! Sign up below!



Also guys, don't forget to sign up for all the other awesome blogfests coming up! I would list them, but Andrew at The WriteRunner already has! (Thank you, Andrew for providing such an excellent service!) When I figure out which ones I'm participating in, I promise you'll hear from me, here, too.

Edit: The dream sequence blogfest is about sharpening our skills at writing dream sequences, so to be eligible to win the Amazon GC you must post something you've written! 

The Trouble with Castor and Pollux

As I'm rewriting HELEN, I find myself completely at a loss as to how to handle Castor and Pollux, Clytemnestra and Helen, as far as birth order and immortality/mortality goes. There are so many conflicting accounts as to paternity, and so many conflicting accounts even of how they were born-- but the one thing that pretty much everyone agrees on (cross-culturally even!), is that Castor and Pollux are twins.

Now, in itself that isn't necessarily problematic. But it becomes so, when you take into account the mythology of Pollux being a demi-god, a child of Zeus along with Helen. Now, unless Pollux and Helen were born at the same time-- be it by egg or not-- one has to ask, how many times was Leda raped by a swan? And, after the first time, isn't it kind of odd that she'd fall for that same trick again? Or did she solicit Zeus for round two, and if she did, was it with Tyndareus's permission and approval?

In combination with this, we also have the issue of inheritance. It's Helen's marriage which puts Menelaus on the throne of Sparta/Lacedaemon, not Clytemnestra's. Does this mean that Helen is the oldest daughter, or the first born of a twin pregnancy? Are Helen and Clytemnestra (which by the way, I find it HILARIOUS that Microsoft Word never questions whether that name is misspelled), older than Castor and Pollux? Since Helen's mythology specifically relates to the rape of Leda by the swan, I'm inclined to think that her conception was Zeus's first offense in that regard.

The easiest solution is probably to give Leda quadruplets, but I'm curious about the conflicts and stresses it might put on the situation if Leda had carried on more than one affair by Zeus, by choice or otherwise. Was the first time a swan seduction, and the second time Zeus took on the guise of Tyndareus (not unheard of)? And if so, how is Pollux identified as a demi-god rather than simply the son of his father the king? Coloring and appearance? Do demi-gods mature faster than normal mortals--or is it just his stature which proclaims him a hero? Demi-gods do seem to be physically larger than normal people, to some extent. Strength, Stamina, Some Special Ability? What differentiates Pollux from his brother Castor? The other trouble with following the quadruplet myth is that Castor and Pollux, were responsible for liberating Helen from Athens after Theseus kidnapped her-- if they were all born together, and Helen was stolen so young, how did Castor and Pollux manage that at so young an age, themselves? (Mind you, Theseus' abduction of Helen was somewhere between her 7th and 12th birthday. I've stretched the age a bit for my book, but I have a hard time believing two 7 year old boys riding all over Greece and rescuing their sister.)

My first impulse on rewriting was to rearrange the pairings, and make Helen and Pollux twins, with Castor and Clytemnestra coming later. But after re-reading the myths, I don't think I can get away with it. Castor and Pollux are just too well known as twins EVERYWHERE, but if they were born with Clytemnestra and Helen in eggs, aren't they not twins, technically, but now quadruplets? Helen and Clytemnestra certainly are not bonded in mythology or in the stories surrounding them the way that Castor and Pollux are. They don't have the same closeness of relationship, where they can't bear to be parted even by death. Some of that might be attributed to the fact that women had less control over the lives, maybe, but I'm not so sure that's all it is.

Still, it doesn't really suit my purposes in this book for Pollux and Castor to be younger than Helen, and making her a twin of Clytemnestra (or a quadruplet) could allow for more conflict between the sisters. I wonder if Clytemnestra regarded Helen's paternity to be an accident of birth? Or, was Clytemnestra born first, but her claim of inheritance usurped by Helen's obvious divine lineage? Are Helen and Pollux the favorite children of Leda? Does Tyndareus prefer Castor and Clytemnestra? I wonder if Leda prefers the children who are not Zeus's, because they do not remind her of the circumstances of Helen and Pollux's conception.

I really do wish I could just make Helen and Pollux twins. Since I can't, I think I have two choices:

1) Leda is raped/seduced/tricked somehow a second time by Zeus and bears two sets of twins a year or so apart-- and if I work with the established idea that Zeus perhaps assumed Tyndareus's form the first time, then I could even make Castor and Pollux the older pair of siblings, Helen and Clytemnestra the younger and the result of the rape by the swan. Of course, there is no hint in any of the myths that Zeus raped Leda twice, and that is a definite drawback, however convenient it might be to employ such a device. On the other hand, it isn't totally out of the realm of possibility either--there is certainly plenty of precedent. It solves the problem of the boys rescuing Helen quite neatly if they are a few years older than she is, too.

2) Quadruplets, born in two sets, with a lull of labor in the middle between the girls and the boys. I suppose it doesn't matter who comes out first then, and the precedent of the story is already present in the myth of the two eggs, later addition or not. I can't quite bring myself to hatch these kiddos from eggs, honestly. That's too fantastic for the rest of the story to support.

Now, I just have to choose which premise I want to work from! Feel free to weigh-in below, in the comments--what makes more sense to you? Quadruplets, half of which were born of Tyndareus, the other half of Zeus's rape? Or a second deception resulting in a second set of twins? AND! What do you do when the historical facts (I use the term historical here loosely) create contradictions for your story?

Conveniently, there's just been a post over at Scienceray about how twins are born, if you're interested in the scientific elements. My favorite part is this quote: 

The non-identical twins (also called dizygotic) may be conceived at the same time, or one following the other in a single menstrual cycle – so non-identical twins can even have different fathers.

I just thought it was fitting to mention, since it popped up coincidental to this mythological twin crisis in my book. And I never realized that non-identical wins could have different dads! Very interesting!

**Picture from Wiki-Commons: Leda and the Swan, by Cesare da Sesto, modeled from a lost DaVinci.

Coming Soon!

I'm so excited about my next couple of blogposts that I am going to tell you what you can expect for topics! This could be a total error in judgment, but I can't stop myself because I'm stoked and wish I could post all these posts right now for your reading pleasure. Stupid Blog Schedule!

TOMORROW I'm going to be discussing the problems with birth order I've been stumbling across in HELEN regarding her twin brothers, Castor and Pollux, and the myths surrounding parentage and events. Seriously, it is much harder to determine who came first and how than you'd think.

FRIDAY I am going to be announcing my plans to celebrate 100 followers with: A BLOGFEST! with a PRIZE even! I will also draw attention to a new blogfest that is coming to us, also.

NEXT TUESDAY! (Yes I am that far ahead of myself. It was an accident.) I will be discussing Aphrodite's hair color-- a case study in character description issues in HELEN and my other books, because last night I started researching it, and all of a sudden it was 3am and I still did not have the answer. It also involved shopping at the Walgreens website, apparently, where I found this:

I'll leave you with this box of hair dye to consider until Next Week's fabulous Aphrodite post.

Rewriting HELEN seems to be good for the blog! Not so good for MY hair, because I feel as though I am spending a lot of time Pulling it out.